Viktoria Brown Triathlete RSS

I'm not a patient person to be honest... and that is not great when you have way too many races on your bucket list. You just want to do them all, all now, not understanding that there will be a season in 2023, 2024 and even beyond... mind you, I already have races in my calendar for 2024 too!!! I find it really hard to stay focused and not throw too many unimportant bucket list races in the schedule. Right now I'm trying to take things out rather than add new ones but when I manage to prune it a little...

I can't explain this sudden change in performance to be honest... I was a happy amateur being content with the gains I was making compared to the abilities I have and then in 2020 BOOM! No idea how or why... and it keeps getting better. It all started with the Hungarian National Long-Course (Ironman distance) Triathlon Championship. I won small local races before but that was certainly a breakout performance and it came out of the blue. It was my second Ironman-distance race ever and I improved almost 3 hours on my time. I won that race in August 2020 and then...

The last race of the year brought great success, my third national record of 2021 and an unexpectedly fast time. It was a memorable race. I learned so much from seeing all the world class athletes and how they race. Imagine a race where a sub-15-hour 100-mile finish time doesn't get you on the women's 100-mile podium! That's how bad ass this field was. A time that put me in 21st on the all-time list for the World... but 3 of those other 20 women happened to be at this race! Nick Coury broke the American 24-hour record in this race and...

What an experience that was! I'm stoked to earn my Kona slot on first try! But it certainly wasn't a smooth sail!  I will start at the end: 10:59:48 (haha, within 11h), 1st place in my Age Group and 4th overall female, earning that coveted Kona slot. And now let's go back to pre-race. The original plan for the year was to do the World Triathlon World Championship in Amsterdam in September (A-race) and piggyback on the fitness to pull off another IM in October (B-race) for a chance to earn a Kona slot. I had my eyes on IM...

My friend called me the other day and asked: "Do you ever feel like you don't want to train?" I knew exactly what he meant because I just went through the same experience for a week prior to that call and I was just about out of the water (not completely yet) by the time we talked. I have been training for triathlons consistently (meaning with a coach) for 4 years now but I have never experienced overtraining before - until last week. I spent the 3 years prior to that training without a coach, just on my own and...