Bravo

Pretty quiet day here in terms of training and in general. My wife and I are both currently exhausted as a result of cumulative interrupted nights of sleep. Given that, our day was mainly made up of walking around in a daze trying to not bump into things.

So given I don't have much of interest to talk about from my own day, I think I might talk about some things of interest from somebody else's day. Two particular impressive somebodies in fact. The Stanleys.

When I say the Stanleys I am referring to my coach Daryl and his wife Robyn.

I have mentioned Daryl on numerous occasions before and so hopefully you have picked up a bit about the sort of person and coach he is. To put it briefly he is the best coach I have ever had, in any sport. I may not have extensive experience of being coached, but I have been coached by a few people across a few sports. Some of those coaches have been head coaches of various state sporting institutes. Daryl leaves them all behind. Simple as that. However, it is not Daryl's coaching I am writing about today.

Daryl has coached goodness knows how many people to the finish line of I don't know how many Ironman and Half Ironman races, plus a countless number of other races. However, you don't often see him do those longer races himself. It is not that he can't, I think it is more that he is at the point in the sport where he doesn't have to do a race to prove anything. Now I think he mainly does a race if it is a race that he really wants to do.

One of those races was on today, the Hawaii 70.3. Daryl rolled up to the race today and busted out 6 hours 25 minutes, on what looked like a tough day, to take 4th in his age group. Pretty impressive effort if you ask me. See I told you that he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone.

Now as impressive as Daryl's race was (and it was), the achievement of his wife Robyn was possibly even more so. Robyn is the author of the blog 'The Comeback Queen" which is linked to the left of this page. Robyn has been told a number of times that she wouldn't be able to race anymore, and each time she has proven that to be incorrect. Today was the latest in that long list of 'impossible' races. Not only did Robyn return to training, but today she also returned to her beloved Hawaii to smash across the line of the Hawaii 70.3 in 7 hours 7 minutes. Sometimes there isn't much you can say about an achievement, all you can really do is sit down and be impressed. And that is okay.

Time to sit down I think.