2018 ITU long course World Championships thoughts and the fear of failure in modern amateur sports
I have been a triathlete for 7 years now. Along these years of training and racing, I have found that many of my fellow athletes fail to set a goal and go after it. This is because a goal that is achievable and challenging enough requires a lot more work than one may think and more importantly, it involves a high probability of failing. I think a lot of athletes nowadays are afraid to fail. This is one of the reasons why they often use the excuse of "I just want to have fun" to justify their lack of focusing, their races where they "had a bad day" and their multi-distance/multi-disciplinary plans: "I want to race an Ironman, a SUP race, a tough mudder, a 6hr endurance MTB and win the National Road bike and time trial races this year". Having fun is paramount and trying out different sports and distances is definitely a lot of fun. However, a lot of these athletes that "just want to have fun" are highly competitive. Despite being highly c...