Getting into triathlons

After MDS, I unexpectedly felt a post-event blues. I had trained for this race for months, prepped on all the details including the material, the food, the weight of my bag etc... and now the race was over and I had completed my objective. A couple of things were hard for me:
  1. Even though I did my best to share my experience, take some pictures, and tell my story, I still felt I was only able to share only a taste of what I had lived, and no matter how hard I would try, people would not get what I had gone through. I read later that it was called the "going on the moon" syndrom that many people going on top of the Everest feel.
  2. There was now this void in front of me. It was actually hard for me not to have a greater challenge to live for and I needed a new challenge.
In addition to this post race "trauma", one of my learnings from talking to all the veteran trailers at MDS was that I should immediately acquire a race bike to start diversifying my trainings if I still wanted to be able to run in my 50s.  The stress the body endures running several times a week, going up and downhill, seriously attacks the joints and the muscles. The secret for lasting in this sport seemed to be the diversification.

Therefore, I finally decided to buy a beautiful carbon race bike, model Trek Emonda SL6.


I was now only one step away from being able to signing up for a triathlon. I just needed to learn how to cycle and to reassure myself on my swimming skills. The last push to actually sign up for triathlons came from two triggers:
  1. One of my friends met at MDS was participating at the Half Iron Man of Aix en Provence (only 1 month after the MDS!) and this piked my interest for the discipline and this event in particular.
  2. Just before the summer, I met in the context of my work a business and life coach named Folker Behrends. Foli (his nick name) also happens to be Iron Man world champion... Talking to him, about the balance between work-sports, and the importance of setting objectives and committing was very inspiring to me. 

I got very excited and signed up for the half Iron Man of Aix en Provence 2019. I had found my next objective and started to get really excited and scared as I had never cycled or swam at a competitive level...




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