Why Wait

This week's title is short for "Why wait to be great" - a mantra from my elite racing days. For athletics, the mantra was a reminder to maintain my adventuresome spirit. While it is true that all we really need is a reasonable weekly structure, it takes so long to get decent (to achieve our own 'greatness') that compliance is increased if we maintain the adventure in our training.

In reality, athletics is no different than our wider lives. If you pursue sport for long enough then your approach (and often your successes) will bring out self-limiting patterns and habits. As adult athletes, it is far easier for us to maintain an open mind athletically than in the other areas of our lives (where we've been repeating patterns for years). Perhaps this is a good reason to change careers, or cultures, every decade, or so.

The photos mixed through this week's letter are from "Rich Camp 2009". I spent the last week training with a British triathlete - we checked out some classic routes in Colorado and Utah. It was a blast for me and I really appreciated the chance to share my ideas with Rich. Our trip, and Rich's story, reminded me of a few things that might interest.

Why Race?
Received some interesting feedback from last week's article.

Are you still competing because you enjoy competition, or because it provides you with a reason, purpose, and motivation to train? As I get older (now 40) I feel way way less competitive, to the point that it just seems to be a non-sense to race! However I miss having the drive that being competitive used to give to my training focus. Every training session had a purposeful focus, an unquestionable importance. Its great to be fit, strong and fast, but I find it difficult to train consistently, getting out on the 'difficult' days, when I'm not sure why I do it anymore? How do you continue to set yourself desirable challenges?

There is a lot in there but you touch on some very important issues that athletes will face. Some of what I share below relates directly to this point.

Common reasons for starting an athletic program:

Nutrition & Body Comp - have the ability to eat more food and look better physically // consume more, look better -- supported by our society, the media and advertising.

Self-validation - while we may be searching for self-esteem, most often our actions are about self-validation by relative out-performance // I have worth because I am physically fast

If we stick with sports long enough then we might realize that we don't need athletic "performance" to achieve the above. We need: (a) physical expression; (b) good nutritional habits; and (c) self-acceptance. If we are successful in achieving these three then we are likely to find that our compulsion to compete fades.

The chemical memories that we have from being fit/strong/fast are powerful drugs and so it's probably not surprising that we can get addicted to them. Athletics is like skin cancer -- you don't pay the "price" until your tan is well faded.

I also think that it is important for us to acknowledge that while athletic competition is valuable, for most of us, it is an irrational long term strategy. We simply don't have the physical structure to support the level of training required to be a "top athlete" forever. Even the most durable athletes wear out eventually. So the intelligent athlete will apply the lessons of athletic competition and shift towards a wellness stance.

So my reasons to train are:

Keep my world open -- as we age, our physical world slowly closes with a reduced ability to explore and travel. Maintaining strength and endurance (not speed) keeps my physical world open. The training required to keep an elite athletic world open, at some stage, that may start to close our larger physical world. In fact, most fast athletes don't do a whole lot of exploring/living -- they just eat/sleep/train.

Increase quality of life -- I was tempted to write longevity but I don't know how much time I've got! So more accurately, I want to optimize the quality of the life that I will have. Here again, top athletes spend most of their lives tired and sore. The best athletes that I know... the only time they aren't tired is when they are injured! Now that's an exaggeration but a regular person wouldn't believe the discomfort and fatigue tolerance of the folks at the top.

If your only socially acceptable avenue for rest is injury... is it surprising that many athletes are chronically injured?

In terms of desirable challenges:

• An hour of exercise per day
• Wake up by 7 am
• Be kind to my wife, always
• Listen more
• Maintain revenue/expense balance

Being at the top of my agegroup is EASY compared to the above.

Transitions
Back to Rich Camp 2009!

Rich is moving out to Hong Kong in mid-June. He's never been there before. I had three major geographical transitions (cross country, trans-atlantic, trans-continental) with next to no due diligence. The "sensible" thing would probably have been to check the place out extensively. Rich, like me, was pretty practical - if you're not going to change your mind then why spend the time researching? Instead of spending his time researching, he went exploring in the US.

In our lives, most of us, will have a limited number of opportunities to explore. Use your transitions (from school, from jobs, from marriages, from business failures...) to explore new directions that might interest you. If you have a chance to do something really interesting then go-for-it! With my most extreme adventures (elite athletics; business formation; trans-america exploration; mountaineering) - the opportunity would not have repeated itself.

Failures in particular, provide an opportunity for new avenues. When we are successful we tend to dig deeper into our existing way of doing things. Here I am talking about my own life -- Rich is young enough not to have had too many disasters! When things don't work out; you have an opportunity to consider radical change.

Spend your time collecting a range of interesting experiences, rather than focusing on building up money to collect possessions. The classic example is a job transition -- the new company will often want you start ASAP but if you can delay a bit then you'll be able to do a bit of exploring. The value in money lies in its capacity to support personal freedom -- possessions, by their nature, restrict freedom and promote attachment.

Achievement
Rich's swimming/cycling is about where I was ten years ago. The fact that he was on a triathlon camp, moving 'blind' to Hong Kong and works in financial markets... pulled me back in time and reminded me that...

Success comes to people with ability and passion. Given that we cannot know our ultimate aptitude when we start down a path... one could argue that success comes mostly to people with a passion for consistent work. Armed with a solid work ethic, we experiment with different passions until we experience success (and proceed to dig deeper with our patterns!).

If you haven't been successful then perhaps you need to create your own luck with a change of focus?

So last Tuesday, I am riding up a grade that's 14% for 7K with a new pal from the UK. We've just had a picnic lunch at the bottom of a canyon in Central Utah. I hauled a stack of fluids, lunch, stove, espresso maker (with CoH, naturally) for 50 miles. The last time I did the ride, it probably cost me ~$500 per day in support, logistics, training partners... This time, I was being paid to host a visitor.

The cost of the exchange was that we were going to do the training that was right for the client, not the coach! This adjustment required a change of attitude and personal goals. Calling myself an Endurance Guide is part of that transformation and a reminder about the man I want to be.

For physical pursuits, time will dull our capacity to be world-class. However, it takes much longer for time to dull our capacity to be world-class people.

We always dream up reasons not to try and I could have given away my love of exploring. However, I had an idea that I just might be able to turn my passion into a new business line.

I don't know where it will take me but trying made all the difference.

Why wait to start living?
gordo