Caring is Cool

Today I learned who graffiti artist, political activist, and filmmaker Banksy is. His tweet…
 
“Our generation thinks it’s COOL NOT TO CARE. It's not. Effort is cool. Caring is cool. Staying loyal is cool. Try it out.” 

Athletes often pretend or say/suggest they don’t care about their “race” or how they do. I rarely believe them. It’s a safe front to use however. Let the world know that you are just “doing it for fun” or haven’t really trained for it so “going easy” or like to focus on the “comfort-zone” of race participation. There is an ever growing number of people that are “finishing” marathons or jumping into mass participation endurance events (in fact the slower you go the more fun and comfortable it is!). Surely we will all agree that anything that gets people moving is a very good thing. But is it really true that they don’t care? Or is it cool not to care? What happens if you do care? 

My response to many of my athletes that say they are nervous before a race is “yes, it’s because you care and caring is a good thing. It means this experience matters to you. You worked hard for something so nerves are a good sign. It means you care.” If nerves are generated from saving face and self imposed [unrealistic and pressure cooker] expectations, we are having a different conversation. 

This will be my final year racing as a professional triathlete. And I too am lining up on July 30th for Ironman Canada in Whistler, BC. I want to be in the trenches with the athletes and feel what they feel, see them on the course and hopefully exchange a few high fives. With that decision comes exposure, effort and a lot of caring. The easy route would be not to race and roll out this year until my pro license expires and avoid dealing with vulnerability, stepping into the arena with competitors some 15-20 years younger, feeling the discomfort of racing and risking failure. But I would rather care and jump in than pretend not to and watch on the side lines.

For those of you training hard, racing, preparing daily, opting out of destructive behaviour so that you can opt into constructive behaviour and elevating your game daily, go back to Banksy’s reminder. 
CARING IS COOL. The personal rewards for caring will propel you and those around you far more the impact of any one race or athletic endeavour. 

My all time favourite quote is by Theodore Roosevelt:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

It’s a bit long to tape on your handlebar for inspiration but read it before your next race. 

Or tape this one (my second favourite):

Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
- John Wooden, Coach. Winning 10 NCAA National Championships in a 12 year period while at UCLA - still unmatched by any other college basketball coach.
 

Effort

This is day three of my writing short (ok moderate) posts of some random yet important topics that role through my head.

If you didn’t get Day 1 and Day 2 and would like to, I can forward to you or check my website www.brite.coach 

All will be posted there.

Since many of you have races or events coming up, I will spend another week reminding you and hopefully educating you on some nuances of endurance training. 

Like Sleep (Monday) and SmartPhones (Tuesday), the topics will hopefully surprise and enlighten you.

Today is about effort and our nature to go hard.

Most days, as an endurance coach, are spent asking athletes to ride smooth, minimize surges and use gears to flatten hilly roads. Whether a roadie, mountain biker, triathlete, runner, doesn’t matter…if you are an endurance athlete and 96.9% of your goal events are based on the development of your aerobic system and optimizing sustainable power, then maximizing your ability to hold a steady output is the skill we are after. 

Developing outstanding endurance is the starting point and with that comes exceptional aerobic economy (which I have written about this past winter).  If all your training is interval-based V02Max or Threshold efforts in place of aerobic base training, we are neither training endurance or economy. We are just getting tired. Now, that’s not to say you should never ride hard and do intervals. There is certainly a time, place and appropriateness for hard work (athlete dependent and training phase related) - blending aerobic development and intensity into an athletes training program is both an art and a science (and highly individual). For criterium riders, roadies, mountain bikers and even some triathletes/runners, you need the ability to change pace, recover and go again and maybe again and maybe again. A crit race often demands a rider to “accelerate” through corners 160+ times in the span of an hour! Intensity for these folks is critical! But they back it up with a ton of endurance work!

In long endurance races or multi-day stage events, success to the finish (aka: a strong finish) will only come from careful pacing and steady output. In cycling terms, every time we exceed our aerobic threshold we burn a match. Once the matchbook is all used up, we will have no fire in our legs for the later stages of the race, the run off the bike or the days following in a multi-day stage race. I find it most fascinating that despite many athletes knowing about this concept, they choose to ignore the consequences of it. Until they have buried themselves in a race, a training ride, or walked an entire Ironman marathon, the impact of burning matches or exceeding their aerobic threshold multiple times in dramatic fashion, the levity of this concept is lost on them. Some athletes learn the first time but more often than not it takes a few good reminders. 

This line of thinking and dialoguing with athletes led me to ask myself what is it about athletes/humans always pushing beyond what is sustainable? 

Self sabotaging their rides or training days but going out so hard? Surely ego is involved but there is something more natural and innocently naive about this behaviour.

I read a great thread that magnified our very nature. 

It went like this…

Why we go to hard is because our very evolution (to standing on two feet) has ingrained a certain ‘resistance reflex’ into us. Try this -- stand facing a person. Ask them to hold up their two hands to you. Place yours against them and then gently apply increasing pressure. They will push back with the same pressure. This is reflexive. That's why our natural instinct is to go harder up a hill, into the wind, surge to the front, etc. Part of ultra endurance training is unlearning that reflex — to keep constant effort rather than constant speed. 

Pacing yourself steadily and evenly, in ultra endurance, will pull back anyone and everyone that went out too hard. Be a champion at the end, not in the first 1/4. 

And, if you don’t reel in others you thought went out too hard, then they were in fact faster/stronger than you. So move on.

SmartPhones

A few years ago, six to be exact, I commented to my coach at the time, that I was noticing my ability to focus in long workouts seemingly getting harder and harder. I loved intervals and things to “do” while training. When I was younger I was able to put my butt on a saddle and just ride. No music, no distractions, no need for special intervals to busy my mind. As phones and instant messaging starting to buzz in my pocket and the urgency of texting or accessing social media updates, I found my attention span was compromised. Coach looked at me like I had two heads since at the time it wasn’t nearly half as bad as it is now. But I knew something was up and might only get worse. 

Yesterday, we talked about sleep. Today, we will talk about stimulants.

Really smart people in the world with PHDs and stuff, designed your little phone with such sophistication that we are literally addicted to the dopamine response from checking it every 30seconds. Very similar to gambling and the addictive behaviours associated with the chase for a win-fall.

“Refresh” floods our system with dopamine and we can’t stop ourselves from going back for more. So how does this affect our performance?

Outstanding performance and execution comes as a result of complete focus. If our brains are wondering if “so and so” liked my post or replied to my text, we are far from focused. In fact we are so distracted we may as well just be on the couch on our phones. 

Like sleep, for the next two weeks, consider ways that you can check less, do more and use the cognitive energy in areas that help your performance vs hinder it. Studies show that simply turning the ringer off or putting your phone in your pocket is far from effective. We operate on will-power in those cases. And we know what happens when will-power is put to the test. Even reading paragraph is likely making you wonder about your phone. 

The best solution to detach from your phone is to remove it entirely from your body, vision and environment. When the phone is removed from an athletes environment, there is proof that performance increases and even the impact of the training session was enhanced. The domino affect of removing technology “instant” calls for attention will impact your ability and willingness to perform, your interest in real people and your awareness of life around you. 

What would you do with all that “checking, surfing, creeping and liking” time back in your life? 

Sleep more. Rest more. Recover more. Perform more and more often. 

Nice alternative.

Having The Courage to Rest

Mid-July

You are either lining up for a full ironman, half ironman, fondo or recovering from an injury over the next couple of weeks. Or you are simply within an important training block in your season.  Over the next couple weeks, take time to focus on impactful ways to improve your bodies ability to perform when it counts.

For those of you racing in the next 6-14 days, resist the urge to constantly test yourself.  Always keep a little in reserve, mentally and physically.  Avoid max effort situations, if you make a mistake then do a little less, go a little easier.  It is far better to arrive a little too fresh than to find one’s self tired.

I was listening to an old youtube on the weekend with a prominent ironman legend and self-less experimenter in the ultra endurance world (Gordo Byrn). He made a few “rest” statements that not only struck the group of athletes he was speaking to but also prompted me to write each of you. 

In general, but especially in the last couple of weeks before a big event (or while you recover from an injury),  every athlete will benefit from finding a way to average 30 minutes or more of sleep per night versus trying to find room for an extra or harder training session. In other words, get more out of the work you are currently doing by showing up to the sessions fresher and more recovered. As it relates to racing and performing, optimal sleeping patterns and amounts will bring out both your athletic ability as well as your cognitive ability to make critical decisions, maintain perspective and operate at a significantly higher level for longer periods of time. We all want that.

If you were to ask some of the top performers (in any field), I suspect they have healthy sleep hygiene and that making sleep a priority was the one key difference in their success. The training and hard work stays the same but the ability to recover and grow is the game changer. Those who do not have good sleeping routines will ultimately not sustain their current level of output. It’s simply fact.

Here’s what I notice, after a couple days of compromised sleep, I am not only terrible at training, I am terrible at life. 

When I know that all I need to do is add sleep, I give myself 10-14days of extended mattress time and when possible, wake without an alarm. Life looks completely different when our bodies are rested and nourished. 

For two weeks, I invite you all to try:

- going to bed 10…20…30 minutes earlier.

- darken your room completely.

- avoid iPhones for at least 60-120minutes before bed.

- leave iPhone out of the bedroom.

- visualize the body completely relaxing into a sleep state.

- if and when possible, wake without an alarm.

At the same time, notice if you like people a little more, if your patience grows, if you start to welcome challenges in a new light, if you start to look forward to sleep more than you used to and if holding a healthy and positive perspective seems a bit easier (in the grand scheme of things).

Hammer or Nail

Many people get into endurance sport, or sport in general, for the social aspect of spending time with others while also getting fit. We meet new people, we bond, we hurt, we laugh and we come back for more thanks to the camaraderie of others being there for us and us being there for them.  For athletes entering endurance sport or returning to fitness an audience can positively influence compliance and consistency.  Studies show that athletes train harder and focus longer when in the company of others. Athlete reliability skyrockets when they know someone is depending on them to show up.  The benefits of “exercising” socially cannot be disproven. So then what could ever be the problem with having training partners? The answer lies in context.

Over the years I have been apart of many training groups, clubs and teams. In my twenties I wore a “road racing” helmet and couldn’t imagine a ride without the company of twenty other cyclists dressed in the same kit and wearing the same socks with coaches at the front and back end of the group chomping at our wheel.  The team would end at the same café for a post ride latte and jam session.  Our goals were team-based sprinkled with race tactics and strategies to win as a result of a group effort. The comraderie was exceptional and when things came together in races, we knew the hard work in training together paid off.  Each season had a plan and each session had a purpose.  The whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Over time, my focus evolved, as did my desire to realize personal improvements and compete against the clock (gross simplification of 10-15 years).  To honor this desire, my training partners had to evolve, as did my training sessions and the specificity of each one. It was wildly motivating to train knowing that each session fit into a bigger picture and gratifying to experience unique improvements. Group rides at random speeds and punchy watts continued to be a huge part of my training. In fact, the more fit I became with solo workouts, the more I could enjoy some of those Hammerfest rides and even test a few riders that always tested me in past years. What changed was the approach and timing of group rides. What changed was who the hammer was and who the nail was.

All of you have goals for the season, for next season and even beyond. Whether you are doing haute route, gran fondos, staged mountain bike events, ironmans, half ironmans, du-athlons or marathons, having training partners can be a key ingredient to squeezing out more effort and pushing your power, pace or volume to new limits.  Group dynamics can also simulate race conditions by having others surround you, maybe uncomfortably so, forcing you to find comfort with proximity and the pressures of keeping up, holding your line, taking a pull or maintaining mental fortitude despite depths of fatigue and bleeding eyeballs.  For those observant few, riding with seasoned well-conditioned road tacticians offers an incredibly opportunity to learn and apply in your own training.  Whether you know it or not, chances are those seasoned riders also do, or have done, a fair amount of solo training to get where they are today. 

So back to my earlier comment about context. The use of training partners and social dynamics gets slippery for endurance-focused athletes when used as a crutch to deviate from their plan and what it really takes to go after real goals. 

As humans, we often look for the easy way to navigate challenges and do the least amount of work with the highest return on investment. In training, we are no different.  Sometimes training partners help make things easier for us. For the record, I’m not calling the kettle black - I have been there too, we all have. 

Here’s the thing…

Setting goals, having dreams of qualification, wanting to “race vs. complete” and becoming a competitive athlete is hard. It demands more of us, physically, emotionally and mentally, than we realize until the going really gets tough.  Using training partners to make things easier on us – be it to help us get out the door, to draft off, to chat with for long rides or runs (at their pace), to use them as an excuse not to do your prescribed workout that was written based on your goals (this is one I hear a lot) or to simply make the training session less uncomfortable for you - will only result in one outcome...comfort zone with no depth for physical or mental stamina. When you hit the front lines in races and the gun goes, you get what you trained for. The more you use social training as a crutch to color a box green, the more foreign racing will feel. 

As we head into the spring and the days are warmer, dryer and sunnier, you will have opportunities to train with others. Consider whether you are the hammer or nail? Some days you may even want to be the nail to practice responsiveness and get pushed. Some days you may want to be the hammer to push others and drive the pace. Some days you may need to opt out altogether and do what is right for you and your big picture.  Either way, keeping perspective and avoiding the trap of using training company as a crutch or dissing the prescribed session altogether because you choose to ride with others that had a different agenda (and thus you were obliged to follow).  When you do decide to “never mind” your training, no need to apologize to the coach. It is not them that miss out, it’s you. 

Remember this: The best training partners are the ones that support your goals and give you the freedom to get your work done even within a social dynamic.  Great training partners are few and far between.  If you take your goals seriously, also take time to screen those you might be spending long hours with on a bike. Best be on the same page about who is hammering and who is not. 

In closing, have a watch of a video posted from the 1970’s on David Gerth’s (Brite Coach & owner of Continental Repairs) blog.  It’s fair to say that bikes, gear, apparel and video capabilities have come along way. Athleticism was at an all time high!

http://continentalrepairs.com/?p=493