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“Avoiding early season setbacks” is a common theme on triathlon, cycling, running, etc. publications/websites at this time of year. While it is only the last week in January, some of you might still be receiving this advice a little too late. Additionally, many people follow all the rules and do all the right things only to find themselves in the exact same place.

Ok, so here you are. You made all these fantastic plans for this upcoming season. You were going to eat right, train hard, recover better and, most importantly, go faster. Then all of a sudden you get sick, you get injured, you get overworked, or just generally get off track. At any rate, your idea of a perfect season has slowly drifted away. If, and when, this occurs, you should do your best to keep the following in mind:

1. The perfect season does not exist. When you sat down to write out your season plans and goals you might have forgotten that no season in the past has gone perfectly according to plan. No matter how well we plan or how hard we try, we will never be granted a perfect season simply because life does not work in a vacuum. “Perfection” is ultimately subjected to our reactions to life’s curve balls. Always doing our best, in every given scenario, is all we can ask ourselves.

2. Stay in the moment. If you find yourself recovering from an illness, injury, or some other life circumstance, it is important to stay in the moment. Do not get caught up in missed opportunities and be wary of trying to ‘force fitness’ with constant ‘make-up sessions.’ Instead, consider what got you here in the first place and make the appropriate decisions that will help you get back on top of your game.

3. Success, in racing or otherwise, happens in spite of bad things occurring. “Bad things occurring” mean this: people who succeed don’t have better ‘luck’ than you or me. This is somewhat of a continuation of my first point, but I think it deserves some extra emphasis. Every time I have let my ‘bad luck’ get the best of me I have lost the race before the gun even went off. My bad attitude would not even allow me the chance of having any level of success. Do not let the same thing happen to you; as I said before: do your best no matter what.

When life challenges you, just smile and get back out there. As trite as it may sound, we cannot control what happens to us; we can only control our reaction(s).

This past weekend I had the pleasure of competing in the 4^th annual Challenge Wanaka Event on the south island of New Zealand. I raced to a 4^th place finish last year and I returned this year with hopes of improving on that performance. I did my preps for the 2009 edition in Australia, but this year I opted to stay at home in Boulder for my training. I had some interesting challenges with the weather, but I still felt good about my conditioning in the final lead up.

Wanaka had been experiencing some cold weather in the weeks before the race and when I showed up the lake was less than 13 degrees Celsius. We had nice race-week weather which likely moved the temperature up a couple degrees, but it was still one of the coldest swims I have done. Last year we had warmer water, but fairly rough conditions. This year the swim was dead flat and fairly uneventful for me. I ended up pulling the second pack of the swimmers around the course and I exited the water side-by-side with eventual winner, Richard Ussher (NZ).

After a mediocre T1 (but way better than T1 last year) I was off on the bike. A couple of riders, including Ussher, pulled away from me quickly during the opening 40K of the bike (which is very hilly); I tried to close the gap, but they proved to be too strong on this section of the course.  As we headed out of town to tackle the meat of the bike course I was concerned that a group of three had formed up the road and I was left in no-man’s land. This was not how I had hoped for the first couple hours of the race to unfold.

Nevertheless, I felt good and I settled into a nice rhythm about two minutes off the group. I forgot how rough NZ chip roads can be, but I had plenty of alone time to take notice. The bike is a one-loop course with one short out-and-back at the 160K mark. As a result, I had to wait quite some time to see how my position on the bike was developing. At this point I could see that Ussher had ridden off the front, but 2^nd and 3^rd place were within about three minutes.

I was not in the position I had hoped for coming off the bike (4^th), but I looked forward to seeing what I could do on the run. I settled into a nice rhythm after the first few Ks and around the 6K mark I heard that 3^rd place was only 30 seconds up the road. This motivated me as I have never finished 3^rd in an international race and within about ten minutes I had taken over the 3^rd place position.

The first loop of the run continued fairly uneventfully and around the 17K mark I could see that 2^nd place still had over 3 minutes on me. As we returned to town and headed back out for the second loop I got a split of about 2:40 to second place. The gap to second had not come down for 21K, but all of a sudden it dropped about 30 seconds.

I continued to tick along and I wasn’t sure whether or not anything had changed, but around the 28K mark I could actually see second place running on the trails. After exiting the trail section (10K to go) it looked as though the gap was now only a handful of seconds and by the top of Gunn Road (8K to go) I took over 2^nd place.

In 2008, when I was racing Ironman Canada, I managed to run into 4^th place with about 5 miles to go, only to be passed by the former 4^th place runner in the last mile (and subsequently finished 5^th). As a result of this, when I moved into 2^nd place on Saturday I started running scared and I never slowed down until I crossed that finish line. Only then was I content that I wouldn’t be caught. This fear is likely what helped me post the fastest run split of the day as well as a new marathon PR.

Last year and I came off the bike in 2^nd and finished 4^th. This year the exact opposite occurred. Perhaps I can find a way to ride like last year and run like this year in the future, but for now I am quite pleased with how things turned out. Wanaka has been good to me for the past two years and I really enjoy racing there. The race is like no other. If you are looking for an honest course in a beautiful place, head to Wanaka next January.

cheers,

justin

Tomorrow afternoon I will start my 30 hour journey to the south island of NZ. My brother and sister-in-law will be joining in LA so at least I’ll have someone to talk to for most of the trip.

Its freezing in Boulder at the moment, but the training for this race has gone fairly well considering the time of the year. I spent a little over two weeks in Tucson before Christmas and that seemed to give me a nice boost of fitness after returning to Colorado 2+ weeks ago.

I’m excited that its 2010 and I’m glad I have the opportunity to start things off on a positive note next week. I really enjoyed racing in Wanaka a year ago and I expect the same this time, but I wouldn’t mind if the rain and cold could hold off while we race. Nevertheless, training in Boulder in Dec+Jan makes most conditions seems reasonable.

I’m not sure I will be checking in here before the race, but you can follow updates on twitter:

www.twitter.com/justindaerr

-jd