Background to White Eyes

So the whites of my eyes started showing, in 2013 when it was thought to be a good idea to do a team event for Coral Coast tri Olympic distance, and then team up again a week later for 70.3 Cairns Ironman.  Both swim legs 1.5km, and 1.9km respectively.  "It's only an extra 400m, only." I was told.

So swimming over 68km in training, blood, sweat and alot of tears later, got myself so worked up on the start line of Coral Coast almost threw up and came out of the water saying never going to do this crap again.  I thought I'd totally blown it.  Second last to get out of the water and thought I'd swam the worst time for my team mates.  Only to look at the results later, swam fastest 1500m I'd ever done.  So I apologise openly to the lifeguard who kindly encouraged me on the surf ski.  When he said are you having fun yet, my reply was does it look like it.  Yep those nerves, and mental head certainly got the best of me there.

 

A week after Coral Coast and Ironman fever had hit town.  I had to do something about nerves and own mental state of yep you can do it.  I went to the woozier  lady (if you have see the movie Bad Boys, you'll know what I mean)  to calm those nerves, and get mental state on track.  Low and behold a completely different person was on the 70.3 Cairns Ironman start line. 

At the start.

I was determined to enjoy myself, complete the swim in 1.05 time limit and get my team mate off on bike leg as best I could.  I just wanted to finish and enjoy.  Enjoy that I did by skipping down transition lane with fellow team mate just bloody happy it was done and dusted woot woo we did it.  Really didn't care what we looked like, we did it and people laughed, clapped sharing our joy at the two nuts skipping, laughing, hugging swim coach as we went.  When the three of us crossed that finish line it was one of the best "natural" highs I've ever had.  

Couldn't have done this without fellow Empower Rangers xo

I was gone, it was in my blood and that little devil and angel of Coach M that always sits on my shoulders had hooked another candidate for this sport, that you apparently can't make up your mind which sport to go for; swimming, bike, run.  So you get addicted to triathlon, and midlife peeps get addicted to Ironman/Challenge cause evidently we haven't done enough crazy crap in our life's and want to use up the extra heartbeats to get the rush of a natural high.  :)