Dear everyone,
You might expect my love story, about a boy and a girl. I am sorry that I have to disappoint you. I rather keep that for my self. But I have another love in live. It’s called triathlon. But this love can hurt too. Here we go.
To be honest this is the hardest blog I have ever written. And I had the hardest period in my short, young career. You might have seen my results. Only one of the results was in the first part of the results list. The rest was somewhere at the bottom.
Since January I haven’t felt well. I went to Kenya. Crashed and got food poisoning. And since then my tummy has bin a problem and in pain. I could continue my training, but training was always hard. I know training can be hard muscle sourness wise, but not tummy pain wise.I was able to finish my 1km reps or my 400 time trail in the pool. But since January no training felt fresh and fit. A few times I have been to a doctor but my blood didn’t show anything.
I knew better, but you can tell a high performance athlete a million times, when it doesn’t go well, you just try a bit harder. You probably can think of te consequences. It went from bad to worse. And when you can’t trust your body, it get’s mental as well. Body, mind and soul are one. And that’s the pain from my love triathlon. You want it so badly but still it goes completely wrong.
Beside my tummy, I had another crash in Sierra Nevada. I was in the down hill and my front wheel just slipped away. I was bruised all over the place. But I wanted to race Hamburg. I started but I never made it to the finish. Two days later an x-ray of my body showed that I had two broken ribs.Result: NO Rio test event.
I tried to continue training and with a few ups and downs it was manageable. But when I started again in Edmonton nothing looked like anything had changed from my bad performance.
Luckily the coaches realized in Chigago (where I had another bad result) that it was not only a mental issue. The plan was to race Alanya and Tongyeong but after the finish in Chigago, with pain in my heart, I decided to get healthy first. There was no point in racing when you can’t make it to the finish line.
So here I am now. After a lot of research they diagnosed me with irritable bowel syndrome. Basically it’s something what I already knew. But all the food poising and antibiotic’s that I had in the past probably made my intestines so weak that I couldn’t extort all the vitamins and minerals from the food. What made me more and more tired. I couldn’t push myself in the races anymore.All right, but what about that one top 10 in Gold Coast.
Well, I had an ear infection and was on antibiotics which took control of my body for a small moment but has made my intestines a little more weaker.
All in all, a season to forget very quick. But to take out the lessons learned. So to finish positive:
I started with probiotics, prebiotics and a diet to make my intestines healthy again (thanks to Olaf van der Zanden for the guidance). I have learned so much more about myself with all the mental coaching (thanks to Lars van der Eerden). I have learned who really cares about me (thanks friends, family, Hendrikx 2-wielers, New Balance, x-eau and foundation Gaan voor Goud) and last but not least, thanks for the people who still believe in me(NTB,NOC*NSF).Cheers Maaike.