Epic Update & Windows of Opportunity

Ran with Petro and the gang this morning. Legs felt fantastic - as they always do for the first couple of runs at Epic.

Mark and I played a game last night - think about who you spent New Year's 1999 with and how many of those people are still in your life.

QOTD from Petro about family: "You're going to need to learn to live with a bit more chaos, or you're not going to make it."

The quote came because he's been skype-ing the US. When using Skype, he just leaves the connection open (on speakerphone) and hangs out with the person on the other line. Drives me a bit nuts because there is garbled noise coming through his computer all the time.

It's the anti-gordo-call method... no plan, no purpose, extended time... I'm more about calling with a mission, achieving the mission, moving along. The only person I hang-out with is Monica (and myself).

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We have a long bus ride to the top of New Zealand this morning. Johno had an excellent idea for us to brief everyone about the camp on the ride. Time management!

Here's the link to Molina's Epic Blog - the first one is a good one. He makes the point that athletes that excel at Epic Camp are still great triathletes, even if they are slow at other formats. Worth reading - it reminded me that I tend to define others by my own definition of success.

Comes back to my point about the world being a better place if everyone was just a little bit more like me... ha ha

Other good blog resources for Epic...

• Petro Blog
• Epic Camp Team Blog - this one will see a lot of traffic because the campers are sharing it
• John Newsom Blog

We are giving 5 bonus points for any athlete that blogs daily for the camp. Expect a lot of writing!

Insider Update of The Day: Apparently, Scott has been lifting a lot of weights (you'll see the weight reference in his Prologue Article). I can relate to balancing weight gain with strength gain - last winter, when my endurance volume dropped, I had the urge to "get strong". I hit the weights very solid and put on muscle quite quickly.

I think Alan wrote a blog about body-type for speedy endurance athletes - most of us are mesomorphs (I think that's what it's called). We "get big" if we don't do a lot of endurance volume. It's how we can sustain our strength in light of the catabolic effects of our training. The ectomorphs that do high volume tend to get injured more easily and, eventually, get skinnier and skinnier.

Being big is tough on endurance athletes, we prefer to be underweight - so it doesn't take much for us to feel huge. Anyhow, Scott made a pitch for Petro to join "Team Sumo". I think that alliances are forming and the camp hasn't even started!

As a former Big Boy, I think that I have ample qualifications for Team Sumo.

I'm waiting for my invite...

Windows of Opportunity
Most the campers here live in the real world - they have families, kids, jobs and obligations similar to anyone else.

This training camp is an opportunity for us to leave our day-to-day obligations and focus on swim/bike/run. By removing all distraction and duties, we offer the athletes an insight into what's possible.

Another one of my goals for the camp is to demonstrate how to get the most benefit from an opportunity like this for your athletic performance.

Often our actions point to other goals/habits that run counter to our stated goals (athletic performance, for example). We accept that we "are" a certain way but forget that our choices have created our current reality.

Generally, in my coaching, I focus on the larger picture of success within my client's overall life. For a working athlete, they will nearly always have the best athletic performances when sport fits into a life that is functioning in the largest sense.

Here at Epic, everyone gets a chance to live-like-a-pro. We are supported, fed, washed, guided... what we need to do is show up, train and blog a bit. Separate from the extreme volume, we live like the best elites - simple, consistent, low stress, training.

Epic is like eating at a buffet... you can "eat" as much as you want. Given that many of us are the alcoholics of endurance sport, you are going to see some weird stuff! Speaking for myself, you don't win Ultraman without an extreme compulsion for exercise (and just about anything else).

Toss a bunch of us together and create a game where bragging rights are on the line... it can be pretty tough to push away from the table.

I've green lighted myself for some extreme training.

One last time with Scott and Clas...

Gordo Would Go