What Are You Actually Training For? Complete, Perform, Compete

So first, when I came back in, in my very first race back into the sport was a sprint, and the only question that I was asking myself was, "Can I complete this?" I just-- My goal is just to complete the race.

I have no performance expectations.

I just want to get back to racing to see how it feels.

And I had a-- I believe that I had a very successful race, and it gave me a big boost of confidence that, yeah, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.

Am I where I want to be yet? No, obviously not.

But I felt like I could see some kind of progression.

So really, the question that I was asking myself when I was preparing for that race was, "Can I complete this race?" Even though I've done just countless sprints.

I've done every race distance up to full Ironman.

It's not that I had never done them before.

I was-- I am an experienced athlete.

The question was, at this moment in time, can I complete this? And my, my previous experience would say, yes, you can, but- That isn't necessarily all the evidence that one needs in order to validate that question and the response to that question.

So right after that race, I started the next training cycle for an Olympic.

I had never really intended to race an Olympic last year.

I had another guy that I knew fairly well, and he said, "Hey, I'm kind of-- I think that you should do an Olympic.

I'd like to see you do an Olympic." So I did that first sprint.

I did another sprint, like maybe a month later, a little bit more of a challenging sprint, but I had good-- I had-- I did well and actually found myself on the podium for that race.

And so then I really started to ask the question, "Okay, now I'm starting to see this completion.

Can I complete an Olympic now that I've shown myself that I have the ability to complete the sprint?" So then I went and I raced the Olympic and did fairly well at that one as well, and found myself on the podium again.

And I was starting to feel confident.

I hadn't really asked myself, "How well can I perform?" or, "How well can I do this race?" The only question that I was asking myself was, "Can I complete it?" I ended up getting a, a free registration into Ironman Florida 70.3.

Again, I wasn't asking myself, "How well can I perform this 70.3?" My only thing was, "I just need to get through the day.

Let me see if I can complete this." And while the obstacles were significant, I did finish the race and I was able to complete it.

That experience left me with some more questions to where, am I still in this completion mentality? Am I still asking myself, "Can I complete these races?" Or now am I starting to say, "I know that I can complete them now." Now the question that I'm asking myself is, "How well can I do in the next year?" So in 2026, I had signed up for a couple more races, and it was-- I signed up for that same first sprint again.

And I didn't ask myself, "Hey, can I complete this?" Because I knew I could, and I was fairly confident.

I started to ask myself, "How well can I do? Let's see if I can put some performance metrics in place to where I can kind of judge how well I'm doing." And did the race and found myself on the podium again.