Chrissie Wellington and my Couchpotato

a couple of days ago I had the honor of meeting Chrissie Wellington in Person, I guess anyone who ever had any kind of interest in Triathlons knows who this amazing person is.
First She did a book signing and we all got our Picture taken with her and  later in the evening She held a talk , it was a Talk from a Triathlete ( Professional one that is ) to other Triathletes.
That women is just amazing and the Passion She shows about Triathlon and Charities She is helping is kind of contagious.
A person like Chrissie Wellington is very clearly a driven person and that certainly is not a bad thing, only with that kind Energy a person can archive what She has archived.
So that brings me back to me and my internal couch potato, I'm very clearly not driven and do not confuse this with laziness, I work hard but I'm not a person who is looking constantly up the career ladder.
My big problem is a small voice in my head , this voice says "Do an Ironman" .The Rest of me tells me "you are bonkers", the internal Couch potato says : "you can't do this"
But then that small little voice is asking a simple Question : Why can't you do this ?
There have been Cancer Patients who are doing it , people of all ages are doing it , why shouldn't I be able to pull this of?
And there is no answer for this one, I'm healthy , I have more then enough time in my life to put the proper Training into this. I have the basic Triathlon kit. No Reason not to start this.
Except the Fear of failure, but listening to Chrissie Wellington made pretty clear to me She is experiencing the same kind of fear and not there are plenty of other people who do fear this kind of Challenge, it is normal to have this Fear the trick is to overcome it.
I believe rather strongly to pull this kind of adventure through, I would need to be driven at least to a certain extend and here is the funny thing , I start to believe that being driven can be learned. I think to learn it, I have to surround myself with People who are driven, a Triathlon Club is the perfect ground for this.
I also think reading the right books  from People who have archived something amazing by being driven will help, Chrissie Wellington , Mark Pollock are some good starters.
That kind of charisma can rub off, I have defiantly changed since I have changed the People who surround me.

Olympics and Triathlons

I have to admit it I'm addicted to the Olympics, I 'm watching events I never ever under normal Circumstance would watch , Weight lifting , Rowing , Gymnastics are normally not events for me, but during the Olympics this all changes. I love to watch all this and more, I guess the reason is knowing how much time and effort each and every one of these Athletes has put into getting into the Olympics. Those Guy's and Girls have trained endless hours.
On Saturday I was watching the Lady's Olympic Triathlon and was glues to the Stream what a Race. If you haven't seen it , try to look it up, really impressive stuff and this Week it is of course Track and field Events. I will spend many hours watching it.
So with that Race in mind, I had yesterday my small Little Sprint Triathlon, that one was my 4th ever Triathlon and even though I knew roughly what to expect it still is all kind of new to me.
This time the huge Challenge for me, was the swim. It was a lake Swim, so far I have only done River Swims and when I arrived at the lake yesterday I realized,  how big the difference would be.
The Lake looked huge and the turning Buoys were far out, plainly it looked scary.
I know I can swim 750m without getting into trouble and that's exactly what I told myself before the start. When I got into the water I started to divide the Swim, my first Goal was the first Buoy, nothing else was in my mind, just the first buoy, when I arrived there, I only concentrated on the second Buoy and then the last bit was the stretch home. That action plan worked amazingly well .
I have that trick from Chrissie Wellingtons book , OK She is doing Ironman's and not my tiny Sprint Triathlons but I thought, what works for her, will do for me nicely ( many thanks for this Miss Wellington ). So the Swim was done and I had decided to go as hard as possible on the bike , I didn't want to care about the run yet and after 10 km my legs were really tired and for every small Hill I had to change into the small gear, but I soldiered on.
 Lastly the run , again I used the Tactic from Chrissie Wellington since I was not able to run the whole stretch, so I did pick a goal a few hundred meters down the road and ran to that point, walked a bit and started to run to my next point and that way I reached quite happily the finish line, I was probably the 10th last in the Race but I don't care, I finished the race and that is all that matters to me.

Those Buoys are far out ......