Blog
Final Elite Season - part 1 (2020)
4th Nov 2022
It’s a year to the day since I retired from elite racing, I should really get on with finishing this blog!
The opportunity for one more elite season - as a mum – is one I thought I would never have. I took 2 years away from racing to have my son in 2018, and then prioritised him over training in 2019. I did make it to Xterra Luxembourg in 2019, but with virtually no training or racing behind me I wondered what I was doing in the elite start line! I didn’t embarrass myself but didn’t feel I had done myself justice either – it was just the motivation I needed to remind me how much I love racing Xterra, and a confidence boost that with a good winter’s training behind me, I could get back to pre-baby fitness for 2020.
So head down and put everything into it, I did. It was never easy to fit enough training in around parenting (with limited nursery hours due to the cost), and also working 3 days a week. Often I would run-commute to work in the dark, trying to do my mile reps with a rucksack on and obviously not hitting the target paces! I would do my long runs with the dog and then straight on to the bike for efficiency (less faff time with showering and changing kit!) We invested in a squat rack and basic weights for home as I never had time to go to the actual gym and could do my S&C while Torben was sleeping.
I was super excited for 2020 and booked about 6 races, hotels and flights. This was going to be my comeback but also my retirement as I would be turning 40 at the end of the season. I was back working with coach Mark IntelliTri, and everything was going to plan… and then covid happened.
It’s impossible to describe the stress of the uncertainty of trying to race in 2020. The pursuit of trying to achieve something time-critical, knowing that this opportunity would never come again, and all the factors determining whether I would ever be able to were outside my control. Not just the medical variables of covid-19, but the political and logistical ones.
In the first few months of the pandemic everything was cancelled. The world locked down, there were no races, and no travel. That may look like worst case scenario, but at least we had certainty. Then some things started opening up. By summer 2020, some of the races I had entered were starting to go ahead, and others were postponed to later in the year. I carried on training and hoping I would be able to do the later season ones. But living in the UK it turns out, is a massive disadvantage. We had one of the strictest lockdowns, and tightest restrictions on travel. It was impossible to get to any country where races were happening. Unlike mainland Europe, where crossing borders was less restricted.
Every country I intended to travel to seemed to get added to the government’s red list a week or two before I was due to fly. THIS is the worst case scenario – to keep putting the work in, keep hoping, only to have it repeatedly snatched away month after month at the last minute. I can’t count the amount of times I thought I would actually have a breakdown. There were not even any competitions in the UK to get race sharp (or to maintain sanity, or even tick off some secondary life goals like a good 10k time). Not even so much as a parkrun as our rules were so strict and cautious. (Far too much so in my opinion – especially when it comes to outdoor and healthy pursuits and when the restrictions become more harmful to people’s wellbeing than the virus itself).
Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate changing plans and how much stress this causes me (I now know why, but that’s a topic for another blog). So it’s impossible to put into words the distress. I had so many BA flight voucher codes I couldn’t keep track, along with race entries rolled over to next year, or simply money lost. The biggest violation (and a lesson to never fly with Ryanair) was I was refused a refund even though I was legally allowed to take their flight but denied check-in.
My very last chance to travel was Xterra Czech in September 2020. I had not even entered this race originally, but it was this or nothing for 2020, maybe ever. So as had become the pattern, I booked another flight, another hotel, another race entry that I may never use. We got into race week and the race was still on, the flight was still on, Czech Republic was still on the green list… until a few days before travel - it was moved to amber. There are not enough expletives I could type, but in the end I thought f*** this. I will go anyway, and take the 14-day quarantine when I get home. I don’t think I even had this choice for any of the other trips. (It’s all become a blur now, but either flights were cancelled altogether, or I the destination country required quarantine which meant missing the race!)
So – I managed this one race in 2020. After only one Xterra in 3 years, and no other races in 2020, it was no surprise that I had no race sharpness, and my performance was way down on what I know I was capable of. I have no regrets that I went and tried. I just about justified my place on the elite start. But this wasn’t the outcome I hoped for (or felt I deserved) after a year of investing all this time, energy and emotion. And after 3 years of missing out!!
I went home and spent my 40th birthday in quarantine (in fact I’ve never celebrated my 40th!)
Next I had to make the decision whether to carry on until 2021. I felt cheated, that this doesn’t count as a season. But would racing be back to normal next year? Or would it be déjà vu, covid restrictions and changing goalposts all over again?
And from the physical / personal side – can I keep going for another year? It is only getting harder to stay un-injured and at 40, only ever harder to try and keep at elite level. Can I afford to, as I only ever budgeted on working part time, paying a coach and costs of travel for one more year. (On the other hand I have so much flight credit left, I can only use it or lose it…) And not to be considered lightly – can I put my family through the rollercoaster all over again? It would be a decision we all had to make.
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