In my opinion, the title of this column is a term that has been forgotten or simply not used enough!

Are you asking yourself what is K.I.S.S? Keep It Simple Stupid!

After my last article on the 40 boring weeks, I got bombarded with the question, “What should I do during the 40 boring weeks?” I can say just about every person who wrote me was trying to make it far more complicated than it really needs to be.

Some of us are coming up on our big goals for the 2012 season. For others it may be time to shut it down or ramp it up -- all depending on your goals for the year or years to come.

As I was out riding the other day I got to thinking about some of my athletes and their years as well as myself and my plans. I started thinking about training and some of the questions I get asked.

Whether you are a seasoned racer or someone taking on a first race there is one sure thing that is going to happen in your athletic endeavors: you are going to have to deal with adversity.

Adversity can be used to describe many different things, can come in many forms, and is obviously different for each individual person. It also usually goes hand in hand with both success and failure on many levels.

For most folks, traveling to a race can be very stressful, especially in the cases of those who do not do it very often throughout the year.

I always tell people that in the last week all you can do is mess it up! What I mean is in the last 7-10 days you can no longer add “fitness” to what you have already built up. It is time to relax, recuperate and get ready for your big day!

"So, are you really going for it and racing? Or are you pacing things out over the day?"

I get asked this question a lot when chatting with age groupers and particularly from guys and gals looking to make the next step in their racing careers.

There are many answers to this question and I could honestly go on about it all day.

In today's day and age of smart phones, email, Facebook, Twitter, and on and on, we all feel the need for constant feedback or information from the outside world.

I don't think things are a lot different in our sport of triathlon. There is more information available than we know what to do with.

I am pretty sure that most of us have had a disappointing race or athletic performance in our career. If you have not, consider yourself lucky!

A lot of us tend to throw our toys out of the crib and blame it on the conditions or someone else. I think there are several things we need to do when we have a disappointment in a race. First thing is give yourself at least 24-48 hours before you make any rash decisions

Your second step should be to take a step back and look at what happened!