Goals

“Set challenging goals: if you achieve them, amazing; if not, it’ll be a fun journey!” – Lisa Wynn

I met Lisa at the triathlon.  She’s the one on the right of my picture with Jenson Button.  A couple of years earlier Lisa had fallen down the stairs and broken her back in two places, leaving her in hospital.  Confined to bed, able to neither move nor exercise, her weight began to climb. 

When it peaked at 18½ stone she resolved to do something.  Despite never having done a triathlon before, and still recovering from her accident, she set herself her greatest challenge.  She got herself a coach and started training. 

The Jenson button Trust Triathlon would be her fourth.

Following my own accident I followed a similar path.  After the fall, psychologically I struggled.  I resented what had happened and how it had left me.  As if the accident was some external entity that had done this to me.  But at least between the accident and my first tentative steps I could always see progress: having my operation, returning to England, getting into a wheelchair, standing in a swimming pool and finally standing on dry land.  These regular milestones kept me going.

But once I could stand, they dried up.  Sure, I was still getting better, little by little, but it was barely perceptible and there was nothing to mark it.  I became more and more frustrated: I could stand; I could walk; so why didn’t I have a normal life?

I resented the accident more than ever.  Increasingly I felt the need to prove it hadn’t beaten me: that I had come back even stronger.  And there was always this nagging voice in the back of my head...

...Ironman