In my last post, I admitted something that a lot of athletes struggle with but rarely talk about: I felt torn between multiple sports.
For years, my identity was tied to long-course triathlon. Even now, there's a part of me that misses the challenge of spending hours on the bike, chasing big mileage, and preparing for races that demand months of sacrifice. At the same time, I've fallen in love with HYROX, strength training, and the unique challenge of becoming a more complete athlete.
For a while, I tried to hold on to all of it.
I wanted to improve my lifting, maintain my endurance, keep my run fitness, ride enough to feel like a triathlete, and somehow excel at everything at once. The result wasn't balance—it was frustration. My energy was divided, my recovery suffered, and I constantly felt like I was falling short in every area.
So I made a decision.
This season, HYROX gets my full attention.
That doesn't mean I've given up on triathlon, and it doesn't mean I'll never return to long-course racing. It simply means that, right now, I've chosen one goal to build around. Because after twenty years of coaching, I've learned that trying to serve two masters rarely leads to exceptional results in either.
The truth is, every athlete has limited time, energy, and recovery capacity. The athletes who make the biggest improvements aren't necessarily the ones doing the most—they're the ones who are willing to prioritize.
What's exciting is that choosing HYROX doesn't mean abandoning everything else I love. Instead, it's changed the role those sports play in my training.
I've started looking at short-course triathlon differently. Fast 5K and 10K running isn't a distraction from HYROX—it's one of the foundations of the sport. HYROX is built around repeated one-kilometer efforts under fatigue, and becoming a faster runner directly improves performance on race day.
The bike serves a purpose, too. It allows me to build my aerobic engine, push hard efforts, and add volume without the impact that comes from additional miles on the run. As athletes get older, learning how to train hard while recovering well becomes just as important as the training itself.
My approach has become surprisingly simple:
One primary focus.
One race to build around.
Everything else has to support that goal.
A local sprint triathlon can become a hard training day. A group ride can become aerobic work. A strength session can build durability. But none of those things are allowed to compete with the main objective for my attention.
If you're struggling because you love too many sports, maybe the answer isn't to give one of them up. Maybe the answer is to choose one thing to pursue right now and allow everything else to support it.
You're not abandoning your other passions.
You're finally giving yourself the opportunity to do one of them really well.