It was with the greatest delight and sense of pride that I listened to my client, Cath Macneil, describing her emotional account of the Aberfeldy middle distance triathlon. Her individual sense of achievement and success quite literally had us both welling up! Cath knew she was not going to be first over the finish line. Every step of the way her training has been defined by her abilities and her reality. The process of building confidence in a way that was meaningful and relevant to Cath was (and remains) the key to her success. This meant that the building blocks of experience and competence, self-esteem (our belief in and estimation of ourselves) and self-worth (how we value ourselves) all played an important role in her performance on the day.

Working with individual clients raises the question of the meaning of success every day. Cath completed the Aberfeldy race outside of the official cut-off time and is listed on the results as ‘DNF’ (did not finish). The result and recorded times are misleading in many ways and as with any finisher on the day, they do not tell the whole story.

So, what does success mean to you? What images do you conjour up? What words come to mind and how does success happen? Defining success in a way that makes sense to you is more likely to lead to a successful outcome than defining it any other way.

But what does that look like in a training programme and how did it add up to Cath’s most satisfying sporting achievement to date? It’s not rocket science, but it is way more than just prescribing a schedule of training with physical and physiological peaks and recovery. It’s an honest reflection of you versus others, your aspirations versus reality and your fears versus comforts that slowly but surely challenges what you know about yourself and carefully develops your skills and self-belief based on the new reality, the new facts and the new knowledge you’ve gained. Simply, Cath took what she knew about herself as the starting point questioned and challenged that by trying new things, going new distances, experiencing new routes, changing her behaviour and expecting to feel a bit uncomfortable a lot of the time.

Cath now knows that she can swim in a choppy Loch Tay when others couldn’t. She knows she can ride some of Scotland’s more challenging hills and routes. She knows she can run a lumpy half marathon and she knows she can put all three together in one day and she’ll be fine with it. From myself perspective Cath’s greatest success lies more in her emotional strength and the sense of freedom she has gained, than in the physical achievement (which is also pretty cool!).

Cath’s next goals? To dispel the myth that some people just swim slowly, to create lovely new clothes and to tentatively take on trail riding.

Well done Cath!