After finishing my latest race I found myself wondering. What am I doing? What’s my purpose? What’s the point of putting myself and my family through all these endless hours of training? Yes, to some extend I do bike and run and swim because I enjoy and doing it. But definitely not all of it. It takes a greater mission to get up at 5am on Sundays for a long run.

And then I thought about why I do triathlon, heck why I do anything. And even though I have been pondering this question for years, I’ve never really had an answer. Ever since reading Simon Sineks „Start With Why?“ I wonderered, what my „Why“ might be. And I never found a satisfying answer.

I hear and read about many Why’s. To inspire people. Because I’ve overcome something and this is proof (being overweight, drug addiction, illness). To prove something to someone. Might all be valid Why’s for others, but I never connected.

Then one day it dawned on me, that it might be simpler. And that it might be okay if my Why was selfish and shallow. I thought „I just really like being good at things.“. That’s it. It’s always been that way, it just took me a while to realize that it is that simple.

I’ve never found any joy or purpose in just completing things. To me, it is about doing things properly. If you can‘t get really good at it, better find something else where you can. First half, first marathon, first tri, first 70.3, first Ironman. I was always concerned with at least having a shot at being part of the front pack. I take immense pride in being good at what I do, be it work, being a Dad or at my sport. And that’s what’s driving me.

Having realized this has made it tremendously easy to identify my goals and to better align my professional and recreational goals. I’ve finally made peace with putting my career on hold for a year or two if I decide to pursue more ambitious goals in sports. 

What these goals might be is what I’ll discuss in a following post.