Shark bait; and our desire to be taken seriously

Would you get up at the crack of dawn on a rain promised Sunday to hit the beach and the surf to train? Hmmm I'm not sure I would, I don't mind the sand bit, AND I would like to see a shark in the wild, just not up close and personal. But more on that in a moment.

I've just come back from listening to author and psychologist Hugh Mackay at the State Library of Western Australia's spring season of author talks. Hugh's new book of which I now have a signed copy :-) looks at the 10 desires that drives us. Hugh's interesting talk covered so much ground that I am going to need to read the book before I can begin to understand the complexity of what does make us tick, but as soon as I have, I will let you in on the findings. But back to Sunday -

It's Sunday morning, we're stuffed full of coffee and brekky and sitting on the sea wall at one of the local beaches.

It's a cloudy day, yet the beach and surrounds are packed with people.

Kids ranging from tinies to teenagers were practising their surf life saving drills. Badly performed sit ups (they'll probably regret those in their 30's I thought) followed by swimming out to a marker some 50 metres out to sea. This is in an ocean where just recently 2 people have become breakfast for lurking sharks. Big sharks at that, the 2 cruising around one of the offshore islands were over 5 metres long and could take any of these littlies in a single gulp and still have room for dessert. Do sharks eat dessert? You get my point - these kids didn't care. Or if they did, peer pressure and maybe overachieving parents sorted out the weak (errr I mean sensible) from the ...

And then there was a group of young women on the beach in front of us. 14 women with an average age of 26 towing ropes and car tyres through rain soaked sand. Check out the pic

We wanted to wander down to the breaker, so we hoisted ourselves off our comfy perch and headed across the sand. One of the women had bailed and was sitting, chest heaving ...

"Boot camp?" we asked
"No this is special triathlon training... we paid for this torture" she groaned.

The drill sergeant didn't let up. I'm pretty fit, but I'm sure I would have struggled, and if you will excuse me probably lost my breakfast too. Thank goodness I'd done my workout before eating :-)

As they headed up to the grass and core body exercises, we had a chance to have a quick chat with a few of them:

it turns out, everyone's motivation was different.

* I've always wanted to do a triathlon, but didn't want to train with blokes, then I found WAT - (I looked them up when I got home - Women's Academy of Triathlons http://http://www.wat.net.au) 7 weeks to train for a triathlon, I can do 7 weeks (if I can get over my fear of being munched)
* My doctor told me to lose weight, I was struggling with the diet and didn't want to do just the normal gym stuff, so decided to challenge myself - and it is a challenge, but great fun
* My friend did it, and she got so fit I thought I'd give it a go
* I needed to lose the baby weight, and thought - why not ...

I know for a fact that what motivates you today, may not motivate you tomorrow. What motivates you, may not motivate your family or your work colleagues or neighbours, it's personal. But when you know what you want and are willing to put in the effort, then the results are always going to show up. And that takes me quite nicely back to something that Hugh said tonight. There is, he says, one overriding desire and that is the desire that says "I want to be taken seriously". What better way to let the world know you want to be taken seriously than to train for and then compete in a triathlon. I wonder if there are non-ocean swimming bits?

With many interesting thoughts

Elle