I think, therefore I persist!!

38th on the Tongyeong - Korea World Cup...

The race did not go as I anticipated.  I had learned not to worry about results, but we always have expectations (which must not be requirements).   Once more, I did not reach my potential in this race, but it left me a wiser triathlete.

I had a positive outlook about the competition.  I felt good that day and for the first time in a World Championship I was swimming with ease in the middle of the pack.  Having already completed three quarters of the water portion, I felt I could sprint at will, until in the last 300 m my stomach started to cramp and I could barely breathe.  @^&! I thought, "I cannot believe this is happening again."  Cramps had been conquered, or so I thought.  I slowed down almost to a stop, breathed deeply, believing I could catch the pack on the bike.

Because of slowing in the water, a few athletes caught me and we started biking as a group of five.  For the remainder of the race I did not feel as tired as I had previously, but the cramps remained.  I pushed, but with such a small group, overcoming the strong lead packs seemed impossible.  Once I realized that, I just tried my best.  

Sometimes the goal seems so close and yet so far at the same time...
What a test of patience! C'est la vie!
Maybe I will find the emerald on my next attempt!!

As described in this paragraph from Paulo Coelho's amazing book I just read "The Alchemist":

(...)
"The old (wizard) man related that, the week before, he had been forced to appear before a miner, and had taken the form of a stone. The miner had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. For five years he had been working a certain river, and had examined hundreds of thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone—just one more— he would find his emerald. Since the miner had sacrificed everything to his destiny, the old man decided to become involved. He transformed himself into a stone that rolled up to the miner's foot. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But he had thrown it with such force that it broke the stone it fell upon, and there, embedded in the broken stone, was the most beautiful emerald in the world.

'People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,' said the old man, with a certain bitterness. 'Maybe that's why they give up on it so early, too. But that's the way it is." (...)