Raceing

As the legendary Michael Jordan once said "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I cannot accept not trying."

I basically lived this quote yesterday as I paddled the race I went into with high expectations and equally high hopes. I was felling good and thought that today was going to be the second of a few good races.

Unfortunately it was not. I ended up having one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.

But the funny thing was it wasn't from my failure.

Here's the story;

At the end of the day, Mike and I were walking back to the car, not really saying much when one of Mike's old coaches, Shaun Pierce, ran into us. Shaun and Mike had a quick chat and I stopped to hear the chat. Mike asked how the day went for Great Britain, and Shaun's answer was quite positive. Except he said they lost one man. The sad thing was an unnamed paddler had missed out on Semi Finals by two seconds. That two seconds was a touch penalty.

I then thought to myself, I had a lot of penalties, I mean a lot. But I wasn't shooting for finals. I was simply shooting for a good race and I was putting myself down because of a race that didn't go the way I wanted it to. I then took the words my mom had earlier said to me, I was out for a good 2 and half or three months from injury. It wasn't because I was being a lazy bum. I had legitimately lost three months. I was putting to much pressure on myself when really I just needed to relax and race the race I could.

My mind was in the wrong place but thats just learning.

Hope you are all still fans after this little bump!

Hope all is well

Aj