Davey Black Triathlon’s Performance Coach, Steve Davis, is going to run 42.2km in 124 days time after sitting on his backside for the best part of a year. Why? Let’s ask him.
We all want to be back out with our mates, riding and running and in the pool carving up the black line. We seek escape and freedom. We are triathletes after all. We thrive on exercise, PB’s and overachieving. We are fuelled by data and post training coffees and smashed avocado. What the hell are they doing with all these uneaten avocado’s in lockdown?
I digress… Instead, we’re locked up. Eating yesterday’s leftovers cold, straight out of the Tupperware. Having way too many coffees out of pure boredom and quite possible developing a drinking problem. Not to mention trying to work our 40 plus hours a week and meet your bosses and clients’ deadlines while trying to teach an 8 year old and a 6 year old about fractions and Marie Curie and letting the 3 year old watch enough TV to power a small village. All this if you are lucky enough to still have a job. Some can’t even pay the bills. Some have Landlords who have put their rent up 2 times in the last 3 months. The world has gone mad. Let’s be honest. I can no longer sugar coat it.
What we are all lucky enough to have, however, is a drive to be better. Like I said, we are all overachieving triathletes. Nothing and no one will ever take away our desire to improve ourselves. Right now that drive and determination is being kicked about and hammered every time a race gets cancelled. We build up physically and mentally to a race, then ‘pffffffftttt’; gone without as much as a ‘sorry I missed you buddy’. That’s just the world we live in right now. It is depressing. It is, however, only as depressing as you let it be.
I am lucky though. I cannot complain. I have been hammered like many small businesses. Some people around me have questionable moral standards. I don’t have the patience to home school. I may have checked to see if the bottle shop drive through was open and then realised it was 9:30am. But I am ok.
The pandemic, however, has beaten the fitness out of me pretty bad. I took up skating and have been kick flipping the shit out of life for the last 12 months *(editor’s note. Steve can’t actually kick flip). OK, so I’ve been carving up the skatepark with my mediocre skills. Outside of that though, according to TrainingPeaks, I have completed a staggering 3hrs and 39min of training in total in the last 180 days. I think that works out to be about five eighths of f-all.
So while I am going through all the stresses of a constantly changing playing field of covid restrictions for my athletes, business and kids lives, I have let my own fitness fail miserably. And that is why “Preptember” has been born. I’m going to get back into training and use all the motivational advice I give my athletes to get myself back on my metaphorical, and actual, bike. I am going to train. I am going to train just enough to get me by and run a marathon on Boxing Day 2021. I am going to show anyone of any fitness level how to make that first jump and get yourself into a good fitness routine.
I am a small business owner, I am a triathlon Coach Melbourne, I am the Triathlon Australia Coach of the Year, I am the father of 3 young kids, and I am going to train, and I am going to miss training because that’s life. I will share what I do, how I do it and why I do it. I will give you tips and recipes and ideas on time management. I will run 42.2km in 124 days time. It won’t be pretty but I won’t hide anything. If you want to join me, then post your progress on social media and tag @coach_steve_davis and hashtag #preptember.
Let’s all stay connected, keep fit together and motivate the best we can out of each other.