Completing Norseman or other extreme endurance races are not easy. It takes hard work, determination, willpower and a burning desire to reach your goal. Winning it takes even more and in the end of the day you might ask yourself, is it worth it?

Getting up painfully early and hit the pool, doing intervals so hard that you feel your lungs are going to explode and you cannot turn over your arms. Sit on the dead boring turbo trainer and pushing threshold intervals until your legs are completely filled with lactic acid. The sensation of total fatigue after another long day on the bike and/or run.

Does the description feel familiar to your own experience? Then I would say it is not worth it.

To quote Ziggy Marley; “Got to be true to myself”. I am a triathlete because I love it. I love the training, I love the racing, I love the lifestyle, I love the people, I love the challenges and I love the rewards.

Still I have to ask myself, why am I doing this? Last year I wrote a blog post in Norwegian with the translation; Winning is not the most important thing (Det viktigste er ikke å vinne). And that is actually true. Winning Norseman for third time in a row is not that important to me. It is not my dream. The important thing is to have a great experience. It should be a very hard day where I have to dig in the deepest of myself to push the limits further then ever before. It should be my biggest challenge to date, and I should overcome the difficulties and prevail in the battle against myself, and my own limits. That’s why I am doing it.

My dream must really be my dream, and not the dream of others. Not what other expect or what I think other expect of me. I got to be true to myself!