Respect.

I heard about her during a running clinic I had attended yesterday. Everyone present had an old injury and were hoping to learn pain-free running. I ran alongside a Canadian triathlete going for a training course with KONA 2010 Champion Mirinda Carfrae. "Chrissie didn't compete this year," she told me.

"Who's Chrissie?" I said, ignorantly.

The KONA IronMan World Championships just ended. The IronMan consists of a 1.9km swim, a 180km bike ride, and a full 42.2km marathon back-to-back-to-back. This year, all-time favourite, nine-time IronMan race winner, and three-time KONA champion Chrissie Wellington didn't compete. She fell ill.

Thinking about the amount of time, passion and dedication invested in her hobby, sport and career, I can hardly begin to imagine the amount of anguish, disappointment and grief she must have felt on waking up only days before the event, the event she had trained and aimed for all year round, which her friends, family, supporters and nation had supported her to not only complete, but win.

A headache and a bad throat comes in forefront of a background of endless hours of gruelling training over the past year. What does one do? All that brutal training all gone down the drain. Or has it?

In life, the unexpected often happens. You plan for further studies but your mum falls prey to cancer. You plan a trip but an earthquake happens there. Life is foiler of our best made plans.

Have you ever had to let go of something you thought you couldn't? Or do you see these "foiled" moments as opportunities for growth and self-reflection?

She didn't compete. And for that, for her response to not competing, she has earnt my respect. In that decision, she has brought glory to the sport. She set an example for others, budding athletes and professionals, as well as normal people like us, to love and respect our body and to honour the sport.

For all that triathlon represented-her life and career and heart and soul, she didn't let it possess her. Instead, in view of circumstances, she let it go. She had amazing strength, but more importantly, beautiful, beautiful courage. She had the maturity, courage and humility to say, not this year. She understood what it meant- the letting go of something she had pressed on so hard for, with the risk of disppointing many who had placed their hopes and invested themselves in her. In spite of all that pressure, she said no.

I have seen many, many people go on race day with an illness or injury, because they couldn't let it go. To me, that is dishonouring the sport. Triathlon teaches us to respect our body, there is no other way to finish a triathlon- I should know. There are still a few more races I'd like to do which I have yet to complete.

When people talk about "loving their bodies" or "loving themselves", they tend to mean the external appearance. After all, how many times have you heard people hating their thighs, or their hair or their legs. I am guilty. But your loving your body also means its inside bits, not just the soul or the spirit, but the ligaments, the arteries, the muscles- everything unseen.

Riding at 40kmph again taught me the importance of respecting one's body. The Big boys did 3 loops down the coast. I did 2. And that was enough. I went home and finished studying what I had set out to study that day. That is honouring the sport. It is giving it its proper time and place in our lives.

And in doing that, we honour God.

In the previous video, in spite of how inspiring it all was, I was disturbed when the man said he was "happy" only when he had finished those races. I like to believe that the happiness came more from the journey of understanding himself and loving his community than from its achievements. Reading this about honouring one's body and one's sport was, to say the least, inspiring.

I still wake up some days wishing I had better legs, that I could run or swim or bike better, that my hair wasn't so dry and I was leaner, but more importantly, I've come to enjoy steak and the occasional burger every once in a while, and learn the importance of loving and respecting my body, inside and out. It means being able to push it, to allow some indulgence, and being able to say no, and to let go.

2011 will be a new race year.

"For you created my inmost being,

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

When I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me,

Were written in your book, before one of them came to be..

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

When I awake, I am still with you.

- Psalm 139: 13-18