The Best Part Isn't the Race

Why the build matters more than the day itself

I was sitting in the café after track Tuesday this week, coffee in hand, still sweating!! When my friend VK asked how the recovery from my hip operation was going.

Six months in. Slower return than I’d have liked, there were definitely moments of frustration, wanting to push before the body was ready. But honestly, I haven’t minded as much as I expected to. Because the progress has been steady, all the way along. Week on week, something has changed. Something has improved. There’s something quietly satisfying about that kind of gradual and predictable improvement.

I told him I was actually enjoying it. He smiled and said something that has stayed with me all week.

“The build is the best bit.”

And the more I sat with it, the more I thought, he’s right. Not just about recovery. About all of it.

Track Tuesday…. Every Tuesday… with InnerFight

There’s a concept in psychology called the anticipatory phase, the period before a goal is reached, where motivation, engagement and positive emotion tend to peak. Research shows that the anticipation of something good often generates more happiness than the thing itself. The pursuit activates us in a way that arrival rarely does.

One of my previous posts talked about the arrival fallacy, the gap between what we expect achieving a goal to feel like and what it actually feels like. Rory McIlroy described it perfectly after completing the career Grand Slam. He got there. And then realised it wasn’t the destination he thought it was.

What both of these ideas point to is the same truth, the richest part of any performance journey is usually the middle of it. The unglamorous, cumulative, quietly satisfying business of building toward something.

The early morning sessions. The small improvements you notice before anyone else does. The week where everything clicks. The week where nothing does and you show up anyway.

But more than any of that, it’s the long rides with friends where the kilometres disappear because the conversation is good. The stair climbs before track Tuesday that hurt just enough to feel earned. The coffees afterwards, where nobody wants to leave for work just yet.

It takes an army to get it done. And most of the time, the army is the reason you do it in the first place. The training is simply the vehicle. But the people, the rituals, the small moments that sit either side of the hard work, that’s what you actually remember. That’s what keeps you coming back. That’s where most of the living happens.

Six months ago I was wondering when I’d be able to get out of bed normally again. Putting on my socks was, and if I’m honest, still is, a work in progress. The idea of thinking about an Ironman felt like a different lifetime entirely.

This week I found myself genuinely excited about a build. Not anxious about whether I’ll be ready. Not fixated on the outcome. Just excited about the process of getting there. That’s quite a shift for me. Because when you’re excited about the build, when you find meaning in the training rather than just the racing, things change quietly in the background.

You train more consistently because you’re not just tolerating the process to get to the reward. You recover better, because you’re not carrying the psychological weight of an outcome you’re desperate for. You perform more freely on race day, because the event becomes something you get to do rather than something you need to prove. The build stops being the price you pay to race. It becomes the thing itself.

VK said it simply, but he meant it. And I think he’s right. At some point you have to ask yourself an honest question, do I actually enjoy this? Not the medal, not the finish line photo, not the Strava upload. The actual day-to-day of it. The getting up and doing it again. Because if the answer is no, it’s very hard to sustain. And if the answer is yes, even on the hard days, even through the sock-related struggles, then you’ve found something worth protecting.

Next time you find yourself just tolerating training to get to the event, pause.

Ask what it would feel like to actually enjoy this part. Not every session. Not unrealistically. But the direction. The people doing it alongside you.

The start line will come. It always does.

But don’t miss what’s happening between now and then.

That’s where the good stuff is.