Summer Running…

The Summer Olympic Games boosted motivation and inspiration during an intense stretch of marathon training. Besides the games, there was a lot of good content to help put things into perspective. With a four-year break, many changes between events, and for me, this was the first event that I ever really paid much attention to while competing in a sport myself. Olympic athletes make it look simple on performance day. It was a good reminder of a parable from the Bible that reads ‘What you see is temporary, it is what you cannot see that is eternal’. The lights, the metals, the cameras, they all come and go relatively quickly when you put into perspective the four years or more of training the athletes put in. I was listening to a podcast episode recently from ‘The Daily Stoic’ on Stoic Harsh Truths. One of them was how short our pleasure is felt from attaining a certain goal after training and great effort and how permanent the sting of shame and failure can be when we know that we haven’t chosen the right thing to do when we could have.  Knowing how to prepare, how to train, and how to get in the mindset of a champion is a sustainable skill that unlocks your real potential. When we defeat that Resistance, we all can develop this skill.

Training season in full swing! 

When we build our inner citadel into a fortress of fortitude, we gain the character to finish everything that we start, long after inspiration has fled. Listening to different coaches speak and reading blogs about them over the summer has been really insightful. I read a blog about legendary basketball coach, John Wooden and his character on and off the court. He made promises to himself that were all about being the best version of yourself and his top priority, every single day was to keep those promises. He always chose to speak about happiness and good health. He always kept high expectations of himself and those around him. He promised to only work with the absolute best people that he could find. There is a legendary quote from him that he would say to his players before the start of a game, in the locker room. ‘My job is done here. The rest is up to you all’. It’s the spirit of accountability. As a coach, he was accountable for properly training the players and putting the right preparation into practices and the days leading up to games. At game time, the players are accountable for executing what they have been trained to do. No coach can go out and execute for them. No one can go out and run a marathon for us. And what he proved with record-winning runs during his tenure is that when you train to be the best version of yourself and prepare in the best way, you execute in the best way, you get the best results. It’s your choice, your actions. 

Thinking about another legendary speaker and champion of his domain, Tony Robbins offered words of enlightenment about making a change in your life. We can’t expect new results with old actions. Just like the real definition of insanity, trying the same actions and expecting new results doesn’t work! This training cycle and this year as a whole have been a real experience for me with new actions and new results. Everything changes and everything ends so our new actions will become old actions in time. We have to remember that we work on the process and the process works on us. It is a constant cycle we go through.

A recent interview I listened to was with Coach Bob Bowman, the coach and trainer of Olympic Champion Michael Phelps. Coach Bob’s energy was radiant through the car speakers and can be felt. He and Ryan Holiday, on The Daily Stoic were speaking about another Stoic virtue; stillness. Coach Bob really understood how important it is for an athlete on the grand scale like the Olympics to be still in the midst of extreme energy. When an athlete performs at their peak, they think of nothing. Just execution. They are performing exactly what they have trained for. The story about Phelps was how he went on the stand to start the 100 butterfly race in the Olympics, standing sideways. The swimmer in the lane next to him also stood sideways to stare Phelps down as a challenge. The race started and Phelps won. Coach Bob asked Michael after the race what that was about and Michael had no idea who was even next to him. Michael was in the race before the race began as Coach Bob described it. His preparation was so intense that he was racing from the second he showed up to the facility. He was ready to jump in and perform just as he trained. At peak performance. The coach spoke about a single trait that Michael had that he claimed to make him invincible. And that was, as the pressure increased, so did his performance. Was it that Michael felt the immense pressure so he performed to react to it?  No! He was performing because of his training and the pressure that he put on himself to perform every single day, at every single practice. The race was just another day for him to perform. He was fueled by what had already been engraved in him.  With stillness comes swiftness and with passion comes patience. It gives the perception that this is easy for them but the sacrifice is hard to imagine and impossible to emulate.

Just to be clear, I am a hobbyist. Not even an amateur, certainly not a pro at running marathons. Listening to Coach Bob really had an impact on me. I felt as if I was learning from the absolute best, so why not take whatever I could from what I heard. One of the more intense workouts of my marathon training week is my Yasso workout, which is a track run at and around marathon pace (6:55) broken up into half-mile sets (2 laps) or 1 mile sets (4 laps) with a 2 minute rest in between. And you’re getting in 4-6 sets total. Every week, it is intense. It is not only a running workout, it’s a breathing exercise, a heart rate workout and of course a mental test of pushing yourself beyond your comfort level. When you want to give up, finding your best set for the final one and ending at your peak. So at the workout following listening to that interview with Coach Bob, I actually realized that I was more comfortable in a high intensity workout by thinking of nothing. Just running, performing at the pace that I had to be at and having my previous training sessions in me to work with. It wasn’t a miracle or magic. I had been going to the track for over a month doing the exact same workout with high intensity. I was executing what I had done numerous times in the past and now I took the opportunity to push myself to one more set and then a faster finish. Countless times during high intensity workouts, I would stress over what could I think of to get me through it. Sometimes, I would try to think of really good ideas around my personal life and work life. Sometimes, I would listen to a podcast right before the workout and try to memorize what I heard and repeat it in my head during the workout. Now it was more clear. My duty is to perform, not to think about how to perform. So many times, we feel that there has to be an external motivator, even internally. What we do need is that inner citadel within us that knows what we’re capable of and gives us the fortitude to push further. Most importantly it reminds us that we are competing with ourselves and only ourselves. I’ve never spoken to Michael Phelps directly, but I’d be willing to bet that he gets up to train every single day and shows up to race day to race against himself. To do better than he did the day before. 

A run for the ages. Running and biking along side my wife is an image that was quite hard to imagine a year ago. Doing it in a duathlon and a triathlon that we completed together, was certainly not in my foresight. My wife’s physical abilities have caught up with her and she has way more ability than she knows! I understand exactly now, how she is able to manage a household, caring for our two children with the same amount of effort, every single day, consistently. She handled her first race of its kind with composure, enjoyment, and balance. When I look back at my first big organized run, I had none of those. Her year of hard work is showing now in a big way. She is an inspiration and this run was a reminder of how vital she is to my journey and to our family of four. We are blessed and can never offer enough gratitude for her enlightenment. 

Another inspiration from this event was Team Achilles, which is no surprise, although I didn’t know how prominent they are in triathlon events. As my wife and I biked and ran along, we cheered on Achilles athletes and guides and it was an authentic experience in true camorodity. I’m blessed that my wife was alongside me for the experience.  

After a weekend of a long run and a completed triathlon, alongside my wife for the bike and run portions, I am taking a moment to reflect on where I am coming from and where I am going. In another sports-themed podcast that I listened to during this summer Olympic season, a high-performance coach spoke about the most important quality of a successful athlete. Consistency. You have to be willing to leave everything out there, every single day, win, lose, or draw. Results aside. As Winston Churchill said ‘Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence is the key to unlocking our potential.’  The coach also spoke of the importance of, not just dreaming big, but believing big. The conviction within us, without any question, any doubt, that we will put the work in and we will accomplish what we are capable of doing. So believe in yourself and stay consistent. Sounds simple right? Then we’d all be at Tom Brady’s level. But we’re not. These are the muscles that I will be working on as I now approach the final third of training for the Chicago marathon. I have begun to write down my inscription ideas for the finisher medal. ‘Set your standard and raise it higher every single day’. That’s one thought. It is also a reminder that you are competing against yourself every single day, yourself from yesterday. It is up to you to push the standard higher and the goal is continuous improvement, or ‘kaizen’ as the Japanese would say.

On a recent call with my marathon coach to discuss the final stretch of my training schedule, we had a sincere discussion about expectations. I had noticed that my pace runs were not quite at the pace that I would have to be at to attain a Boston Qualifying race time. So I asked the question and we discussed where to go from that point. My coach’s strategy was simple and effective. Do not get burnt out and stay consistent throughout the entire training season. So far it’s worked. He explained that running your top pace in your first half of training would have increased the chances of injury or at the least made your legs too tired to perform at your peak on race day. And then he posed the question to me about how difficult my pace runs were on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 10 (hardest). I said 5. So then it was determined that it was time to up the intensity. Now, after my first week of the final training stretch, I completely understand the strategy. My 5 jumped up immediately to a 7. The good news is that I still have time, with healthy legs, to work on that ‘7’ consistently over the next month. Consistency and improvement. It’s a simple strategy. With conviction, I have to say that the process has done more to me than I knew I was capable of and I’m not finished. I never will be. The process is working on my life just as much as I am working on living the best version of myself and constantly moving through the cycle of changes, growth, and progress forever…

Now we’re back to school, back to Fall marathon season, and ready to set new limits!

And don’t forget to enjoy the process as much as you can. Check out Laura Green, a recent guest on the Marathon Training Academy podcast for a good laugh!

See you at the finish line! 

Lessons Learned:
’Do anything to start the process of moving forward, rather than let fear stop you!’ Tony Robbins

‘If your goals don’t scare the sh*t out of you, you probably aren’t thinking big enough. You never really know what you’re capable of until the lights turn on.’ Sahil Bloom

“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. But real success, real mastery, real sanity? That comes only by “tying it to your own actions.” Marcus Aurelius.

‘Run a marathon and change your life!’ Trevor and Angie of Marathon Training Academy