The season ends

The season ends

When life throws the unexpected at you.

Its been a tough year for myself and my family. At the beginning of the year my husband (Patrick) went to see a doctor about an ongoing medical problem, (which is probably due to BPH (benign prostate hyperplasia)). It has been a time of waiting to get appointments and the stress associated with this. When Patrick did get to see the doctor, he was fitted with a catheter, which caused a lot of discomfort, infections, and limited his mobility and lifestyle. As an active person its been really hard for him to adjust, but we carried on with our plans for the summer anyway, camping and going away to France. In fact we have probably done more this summer than we have for a long while, and ended up pretty tired by the end of the holidays. You can read about what he has been through here

Knock on effects

This has also had a knock on effect on everyone else. If you have followed my posts you will see that this year my racing has not worked out as I would have liked, and its no coincidence that this has happened at the same time as stressful events in our life. I didn’t expect this to happen to Patrick, and it has made me think about my priorities in life. I had planned to have a nice easy summer without training, so I could enjoy going away with the family, and I made sure that I didn’t try to cram in lots of training even though I had decided to enter one last event “The Snowman Triathlon” (click the link to go straight to the race report) I felt I really needed to complete one event this year, and continued to train a bit over the summer, but it wasn’t my priority, so I lost fitness, but it didn’t matter. I really enjoyed our breaks, and we seem to have been blessed with good weather every time we have been away. Patrick has had his ups and downs but we have managed to do a lot of fun things this year.

How we deal with setbacks

Before the race I stumbled upon a blog post about how to deal with setbacks called “pain and the second arrow”. I am really interested in how our mindset effects us, and this couldn’t have come at a better time. The original post is here, but I will summarise what happened to me, and how I used the advice. On race day my chain came off the front derailler, and got jammed up against the frame of my bike. The same thing had happened to me at Brecon and initially my thoughts were “I can’t believe this is happening again” “I won’t be able to finish” etc. The article describes the incident as the “first arrow”, and how you react to the incident as the “second arrow”. I quickly realised that I was starting to shoot second arrows, and was much faster at fixing my bike and getting back on the road than I was at Brecon, partly because it had happened before so I knew it was fixable, and also because I refused to shoot those second arrows. So when you find yourself in a difficult situation step back for a moment and listen to the voices in your head, you can choose which ones to listen to and this is how life changes are made. This can be applied across your whole life, and one of the reasons I love racing so much is that it provides us with opportunities to grow, and to learn to deal with whatever life throws at you in a better way.