Emma Pallant

Never Giving Up is a Pride Thing

By InnerVoice

March 31^st, 2017

My Tribe

My close tribe is the Team Dillon gang; my coach Michelle Dillon and training partner Stuart Hayes. They are more like parents to me and we enjoy life as well as pushing our bodies to the limit. They have taught me how to be balanced in life as well as in sport, and I think ultimately you pick the closest people around you by who you aspire to be like. I couldn’t do anything that I do without them.

I have recently joined the BMC-Etixx pro triathlon team powered by Uplace and we are already learning so much. Their passion for the sport and desire to aid every athlete on the team to be the best that they can be fits in perfectly with the way Team Dillon work. The two tribes complement each other fantastically.

i'm still learning

There are so many things I didn’t know when I first started triathlon, and they’re funny to look back on. First of all, I didn’t know why everyone was heading out on the bike with food in their pockets.

I thought ‘man these guys are greedy, can't they wait until after a training session to eat?’ I’ve also come off my bike after not unclipping properly, had my inside foot down going around a corner, stopped in a race to put my goggles on and missed the front pack, taken my helmet off before I rack my bike in transition and got a penalty, stopped mid-run for the toilet while on TV, run out of transition with my helmet still on, the list could go on…

I’m still learning, even now. Ultimately I don’t think I respected the sport enough for just how hard it is to run fast off a bike after you’ve had 90km of time trialling in your legs!

“Losing someone in your life just makes you realise how much of a gift life is, and to live it to the full. It puts into perspective any disappointments or petty arguments. A goal is to leave this world giving more than I took.”

there is always a solution

My only thoughts on quitting were probably when I first came back from knee surgery. I had literally spent months locked into my music in a gym to keep fit -- doing two-hour one-legged rowing, progressing to hand biking, lengths of the pool with a pull buoy, spinning on the bike and finally running. Then, I was finally back and was laying down some good results in races, but every single day I was still running in a lot of pain. Towards the end of 2012, after a few months of this, I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to keep doing what I was doing without always being in pain and something needed to change. I never thought of quitting running but I knew I had to at least add something in to allow me to let go of something that I never thought I would have to let go of.

One of the things I’ve learned is that there is always a solution, no matter what the problem is. As long as you are determined to get to the bottom of it, then there is an answer. When I first started being coached by Michelle, I had major gut problems and my knee was still bad, but she had the attitude that we would find a way. No matter how many people we had to ask or how many things we had to try or how many hours we spent researching on the internet, we would slowly unravel the puzzle. And it’s the same in life, it takes patience and hard work, but the harder it is to solve or the harder something is to achieve, in the end, the more satisfying it is.

i'M not very good at sitting stilL

If I woke up tomorrow and was unable to compete again, I would need to have a goal and a project in life. I’d need a challenge to work towards, to keep me busy and to enable me to finish each day knowing that I had achieved something. I like having a priority in my life. I’m not very good at sitting still or having too much free time.

At the moment, I work as a coach and that is what I want to keep developing for when I eventually retire. When I know I have given everything I have left to give, then I want to go through life helping other people to do the same on an even bigger scale than I do now. It’s Michelle and Stu who inspire me to do this, because of how much they have taught me and changed my life around. If I hadn’t met them, I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today. They have taught me how to be successful at the same time as being happy, how to have a balance in life, how to care for people and yet still be able to bury myself in my racing and training.

i had to give my all

As a kid, I used to play every sport I could. I’m lucky enough to have an amazing mum who supported me, my brother and sister and in anything, we chose to do. For my brother, it was ballet -- he is now a professional ballet dancer -- and for me, it was running. I had a successful time as a middle distance runner on the international scene, but a serious knee injury and then surgery made me decide to temporarily make the switch to triathlon to add a focus to my cross training.

I grew up wanting to be a doctor like my mum. I faint at the sight of blood, though, so my second choice was a less gory career of physiotherapy. It was still sports-related and I watched them on TV running onto the pitch to rub fit footballers’ hamstrings -- there wasn’t much more I needed to know. I qualified as a physiotherapist from Brunel University and worked whilst I was a runner. After switching to triathlon, there wasn’t any time left to fill, so I decided I had to give my all to one or the other and it was an easy choice, there is no better feeling than being out there training all day.

“As sports people we can get very contained in a bubble, but when I went training in Kenya I realized just how happy people can be with nothing. You can’t pay for inside happiness but you can work hard for it because achievements bring personal inner satisfaction.”

you only lose if you give up

The most important thing I’ve learnt from triathlon is to never give up. With the swim being my weakest leg, I am always chasing, but it makes you stronger and I think it’s the same thing in life. We never lose all the time - we are living until we decide to give up. I think never giving up is a pride thing, I don’t want to have to live with that nagging feeling of ‘what if’ and I'm not scared to put myself out there and fail. The people who are there for you in your life through thick and thin, it filters down to them and makes you appreciate the people around you that love you unconditionally.

So not giving up is for my inner strive, my inner feeling of wanting to make them proud and not wanting to not let them down. I know they will be there for me unconditionally, so I want to give it my best unconditionally. If I have given my best and failed at something then it’s a temporary failure, a blip in the road that will help to develop more strength. Losing once doesn’t mean you’ve lost, you only ever lose if you give up.

Still searching!

As a runner, I was constantly training in a group of boys and it was a lot less effort to meet someone, but in triathlon, I’m still searching for my knight in shining lycra! My family and my closest friends are all amazingly supportive of my career. I don’t see any of them anywhere near enough but it always makes for a great time when we eventually do catch up.

My next race is the National Duathlon Championships and then the season of 70.3’s begins. My main goal this year is the World Duathlon Championships and the World Half Ironman Championships. As for the sporting bucket list, Kona would be top of that bad boy!