“'Triathlon is not for me'.
Perhaps it was the phrase I repeated most when someone asked me if I was curious to try it. Leaving my comfort zone has never been my strong point… and my career in sport has a lot of that.
Sport appeared early in my life. Since swimming is quite complete, it was the option to start. Over the years, swimming became something natural and something that I would be good at to advance until I finally reached the competitive level. In training I was always relaxed. There was just one problem: competition. Taking part in a race, nerves, the starting gun, the thought “I can't win” filled my head. Daily training was my comfort zone, while competition was the unknown, the leap of confidence in myself... which I didn't have.
Years later, college made me put swimming aside and I put the sport on hold.
As fate would have it, I came across two new friends who challenged me to do my first half marathon at 23 years old. I didn't even hesitate to accept and enthusiasm set in. I quickly realized that I had discovered a modality that made me happy. When I ran I felt free, I felt unstoppable, capable of more than I thought possible. With my first marathon, something clicked in me: I had done 42km, something unthinkable until then. Can I finally step out of my comfort zone? I decided to focus on that goal and continue running marathons. After all, the queen distance would be my greatest achievement in life (I thought).
When I was 30, I met my best friend who did triathlon. It was the first contact I had with this sport and I started watching races and meeting more people in this field and my fascination grew. I returned
I was a big fan, always knowing that it was too hard for me. Practicing one sport was already complicated…but three? And followed? It was a difficult sport, I didn't miss swimming and there was one tiny detail that was a “deal breaker”: I didn't know how to ride a bike. At all. That’s why I said “triathlon is not for me”. Little did I know how wrong I was.
In October 2021, I attended the Ironman race in Cascais for the first time. All the emotion I felt in those athletes, overcoming the hardship of such a feat, the goal. And at that moment I swore to myself that one day I would take part in that race. The promise was made. It was about rolling up my sleeves, getting the materials and taking on the challenge. And for the first time, without realizing it, I took the first step out of my comfort zone, never to enter again.
Teaching myself to ride a bike was the scariest and most incredible thing I've ever done. Feeling like we're going back to childhood but with adult fears is not easy. But it's in these moments when we think: how much do I want this? Why do I do this? And we move on. And I learned to walk and I continue to learn every day. Going back to swimming was the second achievement: letting go of that little devil in my head that told me I wasn't good enough. And I let him go and went back to swimming…this time happier. The stage was then set to launch myself into my first triathlon.
The first triathlon I completed showed me what I hadn't been able to say for so many years: I'm capable of much more than I think. And triathlon is definitely for me.
My first triathlon took me to my first half-ironman and will one day take me to my first ironman, one of my biggest dreams. The fears that led my 13-year-old self to not want to compete in swimming still hang in the air, but with the difference that I no longer let them define me or stop me. At 36 years old, I know that the ease of my comfort zone limits me from incredible things. And life asks us to surprise ourselves from time to time. Being idols of ourselves is something that cannot be explained, you can feel it. And I'm still at the beginning of this journey."
