LEED

Photo credit: World Triathlon

On the rare occasion that Southern California brought weather that required winter clothing in December and January, Paulo would show up at the pool with his LEED hat. I always looked at the letters, but never asked what it meant. Eventually, only perfect warm days filled the calendar and the hat was nowhere to be seen.

On Thursday last week I stopped at the squad house to pick up LEED hats Paulo had left for Summer and I, and upon arrival in Edmonton, it was an essential part of my wardrobe. Brrrrr.

Even still, the first few times I wore the hat, I had no idea what LEED stood for. It was just a fuzzy thing that kept my head warm, and I got to match my best gal pal during our Edmonton excursions.

This girl. SO PROUD. 

"Living Excellence Every Day."

Initially, this acronym sounded intimidating. When I think of "excellence," the tendency is to only think of its association with achievement on race day. Of course, winning is excellent. After more thought, though, I realized that excellence doesn't always look like someone standing on the podium. Excellence has many forms. It can be the way you commit to your craft on on a daily basis, with focus and intention. It can be the consistent decision to show up, do your job and be better than you were yesterday. We don't have control of much more than just that.

My races in Canada can best be described with words other than excellent, but the process that I followed to get back to the start line is something I am proud of. Achieving my own excellence, which looks slightly different day by day, has been at the core of that process, and will be moving forward.

I am, as always, incredibly thankful to my support team: Paulo, the Triathlon Squad, my family, friends, ROKA, BiPro, Off the Front Multisport and Team Psycho for all that you do to help me achieve excellence, through good times and testing times. I couldn't do this without you.


Jess