just two years ago...

I was reminded by a colleague today that just two years ago we stood in the hallway at school talking about triathlons. She was about to do her first - the Cap Tex sprint - and I was about to do my first Olympic triathlon at Cap Tex that year. It got rained out so neither of us raced. As a result, I signed up for the Austin Tri that September in hopes of getting racing the Olympic distance before the Longhorn 1/2 Ironman that October - my first 1/2 Ironman.
Anyway, my colleague (and friend) said, "Can you believe that was just two years ago and now you're doing an Ironman?" She was so supportive and enthusiastic that it made me stop and think that I really had come a long way. In my heart, I know this and I don't need someone else to point it out to me. But sometimes in this sport that consists of months and months of training you hit times when you feel slower than you did the week before (for a couple of weeks in a row!), and it becomes easy to wonder if you've made any progress at all. The reality is that for most of us if we turn the dial back a few years, it's VERY easy to say, "Yes! I have made progress" in at least one area, if not all three. And even if we look back to the beginning of our training there's at least one thing that we can do now that we couldn't do then whether it's drinking from our aerobottles without being a hazard to other cyclists, running a mile under 10:00, completing a full swim workout without having to skip any sets, or doing a "real" push-up, and on and on and on...
Like in the rest of life, it's sometimes tempting to focus on what we still can't do or where we still want to improve. I know I need to have those things on my radar - they are part of what keeps me going and what will keep this training thing as a lifestyle choice rather than one season of my life. And my personality lends itself to focusing on these ares of improvement, forever my own harshest critic and always looking to be better at whatever I'm doing. Not out of competition but because of inexplicable determination to live to the fullest and be whatever I can be in any situation or area of my life.
But I also need to stop every once in a while and roll the film back on my life and take a good look at what I've accomplished. In triathlons, I can look to my first Danskin in 2004, Longhorn 2007, or even January 2009 when IM CDA training started! I've changed. I've grown stronger and more confident (I used to fear every long ride and every single run workout). I've become a better athlete...and I think a better person. So when the road to "but I still want to..." or "if I were just faster at..." presents itself, I need to remember to look at the road that I've already traveled and feel good about it. It's certainly easy to do that for the people around me...and thankfully I have colleagues and friends who remind me to do it for myself every once in a while, too!