By Coach Erinne Guthrie
I have had my share of life’s ups and downs Divorced parents Failed marriage Successful birth of my daughter Death of a soul mate My fathers suicide But none of those scared me the way waking up one morning seeing only black in my left eye did.
I don’t have good eye sight to begin with (-8.50!) but wearing contacts has always allowed me to see 20/20 and do everything I ever wanted to do.
But waking up seeing black was so scary for me because it really threatened the active lifestyle I live and love.
Interestingly enough the week before this happened I had been introduced to a book called Miracle Morning and had started adding helpful elements recommended in the book to my normal 20 min meditation at 4:20 am every morning. The 6 elements of the Miracle Morning are silence, affirmation, visualization exercise, reading and scribing or journaling.
Although I was already implementing 3 out of 6, it is amazing how implementing all 6 helped me get through this challenging period in my life. Even though I did allow for exactly 2, 24 hour pity parties,
that was really all I needed.
I got through retinal re-attachment surgery with a scleral buckle around my left eye with the best doc in the world Dr. Smiddy. Luckily, I have an awesome team and coaches and no sessions were canceled. My team of coaches stepped up I kept training as soon as doc gave me the green light. And although my vision is not back to 100%, I raced in my 1st ever draft legal sprint triathlon to try and qualify for world championships.
I was very tempted to skip the race for fear the warped vision in my left eye would cause issues in my performance. Would I get hit in the eye during the swim? Would I be able to draft safely? Did I Lose too much fitness in the weeks I had to take off leading up to the race? I didn’t want to talk about it to too many people for disgrace of total failure, so with the encouragement of my FC TEAM and a few athletes and friends as well as the implementation of the 6 elements of the miracle morning book I decided to race. So even if I came in last I knew for me it was about being there and participating and how I decided to respond to my situation instead of react to it!
Guess what?
I qualified! This has always been a dream of mine and now I am headed to CanCun, Mexico with 2 other Full Circle athletes to race against the world! Wow, who would have thought this was possible given my situation. Although I did not have a great race by any definition, with 5 girls pacing me on the run, I did get 9th place and the top 10 in each age group qualified. It was a tough but really fun race and the draft legal element of the bike made it completely different. I highly recommend a draft legal race if you can enter one. Here are the race results and more info on the USAT Website.
So if you are still reading because this is a kind of long post The big things I wanted to share is that It’s not what happens to you in your life it’s how you respond. I can easily decide that after this happened I needed to quit triathlon and racing because it’s just too risky but what I realize is that is just not an option for me. I love swim bike run too much to say goodbye!
Also having a daily practice like the Miracle morning was definitely introduced to me just in time to help me keep my eye ( no pun intended) on the big picture of my life which is:
To motivate triathletes to break through the obstacles holding them back from their ultimate triathlon performance. On that note, please watch out how you can be involved in having your Ultimate Triathlon performance after attending our 6th Annual Ultimate Triathlon Camp in Clermont FLorida. Registration is opening up this week! And
Look for upcoming details in the next week!
Thanks for reading!
Namaste
Pinch Me, I'm Dreaming! - Full Circle Coaching
[…] This level of competition is all new for me, as I’ve never competed at Worlds’ or even Nationals’ (even though I’ve qualified many times). For whatever reason, it wasn’t important to me to travel and compete at this level until now. I’m not sure why at the age of 45, but I am choosing to go for it! This race is totally different as it is a draft legal race on the bike, which makes it a completely different type of triathlon than the way I have been competing for 20 years. I’ve only done 1 draft legal race which is when I qualified by the skin of my teeth. I started in first out of the water and ended up 9th across the finish line. With almost zero training going into that race, my friends talked me into competing because all I had to do was get top 10 in my age group. I said I think I can do that even though it was only a few weeks after my retinal re-attachment surgery (read that story here). […]
Wow Erinne so proud of you. Thanks for the positive information and for me it helps me to see how to overcome struggles. You help me so much and I am so proud to be part of the FC group. Best of luck to you!! see you sunday