Desert Lessons - Part Two

At our recent camp in Tucson, I didn't assign myself any formal topic. I wanted to see how the camp played out and give myself a chance to address questions/topics that came up as we rolled through our training.

Part One of this article is over in our column at XTri. It covered questions raised by the athletes as well as what I learned from our coaches.

This week's article covers the key things that I learned from a decade of triathlon (most of which was spent with an evangelical focus on performance). These lessons are personal to me. They make sense "now" but I don't claim them to be universal truths.

I'll wrap up with some tips that I do believe to be quite universal in application. If I had kept these in my mind for the entire decade then I might have enjoyed a deeper level of success.

I float them out there because it would be great to see one of my close friends take the lessons of my success a little further than I was able to pull off. You know who you are and you know what I mean -- I'll keep the specifics to myself because I know what it's like to lay it on the line publicly!

Lessons From An Athletic Journey

Learn from success -- Jack Daniels, World Class Coach
We often spend a lot of energy trying to figure out what is NOT working in our lives. Probably more important for successful people is to understand what IS working.

In preparing plans from season to season, change can be useful but remember to keep the core of what is working for you. Quite often another one, two, or three years of a solid plan is what is required to breakthrough.

Breakthrough Recovery
I think of athletic performance a bit like the Richter Scale -- it takes exponentially more energy (expressed as training work) to move up each level. As you break through to new levels, you must become even more focused on your recovery/unloading. The reason is that it will require even more training load to move to the next level. The workload is exponential -- the athletes at the top are doing insane amounts of training (however you want to define).

The single greatest mistake that I made in my elite career was failure to adequately recover from my breakthrough performances. I am not alone -- there are many (far more successful) athletes that have walked a similar path. From June 2004 to March 2005 I was "fast" -- in that I could train/race with pretty much anyone. It was a heady drug and, when you feel like Superman, you can make mistakes. It took a lot of effort to wreck myself!

Nine months of athletic rock-stardom was nine more than I was expecting -- and -- I never relied on athletics to make a living.

As athletes, you won't see what I mean until after you have made the same mistake. However, I know a number of coaches read my blog. Coaches, you can probably double, or triple, the lifetime prize money of your best athletes if you apply this lesson. Don't expect them to thank you at the time!

Greatest Fears
Our greatest fears are nothing when we are forced to face them. Mark Allen's story is a lot better than mine (he won in '99, I was 13th in '07). While Mark's story is inspirational, mine is more common.

The lesson from facing fear is not that you will triumph, the lesson is you will see your fears for what they are... hollow projections of the mind. Don't get me wrong, you will feel pain -- deep pain -- but that passes and, at the other side, is peace.

Just in case you were wondering, my greatest fear was a public meltdown -- I managed to achieve that while wearing Bib #1 at my favorite race in the world!

Failure vs Regret
Finish what you start. The pain of failure passes over time. It can take years, but it passes.

The regret of sensing your destiny and failing to do everything in your power to head the call... that will haunt you for a long time. Time spent following a deep calling is well spent.

The common way out of regret is to start telling yourself stories and create a personal legend. This is the path of cheaters and probably the best argument I know to avoid doping. After all the fans have left you, and your physical gifts wane, you will be left mainly with the memory of how you acted.

You can't control your peers -- you have total control of actions that can lead to regret.

One True Standard
Over the last twenty years, I have been fortunate to work with the brilliant; live alongside the wealthy; and train with the gifted. Strangely, I have always felt like a visitor in their worlds. The places where I feel at home are the forests, the oceans and the mountains -- hiking, mountaineering, long distance swimming and bike touring. Personality tests show me as the perfect candidate for a Park Ranger.

Athletic performance was a complete accident -- I only signed up for an Ironman because I had been convinced that I was likely to die in the Himalayas if I kept climbing! I discovered a gift and decided to take it absolutely as far as I could.

I'm happy with the way things turned out -- mistakes, failures, successes, victories -- I wouldn't change a thing. So the final lesson is to remember that ultimately you'll be living with yourself a lot longer than most of those around you.

Advice to Aspiring Athletes

You Can't Do It All
In my life, I can do one thing well -- everything else slides or is ignored. My definition of "well" is world-class. My goal is to be world-class in what I do -- finance, coach, husband, athlete... I'd be lying if I told you that I had transcended relative performance!

You will need to make choices if you want to perform relative to others. You are also going to have to make a habit out of doing things that your competition are unwilling to do.

These habits need not be 'evil'! Moderate exercise, eating well and getting enough sleep are probably the greatest areas for us to outperform in the long run (by not dying early).

Personal Responsibility
Hiring a coach does not remove your obligation to think.

Basic Week
Your training must be consistent with your life situation and, taught to me by Molina, the time you have to train has no impact on human physiology.

Your competition does not care about your schedule. We don't get to set the rules of engagement.

Learn From Your Students
You are going to need a lot of help to achieve ambitious goals. Probably the #1 mistake athletes make (myself included) is ignoring the possibility that a "slow" person might have something to teach them. Triathlon embodies this form of intellectual arrogance -- I was a poster boy for it!

This past winter I mentored a dozen beginners that were preparing for their first triathlon. Many of them fell away along the journey but a core listened, challenged me and applied my teaching. If you want to learn the fundamental principles of performance then listen to your students. Similar to Monica, they give me gentle feedback about my greatest limiters!

"Not To Do" Lists
Keep track of the choices that you make that result in self-sabotage. Here's a few of mine:

• Naps after 3pm
• Sleeping past 7am
• Coffee after 3pm
• Getting loaded
• Overeating on starch/sugar

They are small individually but if any of the above becomes a habit then my productivity will plummet and I am a lot less likely to achieve my goals.

It might be my personality, but I have an easier time stopping poor choices than nurturing good habits.

Hope this helps,
gordo