Siri Says…

A captivated audience packed our Santa Monica store, last Thursday, to hear Siri Lindley’s stories about her triathlon and coaching career. Her humor kept the audience in constant smiles, as she shared her mistakes with the TriLAB crowd, so that we could learn from them.

Having been one of the fastest women in ITU, it was shocking to many in the audience that she didn’t swim with her head in the water before she was introduced to triathlon. She also admitted that she “choked” at her Olympic qualifiers. Although it is still painful (see below in the list of lessons, about putting eggs into a basket), having admitted that she choked has allowed her to move beyond it and race harder than she had ever before; thus, also allowing her to be a better coach. She also confessed that Mirinda “Rinny” Carfrae’s Ironman win was her first Ironman win, too.

We all appreciated Siri’s honesty, raw humor, and at times “crazy” tangents.

A few lessons we went home with and can share with you:

• Appreciate your supporters in the sport–family, friends, pets.
• In addition to visualizing your perfect race, visualize what could go wrong, so you know how to recover from them and continue with a fantastic race.
• Even if others laugh at your expense, prove to them how great you can be on the [triathlon] field.
• You probably don’t need to binge on pasta, cookies, crackers, desserts to “carbo load” the night before a sprint-distance race. Likely, it’ll just give you a hard time fitting into your race suit the next morning.
• Don’t put ALL of your eggs into one basket. Be it a race or other life event, giving yourself that much pressure to accomplish one thing only rarely ends happily–regardless of whether or not you accomplish it.
• If you work with a coach, follow his/her schedule for you. Communicate your thoughts and feelings, honestly, with your coach so that you are on the same page.

Of course, she shared more. However, you will have to attend our events in the future, if you want to hear it all! We look forward to having Chris Foster, one of Siri’s athletes, share his story, on Tuesday, August 9, at 7:00 pm, at the Triathlon LAB-Santa Monica.