By Trevor Woods

Qualified exercise physiologist and proud triathlete sponsored by Udo’s Choice Ultimate Oil Blend, Trevor Woods, shares how triathlons have shaped his life, providing resilience, purpose, and a lifelong passion for pushing limits.

For many years now, 35 years to be precise, the sport of triathlon has been a cornerstone of my life. It has taught me some invaluable lessons, kept me feeling positive about life, given me a sense of accomplishment, allowed me to meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends, travel to many different countries, and of course has kept me healthy and physically fit. Above all, however, it profoundly helped me to cope with losing both my parents at the age of 11 years old. The sport of triathlon is full of many competitors who have gone through transformative events in their own life, whether health-related, a disability or other challenges. In taking up a sport like triathlon, as I did, they find their true selves, their self-worth, and ultimately enjoy that feeling of accomplishment the sport offers them.

I never really took sport seriously until I was about 17 years old when I started liking cycling and running, at that stage I perhaps trained several times a week. I had immense admiration for the world’s best triathletes at that time, Mark Allen, Dave Scott, and Scott Tinley. Even though I struggled to swim a length of the swimming pool I attempted a short ‘try-athlon’ in 1989 in my hometown. It was a 250m pool swim, 10km bike and 3km run, I finished up in the top 10 and was instantly bitten by the bug. From then I started to train properly, 5+ times per week and by 1992 I was getting some good results at provincial level. In the years following this, I kept seeing progress and my consistent training and focus started to pay off with multiple national titles and national series wins, setting the fastest Irish Ironman time, and qualifying for the Commonwealth Games triathlon. Fast forward 35 years and I’m still enjoying the sport as much as I did back then.

I have always found triathlon training and racing to be a great outlet for me, both physically and mentally. Nothing feels better than working hard and then relishing the satisfaction of that well-earned exhaustion. There is that unique sense of accomplishment finishing a race, a nice reward for the weeks, months and years of training and preparation. Triathlon has also helped me find peace with the loss I experienced as a young person; it’s given me somewhere to focus my attention and energy and allowed me to look forward to the future. More importantly, it reminds me I’m still in control of my life.

Triathlon presents a unique challenge in that it’s not just one sport, but three, and mastering them all is a lifelong challenge for many. I’ve always relished in the commitment, not just to training, but to nutrition and sleeping, in essence, it becomes a lifestyle. Setting personal goals to work toward and maintaining a positive state of mind can make all the difference between being happy and healthy, or fighting off depression or worse. So if you too fancy a challenge and want to enjoy the multiple health benefits it can offer, perhaps you should give triathlon a go!