LOU to Kona

How many times have you heard that to succeed in life you need a goal? How many people have you met that set crazy goals for themselves so that they can make their life meaningful? I have been a goal oriented person my whole life, I always have something to strive for, something to better myself and something that makes my life meaningful.

Have you ever worked towards a goal? A goal that you chase for years, a goal that you want so bad that you wont stop until you reach it?. Growing up I couldn’t understand most people… classmates who got up just in time to go to school, friends who after school went home. Friends who knew the trendy TV shows, whose weekends were filled with free time, days at the park and endless visits to the movie theaters.

My childhood was a bit different… by the time I started middle school I was in a school just for swimmers, and spent most of my teenage years chasing that black line, and always, always, always keeping my end goal in mind: making it to the Olympics. It is a very long story and after 22 years I can finally say it has a happy ending, but to make a long story short I quit swimming in 1992, after not making it to the Olympic Games hosted in my hometown Barcelona.

                         Picture of my swim team back on the day

I dealt with disappointment and struggled to live a ‘regular life’ after that. It wasn’t until 1996 when I moved to the States that I found myself again… 4 years, that is a long time to be lost!

Fast forward to 2009 when I did my first triathlon and I found a part of me that had been dormant for a long time. My competitive personality was fulfilled and I was able to have a somehow normal life and still feel accomplished. And then I started chasing a dream... I always looked at Kona as my second chance to compete with the best of the world, my opportunity to proof myself that I could do it, and that I belonged there. I never, in a million years did I think I’d qualify on my second attempt, but I have learned that sometimes in life things go your way and sometimes don’t. I like to say I got lucky, and when I say that I don’t mean my performance came out of nowhere, but I mean that I just had the perfect day, on that day I had the best day and that is what counts.

Needless to say I was emotional probably for the first week after IMLOU. Anytime I spoke to someone about my race I cried, every time I read text, FB post and tweets I cried, I was so over the moon that it took until Tuesday or so for it to really sink in... and when it did, I cried J

The emotional rollercoaster during taper was NOTHING compared to my post IMLOU emotions, for the first 3 weeks or so I was soo happy to have qualified but at the same time I was not so happy to be racing again. The pain was too recent to forget and knowing I was about to do it again was something that it took a bit for me to get excited about. It had been a long 10 months of training, I had accomplished my goal and at that point I wasn’t sure I had anything left in me.

We had seven weeks to get me recovered and ready for Kona. For most this seemed like a crazy turn around, but Matthew had done this multiple times, not only with his own qualification (2012) but a couple of times with other Dynamo athletes, Haley being one of them. I have learned to trust him and at no point did I question that it was doable.

For the next seven weeks I was in an autopilot, I’d wake up without even thinking about the fact that I had a workout to do. I would get it done and wait for the next one. A bit different from the last ten months when each workout meant something, I could not get my focus back but at least I could get my training in.

Anytime I wanted to complain I just remembered myself I was about to compete in Kona… didn’t take much more selftalk to just get it done.

Emotions were all over the place for five of those seven weeks, one day I’d be excited, the next day I struggled to get in the pool.

At some point I started meeting Erin again for weekend workouts and it all changed very quickly, the excitement was there again and I was looking forward to racing Kona.

The original plan was to take the whole family, but after Sami and I started looking into it we quickly realized it was going to be a very expensive vacation, so we decided to leave the kids behind and enjoy the week by ourselves.

The week before heading to Kona my parents flew in town, it is a rare luxury to have my dad here, but I put some guilt into him and he decided to join mom at the last minute. This end up being a blessing, last summer was the first time I didn't make it home to visit the family, that is the first time in the 17 years I've lived in the US. The kids were thrilled to spend so much time with their 3 grandparents, yes Sami's mom was down here as well, and it gave me and Sami a piece of mind knowing they'd be well taken care of. 

Not only the kids were well attended but we came back to a fresh painted house, dad spent a lot of hours painting the kid's rooms, touching up the doors and windows and fixing everything that was on sight. So it was a win win for everybody :).