Hard work – 30 Days to go!
Then I remembered a saying that I heard for the first time a few years ago while chatting to Roland Schoeman, Olympic Gold Medallist and an awesome guy, judging from the couple of hours I spent with him. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”. He mentioned that it is was up on a wall at the University in the USA where he spent many hours training. I had to think about it for a while before it sunk in.
Soon afterwards I wrote it down on a piece of paper and then transferred it to my diary. I then saw it again recently at the Sports Science Lab (SSL) in Pretoria run by Neil DuPLessis – an incredible sports scientist who has helped me with 2 fairly serious injuries.
I reckon, that I live by this. I am not particularly talented – I was 4th Team rugby captain at high school and tried my hand at just about any sport on offer from tennis to squash to cricket to action cricket, athletics to volleyball to swimming to bmx’ing to canoeing to water skiing and throw in some golf. Not often did I achieve anything amazing, but I loved every minute of being outdoors and exerting myself in some way.
Then I fell in love triathlon – WOW have I worked hard at this sport and enjoyed the journey immensely. Note I said journey, and not every single session or moment. The other day I was so far over y limit on my indoor trainer that I thought I was going to throw up. I didn’t, but I know that hard work will pay off in Kona.
Nothing in life comes easy – work hard and you can beat those talented individuals out there!