I thought I should follow up from Sundays Windsor Duathlon race report with a few reflections now that I’ve had a couple of days to process the event.

But first I would like to congratulate all the medalists from Sunday and especially Messrs Mahon, Wood and Pollitt who won the medals in the Mens 55-59 AG. Duncan Wood and Martyn Pollitt dealt with the disruption of being held up mid race brilliantly to come back and finish really strongly, thoroughly deserving to win their medals, thus knocking me out of the top 3 in the process. Here is the revised result:

Now, when I crossed the line I was wonderfully knackered and experiencing that sense of exhaustion that comes from really testing yourself to your physical limits. It’s a pretty euphoric sensation and it can tend to distort your view of what’s real. When things have gone well then the feeling is total elation and when things have not gone to plan then the world can feel like its about to come to an end. Neither is rarely true even if it absolutely feels that way in the moment. But on Sunday I was experiencing a mixture of confused emotion. I thought I’d won a medal, which gave me such a high for several hours, but on the other hand I knew I hadn’t quite nailed the performance and at that time I was ready to blame external factors.

With the benefit of 72 hours to reflect, to gather more information relating to the results confusion and importantly to offload the unhelpful feelings I was experiencing, I’m now in a mental place to learn from the event.

Reflection is such a powerful performance tool as it can help to identify the important factors that have impacted on an outcome such that they can be built on or changed the next time, or if they are out of your control then they can be forgotten about.

The controllable factors for me from Sunday were:

• Dealing with the conditions: I got most of it right in that I stuck to my normal transition bike set up routine but I should have carried the bike out to mount line “cyclo-cross style” to get my bike leg off to a faster start.
• Dealing with my chimp factor: since my Gran Canaria camp with TriSutto I’ve been wrestling with what to do about my bike as its too small and I’m now just waiting for the new bike to arrive. In the meantime I should have been much more relaxed about the bike and used my past performances as evidence that I can ride strongly on it. Instead I think I was looking out for any indications that reinforced the negativity I’ve been feeling and on the first lap I found lots of examples to get my chimp agitated. This definitely cost me time on the bike.
• Avoiding distractions on run two: as I get tired I must continue to focus on what enables me to run well and not get distracted by such things as the race commentary, the pace of others, what might be ahead etc. I need to stay in my bubble where I know what to do and how to get the most out of myself. On Sunday I forgot all this!
• Run hard until the end. Ultimately its about getting the most out of yourself and if you do this then the result will take care of itself. I found myself scanning the other runners to see who was coming from behind to ensure that I held off others who may have been in my race rather than ensuring that I squeezed every last drop from myself.
• Roll with the punches better. Things will always go wrong and often these are out of your control so I need to ensure that I don’t get bothered by things I can’t do anything about…..and on Sunday there were more of these than at most events!

Finally, given the theme of my blog “Faster After 50” and inspiring others to chase their dreams I can’t finish without giving huge respect to Gill Fullen who missed out by a mere 5 seconds on being crowned overall Womens National Champion whilst representing the 50-54 AG. Gill you are phenomenal and an inspiration to us all.