Becoming a winner – part 4

Sherilee

As an Ironman coach many of the athletes who come through the door have not had a lot of background in any one sport. Sometimes they have no experience at the sports involved but they have this burning desire to test themselves.

Sherilee had completed another triathlon squad’s beginner course. She had done all she was going to do with the other group when she came along to one of my sessions. She was shy and overweight.

She was tall, around 178-180cm and over 100kg. She was unfit and tried to avoid attention.

One thing which became apparent early in her training was her ability to focus on a task and her willingness to give things her best shot. As part of her training I helped her outline a diet plan and started asking how things were going often enough for her to feel I was watching and encouraging.

She asked if I’d train her for the Gold Coast Half Ironman. We had a large group training for it and had enough of a range of abilities to divide the group into two levels. The lesser developed group was mainly girls with a couple of guys. That group bonded so well, they would socialise together, train together and look out for each other.

They argued, they celebrated victories, and they laughed a lot. They all raced the half Ironman. It was an extreme day, hot, 36C, windy on the bike and steamy hot on the run. The spirit in that group was so strong that everyone of them waited at the finish line for each other to cross.

Finishing that event in the toughest of conditions, a 100% finish rate and a 95% qualification rate for the full Ironman defined the “new guys” as full “Cycos”. It wasn’t a qualification enforced by anyone else but themselves. They felt they had made it.

Sherilee trained as hard as our best athletes. In fact I’m sure her attendance rate at training sessions was 100%. In her whole life, I’m sure she hadn’t been as focussed on any one thing as much as this.

The kilos seemed to drop off her tall frame, no-one was more disciplined.

When she stood at the start line at Forster, I felt very proud for her. Here she was, not a natural athlete by any stretch of the imagination, ready to put her heart and soul on the line.

She swam the time I was expecting, had a quick transition and got into the bike. She gained places all through the second half of the bike. The stage where the mind has over rule the legs.

It was the run where she stamped her authority on the race. When she started the race she weighed 92kg. She ran down 14 men in the same age group as her 35-39. And later when we looked up the results she had run down 14 men in the 40-44 age group.

I’d say the guys who were run down Sherilee, didn’t exactly feel like winners. But in my book Sherilee was definitely a winner.