This post is a detour from my usual rant on MY training & racing. Which, in short, has been stellar. This weekend ended a 3wk block & am very much looking forward to a recovery one to follow.
Since Saturday afternoon, just before starting my trun off a long bike, I've been devastated for my brother. My mom texted me saying "not good. he ran great, but was 3rd or 4th chase pack". My stomach sank, I continued my day very sad and couldn't get a hold of him to have him explain what happened.
I decided not to go watch because it was a hassle to switch my big training weekend my coach had planned and Daniel and I agreed it would probably add more stress to his morning and his race.
Anyway, now it's Sunday, I've picked him up from the relay he did with some teammates today and we both can't stop talking about "woulda, shoulda, coulda". It's good he goes back to TX tomorrow or we'd drive each other insane wanting to change the past.
I now understand what parents go through with kids in competition- I can't think of anything else all day!!!!!!
It's his fault, he knows it, and that's what kills me the most. He ran the fastest run split of the day in 15:22, was 4th out of the water, but his mistakes made his bike PEDESTRIAN.
I told him the night before "don't make unforced errors. It's one thing to be beaten than to lose. The former your competition was clearly better, the latter you f'd yourself".
So when I got the run down of how the day played out he explained his rookie ideas of changing things up before a race (helloooo!! that's the #1 thing you don't do before an A race!!)
Frist, decides to leave his trikit unzipped so he doesn't have to deal with unzipping it for the run. So when the wetsuit came off, so did the one piece- bear chested, he lost valuable time in T1 putting it back on.
Fine, moving on, that was not the end all. What was? Deciding sometime this week (so mad I didn't know about this!) to cut his shoe straps sooooo short that when getting his feet in while riding, the strap comes completely out of the buckle. Thus, he rode the entire ride unstrapped. One did strap in- getting that one to work cost him being dropped from the 1st chase pack....eventually landing in the 3rd or 4th!
I want to strangle him and hug him at the same time. He has two more years as a Junior, but he had this race. Just being in the 2nd chase pack, with that killer run, it would've been in the bag.
Unfortunately this journal/blog of mine, which I often use as a way to vent so I don't bottle stuff up, is public so many will read this as excuses I make for him. No. I've told him he sabotaged his own day, there's no pitty party only moving forward and having a great XC season this fall. It's a lesson learned. However, it does hurt deeply- & hard to tell if it hurts me more or not :'(
