Hendy’s breaking point
He’s a leading series hopeful and has the DNA of a champion but TJ Hendy has revealed his battles to find form, as Tom Boswell reports
TJ Hendy has a broken heart.
It’s something he has been dismissing for months and even become angry over.
The ironman’s training has faltered and he is a shadow of the person who won his first Nutri-Grain Ironman Series race a year ago.
Yet in a moment of clarity ahead of today’s Ocean6 Round 3 in Wollongong, Hendy has faced his demons and traced the source of his heartache back to one race – the Coolangatta Gold.
The Surfers Paradise representative was forced to pull out of the famous event midrace on October 7 after suffering hypothermia.
The son of surf lifesaving great Trevor knows there is nothing he could have done on the day but mistakes leading into the race have haunted him and stripped him of confidence.
“Even the month leading into the race I pushed myself to the limit,” Hendy said.
“I’d been going through some big ups and downs, having some really good sessions and some terrible ones.
“I overcooked myself on the day and didn’t do it right. I didn’t eat right and didn’t plan for it correctly. I had a huge feeling of emptiness after putting 20 weeks of my life towards it.”
Hendy, 22, has a theory of why his body reacted the way it did despite competing in the heat of Queensland.
”My calorie intake was too low. My body was overheating and then tried to cool itself down,” he said.
“That’s what I think. And then it got in the cold water
and couldn’t warm back up.”
The body has since recovered but the Hendy said the mind was yet to do the same.
“I have a broken heart from it. I have had it a couple of times in this sport and whenever it happens all the previous times you have felt that way come flooding back,” Hendy said.
“It strips you of your confidence a fair bit and then I had to try and requalify for the series after missing out ocean automatic spot last year.
“It makes it harder to get back up and you question yourself and if you’re doing things the right way. I got myself in a tough position where everything just felt hard.
“I haven’t had any moment where I have broken down and cried but I find myself angry. It’s more from being upset and I did it to hide how I was feeling.
“It’s been hard to push myself to the limit and it was the same at the world titles. I didn’t have any individual
success even though we won the taplin relay as a team.
“I wasn’t willing to completely put myself out there.”
Ironmen and women spend hours a day working on the different disciplines involved in the gruelling sport but Hendy (right) has put some of the physical training to the side in order to focus on the mind.
“I’ve been looking at the different layers of the mind, body and soul,” Hendy said.
“One of the things I have
been doing is spending some time coaching the Nippers and it’s been awesome to see the way it puts a smile on the kids’ faces.
“I’m trying to go through the emotion of it all rather than dismissing it. I’m letting myself get down rather than trying to escape it.”
Hendy is seventh in the Ocean6 series rankings and despite turning a corner ahead of this weekend’s races, he isn’t expecting results to change immediately.