“These age-group athletes that go swimming at 6am in the morning and then, after a full day at work, go out running that very same evening seem just crazy to me…”

These words, taken from an interview with a pro triathlete made a very strong impression on me.

The professional athlete’s admiration for amateurs made me reflect upon the extent to which the complex balance of “sport-work-family” should be taken into consideration when evaluating performance.

In other words, those who have 4 children and work 9 hours a day on a construction site aren’t competing on a par with those who have a less frantic lifestyle. It might seem obvious, but I can assure it is almost never that clear in the minds of the amateur athletes themselves.

These aspects should be taken into consideration for at least two reasons;

• So that we can review seasonal programming and schedule the workload and race program also in function of maintaining a general work life balance.
• To avoid unhelpful frustration due to “comparisons” with people who do sport by profession- who it has to be said are not exempt from feelings of stress and unbalanced relationships with their chosen sport either (e.g professional althletes who suffer from debilitating anxiety prior to competitions)

It is necessary to start from the premise that sport must be, at the amateur level, a sort of zen garden where you gain energy and self-knowledge by confronting your own limits, with the essential aim of training to be a better person in life.

The stopwatch can’t give you an indication of how good a parent, or partner that you’ve been.

Without these additional elements we can initially become faster athletes but we become weaker as people, and ultimately worse athletes.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

(Albert Einstein)