Lemons

With all the social media outlets around these days, we usually only see the warm and fuzzies of everyone's lives, people tend to not want to share the ugly things that are happening. But that's life and let's be honest, not everything is rainbows and butterflies. AND with where I'm at and what's going on with me right now, I think it's important to keep it real.

Sometimes life give you things you wish you didn't have to deal with and you wonder why this is happening now, of all times, but it's important to put things into perspective and remember, there's usually a light at the end of the tunnel and as bad and unfortunate the timing of life's circumstances, things could be worse.

Let me back up. I've had a few posts lately about all of the good things that have been going on swimbikerun related (South Shore Swim, North Shore Tri, adventure swimming to the Mokes, Honu (will update about that in the next post), to name a few), yet there has been some yucky stuff going on beneath the surface that I haven't talked about.

Long story short, I somehow injured my knee, no trauma was experienced, it just happened, still not sure how. I went from crossing the finish line at a local race two weeks ago to not being able to walk. I'm back able to walk and am in less pain and the swelling has gone down a bit. I'm hopefully on the road to recovery as long as I take care of myself and give my body the time it needs to heal.

However, I had this little, not little, kinda big race on the schedule. Hawaii 70.3, our local big race. I've been set on this race as a tune up and pre-race, race before the big, big race IM Whistler at the end of July. What to do? Could I do the race, absolutely I could. I'm in great shape (in my opinion) and I'm race ready. I can push through a pretty good amount of pain if need be (but that could be what got me into this predicament....funny how you can go from feeling no pain at all to being incapacitated, the mind is a powerful thing, but you need to be aware of what's going on in your body). But is doing the race going to jeopardize my body for Whistler and/or the next 20+ years? It could and that's not a risk I'm willing to take.

Triathlon is something I'm passionate about, I truly enjoy it: the physical stuff as well as the relationships gained from this close-knit community, but it's not my money maker, right now it's my hobby. Something that I love to do.

I'm not one to make excuses and doing this race was part of the plan all along, but in doing this race could I jeopardize the rest of my season, maybe, maybe not, but that's not a chance I'm willing to take.

I opted to not even bring my bike over to the Big Island for the weekend as I didn't think I could swim, ride and then not run. So the plan was to swim and then be super Sherpa Cheerleader for the rest of the day. It was a difficult decision to make, but one that I think is best for me.

As cliche as it is, life gave me some lemons, but I was able to make some lemonade by watching and cheering for everyone else that has worked so hard to get to this race!!

As a good friend told me, "Life is a series of temporary situations." Thanks Amy!!