A Little Off Balance...

Joy here...After Sunday's race, my coach has told me to take this week off the bike, otherwise I'll get a little mentally sick of it, so I figured I'd take a moment to talk about balance and stability.

I mean, my last post before the race outlined my fears of being a little wobbly out there on my bike with my new aerobars, and there's good reason for me to fear being wobbly and off balance.

That's me as a baby...I guess no one told me that the food
goes IN the mouth not ON the head.

You see, I have a long history of being accident prone.  I'm the sort who can't walk through a door frame without knocking her shoulders on it; I'm the sort who is attacked by the corner of a table whenever I walk by; I'm the sort who will trip on her own shoes; and at any given time, there's a good chance I have random cuts and bruises on various parts of my body.

As a kid I had to get stitches on my forehead.  Why?  Because I shoved my head into the opening between the door and the door jam as my brother was shoving the door closed.  Most people might stick their foot in to block a door from being shut.  Not me.  I used my head.  The door won.

And it would seem that my lifelong flirtation with clumsiness and being slightly off balance hasn't departed as I've aged.  In fact, when I was working out with the Trainer and she was having me do a relatively easy core activity, she discovered that I'm wobbly and off balance even now.  See the video below, where the first two tries (on one side of my body) I'm obviously more off balance than the final try (on the other side of my body):

Today I went to the physiotherapist again (as a follow up to my tight muscles causing back pain that I've blogged about here and here), and I showed her the video.  She agrees...I'm off balance.

But what she says is not that there's some quick fix or even something terribly wrong with me, but rather that I need to pay more attention to my body, be more attuned to it.

I recently read four-time World Champion IronMan Chrissie Wellington's book A Life Without Limits (which, by the way, I very much recommend; it's not just about sport, but her history with international development and the way that sport is about much much more than mere competition).  In it, she wires "I was a ridiculously accident-prone child (and adult)"* and later goes on to meet controversial coach Brett Sutton who after one of her accidents told her:  "Chrissie, you think these things just happen to you.  They don't.  It's because of the way you behave.  You've got to learn to take control, to think before you act."**

That sounds like good advice.  Instead of thinking that I'm just permanently off balance or a little on the wobbly side as though it is an essential part of my genetic make up, I'm going to make a concerted effort from here on in to think of it as something I can change.

If only I focus hard enough.

Over and out,
Joy


*pg. 11
**pg. 120