“You gotta have your high’s and you gotta have your low’s” is a quote I will always remember from one of the many swim coaches I worked with in the past 3 years. He used this quote to make a point why athletes who don’t take risks in competition will always have conservative results and the athletes who are willing to risk a bad performance to achieve a great performance are the athletes who often achieve the greatest success. All last year I had an ongoing joke between my training partner and I that with all these “low’s” we were experiencing that the “high’s” must be right around the corner, but the swim coach responded “if you keep training that way you will realize your low’s were actually your high’s”.

Last year was my second year competing on the ITU triathlon circuit and it was my best year yet. I earned ITU points in 3 continental cups and moved my self up to 220^th in the world rankings, but at the end of the year I was still disappointed in the trajectory of my rise in the sport. It’s either arrogance or ignorance, but I thought by this time I would be competing for a spot on the 2012 Olympic Triathlon team. Now I’m heading into my 3^rd year as a professional triathlete, the all-important Olympic year and I have zero chance of even getting into the selection race (WCS San Diego May 5^th).

So what have I been doing wrong? I believe I was focusing my energy not in the wrong direction, but in too many directions. I was trying to be a great overall triathlete instead of focusing on the one thing that was causing all the problems in the first place, my swim. I think as an athlete and especially a triathlete it’s easy to get caught up in the competition of training. I wasn’t willing to miss group rides or training runs to focus on my swim because I thought other guys would be improving and I would get left behind. So I tried to fit them all in and most of the time would show up to swim practice beyond tired. So when I went to races and continually came out 2 minutes behind the lead pack I didn’t understand why I was not having better results in the swim. The frustration started to build after each race because in my head I was a better cyclist than most of the guys I was racing and a faster runner too, but I kept getting beat by guys that I viewed as weaker competitors than myself. I kept hoping that one day I would magically swim with a pack and we would merge to the leaders, but it never happened.

So at the end of last season I was faced with a decision, should I continue down the path I was on making small improvements year to year and being a well rounded triathlete or should I put my running and cycling on the back burner and fully immerse myself with swimming. I decided to take a risk and change the way I have been training. Last week I packed my car and drove out to California to begin the journey of transforming myself into a swimmer. For the foreseeable future I am going to make swimming my number 1 priority and see how much I can improve with the guidance of my new coach Gerry Rodrigues and Tower26.