Goal Smashing Month of Success

March 2017 · 5 minute read

Well… After last months post, you’d assume this one would be nothing but bragging about my goal smashing month of success! Well… you’re wrong.

This month did not go according to plan in any way, shape or form. I am not content with the way this month played out in way, shape or form. Where to even begin with what went wrong?

I trained my ass off. Like, 18hrs a week trained my ass off. Good training too, not a half arsed couple of punches on the bag with intermittent long breaks. Loads of focus on technique and perfecting my balance, kicks and footwork. I’ve never trained so hard in my life.

And then… On the 18th… I had my big chance to shine!

International K1 Debut

Prepped and ready, after the heaviest 3 weeks of training I’ve ever done. In front of millions of people I stood there and made a monumental embarrassment of myself. I completely froze. My mind went blank and I forgot how to fight. I can tell you for a fact, no one saw the result of that hard work. No one saw a single perfect kick or beautiful balance. There was no footwork, there was nothing.

How humiliating… I didn’t even look that bad the first time I ever got in the ring. Sure, people tell me “it happens” and “it was that bad” and “you’re your own worst critic” but I have to disagree. It was that bad, it shouldn’t have happened and my self-criticism is right on target. It was so bad in fact, that I’m still too embarrassed to go back to the gym.

But don’t worry! This doesn’t mean it’s the end!! It’s just a temporary set back. There’s no chance I’m walking away and leaving that as my final performance. I aim to be back in there and back to my old bad-ass self by the end of April. All I need is to relax for a bit on holiday and rediscover my confidence. I guess the upside of the whole experience is that I’ve now realised my biggest downfall. Which means I can fix it. And that’s just what I’ll do.

Ahead of the international opportunity to humiliate myself (sorry, it’s going to take me a while to get over this one), I had been hitting some long distances, training for my first ever marathon. And ohhh boy was I on track! Got right up to 32k and it looked like I was going to nail the full marathon in less than 4 hours. An epic time for a beginner!

My Frist Marathon

Unfortunately, along with embarrassing myself, I walked out of the ring with a severely inflamed kneecap which increasingly worsened after a couple of mild 20k stints.

After a rough week of trying to rest but also trying to run through the injury (I’m sure it’s not actually thaaaaat bad), I pushed myself last Wednesday to run 35k over one long 3.5 hour session. Granted, it was on a treadmill and was going to be nothing like the real thing but I had legit reasons for doing this.

  • It was evening and would be dark by the time I finished
  • I needed to be able to stop urgently in case my knee didn’t hold up
  • I really just needed to hit at 35k once to ensure my muscles had been conditioned enough to maintain the stamina to go the full distance
  • It was probably lucky I did it because I found some new locations highly susceptible to chauffeur after an even longer period of running. I realise, a 35k run 3 days before a full marathon goes against all training and preparation guidance but it had to be done. If I couldn’t hit this distance following my inability to walk properly the weekend before I don’t think I’d have the confidence to do the full run at all.

So anyway, I decided to go against what any ‘expert’ would probably recommend and do the run regardless.

Probably one of, if not the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. With a 5am start to the day and a 7.30am start to the race, I am pleased to say that I finished the off-road run coming in second place with a time of 5:03:00. I went into it with a injury and my knee locked about 25k into the run, and again every 2k until the end but I didn’t give up and I can happily tick a marathon off my bucket list. I finished feeling dehydrated, fatigued, exhausted and relieved. It’s not something that I’ll rush to do again but hopefully I can have another go before this time next year, hopefully with no injuries and most likely on a flat track, so I can crack that 4hr time I was on target for a month back! 😉

Up Next

And now here I am! Off to the Phuket on my next big adventure!! Okay, I’m only going for 10 days and I’m literally planning to lie on beaches, eat a lot of food and get massaged until I’m mush. Never-the-less, I believe it’s well deserved and I can’t wait to catch up with some good friends!

It’s certainly been an eventful kick start to the year and regardless of all my short-comings, I know this break is much needed in preparation to hit the ground running for my next big goal. Fingers crossed this’ll all result in a more positive story to tell next month along with a slick new qualification! 😉