Embracing Challenge: Committing to a 2025 Race Ep 73

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So if you want an experience that can transform your entire season, we invite you to join us. Head to theenduranceedge.com and click training camp and reserve your spot with just a $100 deposit. Come train hard, learn a ton, and leave stronger than you ever imagined. I'll see you there. Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. Today is all about sharing my 2025 challenge to you, and hopefully I would love to hear your 2025 challenge. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because last week I had the opportunity to do what's called a values test. Now you can search for them online, preferably finding something that's validated. In essence, it is a test that determines what values are the most important to you. So let me give you a few examples. They could be anything from control, certainty, security, financial stability, wealth, excitement, creativity, authority. Beauty, influence, love, popularity, appreciation, family, forgiveness, passion, success, growth, intelligence, equality, teamwork, contribution, spirituality, justice, tolerance, freedom. And that's just to name a few. So one of the ones that came up for me was challenge. So I tried to think of, okay, I really do need to race and to be competitive. And to find something that really works for me. So let me give you the definition of challenge. It's testing your own abilities or competition. Taking up challenges is often the result of a strong need to test yourself. These are activities that require us to leave our comfort zone and face something new and unknown. They awaken our imagination and shape our character. Some strengths are that challenges reveal our hidden potential. Picking them allows us to know ourselves better. And some dangers are to keep your limitations in mind and think about whether you are taking excessive risks. So as some of you know, my preferred mode of triathlon is off-road. So that presents a challenge in and of itself just because it's very niche already. There are not necessarily a lot of people who do it in the first place, and certainly there are fewer women who do it overall. And the reason why I got into this, in fact, was about 15 years ago, I was riding on the road and I actually got in an accident with a car. So it was actually a sweet little old lady who didn't see me and she turned in front of me and ended up hitting me. And that was when my husband said, that's enough. And I thought to myself, well, man, I still I gotta ride my bike and I love it. So he was kind enough and that, cuz that was his original sport was riding off-road. He was kind enough to help me along that journey of figuring out how to navigate off-road. And I hated it at first. I was terrified. I didn't know where traction was. I didn't know the skill, but I stuck with it and I am still in the process of learning, and I think that's why I love mountain biking so much, because of the challenge. So here we are, back to my challenge for 2025, is that I am going to do the XTERRA North American Championship. I have no idea how I'm gonna do, because when you look up the results, it's all in what are the conditions, certainly on the bike course, Is it dry? Is it wet? Uh, what's the elevation look like? Uh, how technical is it, et cetera? Same thing for the run. So for example, this past year, the North American Championship was in Alabama. It was a 1500-meter swim, a 33K bike, and a 10K run. So 33K is about 20 miles. So it's very hard to compare that on-road to off-road, but there were 225 overall race participants and only about 20% of those were women. So yeah. You know, maybe chances are higher that I could potentially qualify for Worlds. That's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this as an opportunity to say that I had the opportunity to qualify for Worlds. So that extra level of challenge is what motivates me. So there you go. I'm putting that out there. When you decide on your challenge, is it going to push you way out of your comfort zone? Is it something that's achievable? I don't have any doubt that I can finish. That's not the challenge, but can I improve my skills and improve my fitness enough to be competitive? That's my personal challenge to myself. And then when I show up on race day, I show up on race day. You also never know what's gonna happen. So for some comparison, the female fastest swimmer was 22 minutes. The female fastest cyclist was an hour and 33 minutes, and the female fastest runner was about 44 minutes. And it looks like women in my age group were doing this, the swim somewhere around an average of 35 minutes. The bike was maybe somewhere around 2 to 2:45. And the run, it was more like 1:20, an hour and 20 minutes. So somewhere on average of finishing in about 4 hours and 45 minutes. So therein lies the additional challenge of not only do you have to navigate off-road, but then you also have to figure out how are you gonna fuel and hydrate, especially when your hands are occupied. Uh, so those types of things are what really get me excited. So when you are looking for your challenge, is the comparison factor gonna freak you out? Or is it, hey, I really want to— I generally don't climb well, so maybe I'll pick a flatter course so that I can challenge myself to go faster. Or is it that I'm gonna challenge myself to do something that I don't know if I can do or not and do it that way? So I'm I'm curious, now that I've shared my challenge for 2025, I want to hear what your challenge is. And is that something that's like lighting you up? Are you a little bit scared but also a little bit excited? So let me know, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening to the Find Your Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you're interested in learning more about our endurance coaching, sports and wellness nutrition, metabolic and sweat testing, triathlon training team, or our triathlon training library, be sure to check us out at theenduranceedge.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media at The Endurance Edge. Thanks again. And we'll catch you next time.