Blood sweat and gears: the day I almost quit

It's been a hard year, I suppose you have guessed that already. In fact, it was only today, when a friend congratulated me on gaining a spot on the GB team for my fourth world championships that she also reminded me how well I had done, considering I lost a whole season to the head injury last year.

I managed only two races last year, before spending two months recovering from a head injury and memory loss, sustained when out on a solo bike ride in the local lanes. Luckily, I qualified for the 2011 world championships in one race, and qualified for the 2012 European championships in the other. Then I spent 8 weeks patiently waiting for the severe concussion to subside, only able to turbo in the garden for very short periods, and only after several weeks of complete inactivity. For a good month I was unable to walk unaided, I was that unsteady on my feet. You can read all about my recovery in a separate series of blog posts - click the tag 'helmets save lives'.

After merely getting round the world champs in Beijing (feeling incredibly lucky to even make it to the start line) - I set about trying to recover my lost fitness in the winter season. This was also coupled with real life challenges; work. I was incredibly unhappy and actively seeking another job - which I did, and started after Christmas. The problem was this job was a 45 min commute away, and the previous was ten minutes up the road. I struggled to logistically fit in the training like I had done before, now I had to fit a commute in as well. I was getting up at 4:30am to fit training in before work, then doing another session as soon as I got home at around 6:30pm, so there wasn't much room for anything other than swim, bike, run, eat, sleep and work.

This was clearly not sustainable and it didn't take long before I simply didn't have the time to train like I had been doing and still operate the rest of my life. My husband simply didn't see me. It took some strength to face the fact that work and life were the important things and training was second to this, so the training had to be cut back while I worked out how I would balance everything. This made me feel sad. I felt like I had failed.

This coupled with an incredibly cold icy snowy winter meant that training did not take the same path that it had in previous years. When the triathlon season was looming, with the European champs as the first race, I had no idea what shape I was in and wasn't feeling very confident at all. On reflection, there was the complete loss of fitness ALL summer that I was fighting to get back, coupled with work, stress and the weather. I had a lot of factors playing against me.

This would be an all or nothing season and all the qualifiers were in the same month immediately after the Europeans, making for a pretty relentless schedule.

I had what seemed like a great result with my 5th place in Eilat, and I should have been happy. Truth has it I had an awful race, a personal worst run and a personal worst overall timing result. Competitors that I raced against and had to fight to stay in front of, I have since raced and comfortably beaten by several minutes each time.

When I returned, and faced the world qualifiers I really wasn't sure if I would make the grade. I felt less sure than I ever have in all the years I have raced for GB. There were a great many tears shed and many conversations where I actually wondered why I was putting myself through this. I seriously considered retiring from triathlon and I ended my coaching agreement with my coach who had been with me since day 1. I needed time to think. Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful for all the work they had done with me. They turned me from a beginner into a GB age group triathlete and never had any doubts in my ability, even when I did. I am not an easy person to coach, I ask lots of questions and am a very emotionally demanding person but you can guarantee I will give 100%, but I just wasn't sure if that was enough anymore. I compared the results history and I couldn't see progress in my statistics, and this frustrated me. There has to be more to life than triathlon. I needed time to myself to sort this all out. The only route seemed to be to quit triathlon.

BUT there was still work to be done: I was still entered for races, what would I do, race them, do them for fun, not do them? I just didn't know what to do.

I noticed a passing comment Emma Davis (Irish elite triathlete) made on twitter and responded asking could we meet. At the time I still wasn't sure what I was going to do.

Emma was very positive despite my mass negativity. She was sure that she could turn me into a runner (still my weakness area) and help me move off the plateau into more performance gains. I thought it was worth a go. I came away feeling like there might be light at the end of that long dark tunnel. The timing wasn't great though, right in the middle of the race season isn't the best time to try something new.

I did the remainder of my races with a completely different mindset. I was worrying far too much about the rest of the athletes and using the qualification as my bench mark. I had an NLP word with myself and realised I should be focussed on doing the best I can do, and see how that pans out. World qualification wasn't the be all and end all. We decided a family holiday somewhere NOT triathlon related would be what we would do instead. It would make a nice change anyway, as well. I was fine with that.

So, then there was Bristol. I worked to my strengths: swim-bike. Well, if it was good enough for Loretta Harrop then it was good enough for me. And it worked!! I exited the swim in 4th, exited T1 in 3rd, started the run still in 3rd, and ended the race in 5th. I lost the two places right at the start of the run, I saw them come past, and they both looked like runners. I didn't lose any more positions after that. That was a MASSIVE step forward for me.

So, I have qualified for my 4th consecutive world championships, I pre qualified for next year's Europeans meaning I don't have to do any of those qualifiers, the pressure is now off.

All things considered I feel very very proud. The competition this year is massive. The winners I am chasing are getting faster and faster each year as the calibre of athlete sky rockets. This year there were twice as many women fighting for the same amount of spots on the team, and my age group was more competitive than all the other women's age groups. With all that in mind, and all the challenges I have faced, I will wear that GB suit in New Zealand this October with more pride than ever before.

Now, I have two months to go, I have work to do :-)