Get Better by Facing Your Fear Daily

Every day, you should decide what you fear most and take at least one step towards it.  The picture above is from when three friends and I did the Ragnar Relay, which actually requires a team of twelve.  Ragnar is a 200 mile non-stop relay run, and doing it with four people seemed like suicide.  To get it done, I became the best runner that I had ever become in my life and the guy in the background got into amazing shape after years of desk jockeying like most of us.  Attacking our fears made us the best we could be.

I was running this morning and thought, "What's my biggest fear right now?"  You should ask this daily because what you fear most is usually what you want to do most.  It wouldn't be a fear unless you are thinking about it constantly, and you're thinking about it because you want to do it.  Do it, and the sense of accomplishment will transform the rest of your day.  My biggest fear?  To run along the freeway in the dark.  Why was it a fear?  Because deep down, I wanted to break out of the boredom of running the same boring loop around my neighborhood again and again.  I needed adventure.

Happiness is the elimination of boredom.

I had a choice.  I could turn right and continue the loop or I could go straight and head out onto the highway.  

I went straight.

There's a part of the Ragnar relay where we had only half a lane coned off for safety and ran straight into oncoming traffic on a highway in the middle of the night.  Loaded up with Red Bull and Tylenol, that was probably the most awesome thing I've ever done.  And once you do something and learn that the risk is actually much less than you thought, it's not that risky after all.  

Running down the side of the highway near my house is actually pretty safe, with a huge shoulder and rumple strip to warn of cars drifting.  I could always escape danger by a good margin by listening and then getting off the road if needed.  This morning, I never even needed to.  My fear was completely unfounded.

Think about what you are afraid of most and take a step towards it.  You might be surprised at what you find.

Play Mario Kart on Your Bike

Idle hands are the Devil's playground, and it looks like the bikers in Portland have a lot of time to kill.  Mario Kart symbology appeared overnight on a stretch of bike lane, turning a daily dance with traffic into a video game.

Everyone starts assuming that the city will scrub the pavement of fun because, well, that's what bureaucracy is all about.  Actually, the first step of bureaucracy is to make the word "bureaucracy" so hard to spell, people give up fighting it before they really start.

The real gem is 27 seconds into the video, where a Too Awesome to be a Commuter Cyclist (or T.A.C.C.) shuns the bike lane entirely while dressed in full racing kit, undoubtedly using his ride to his shift at the Apple store as a TDF stage simulator.

Earn More Time with Creative Procrastination

Many of us are highly skilled procrastinators. We trick ourselves into putting off work by thinking that we really need to read that magazine again or spend more time "Twittering it up all over the place". Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. The sad thing is, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. You wasted another hour while the real work still needs to be done and you didn't gain anything except reinforcing a bad habit.

As endurance athletes, we need all the spare time we can get.  So, if you're a great procrastinator, here's a cool trick:  Procrastinate against the things that waste time.

Huh?  How does this work?  Is quite easy, actually.  First, let's acknowledge that you are indeed smarter than some "trick".  But then, realize that sometimes we can use the smarter parts of our brains to "trick" the dumber parts (the parts more on autopilot) to do what we need.  Example - You don't want to forget your ID on your next bike ride, so you put it on the seat of your bike the night before so you can't leave without it.  Many people play these kinds of tricks on themselves all the time.  I put stuff by my front door so I can't leave without it the next day, sometimes directly in the path of the door so I physically can't open the door without picking it up to take it with me.

If you change your view on things a little, it's very easy to see that getting Project A done now gives you more time to with Playtime B.  I was talking with a friend just last night and he calculated that biking to work actually gave him more time to be with his family even though it did take a little longer than driving his car.  It counted as workout time, time he no longer needed to do on weekends or in the evenings.  Smart view!

Ok, so now that we understand that it is a time-saver to get the important things done first, now what?  The final step is to swap that sweet feeling of putting things off from one type of work to another.  It's important to remember that all work is work, you body and mind doesn't really know the difference.  That's why when you do something that you were putting off, you wonder why you were putting it off in the first place because it wasn't all that hard anyway.

Here's how you do it:  When you are choosing between two tasks and one is surfing the internet and the other is writing that TPS report for the boss, literally say out loud, "I'm gonna put that surfing off 'til later." in your best Matthew McConaughey procrastinator voice.  It works and it starts building a really cool habit of procrastinating against stuff that is eating up your training and with-family time.

In the end, we are our habits.

Give it a try and enjoy!

Overkill. Is It Ruining Your Training?

Endurance athletes don't have a lot of spare time.  We accidentally eat up free moments by overkilling in many areas. There is efficiency and elegance in simplicity, and it can take you much farther in training than you think.  

To illustrate the point, there's an old saying for how women should dress for a party - "Put on only the jewelry you need. Now, remove one item."  It makes you look and feel like you have your act together.  In triathlon, this equals speed and success.

So let's get started.  Here's a quick list of the usual suspects in triathlon overkill.

• Too much gear.  People are happiest when they only have to choose between about three items.  More than that creates stress and indecision.  When you've got six road bikes, you spend a lot of time picking out the one to ride and then wondering if you made the right decision.  That stress weighs on you and slows you down.
• Dieting.  All that needs to be said is that most triathletes are told to eat more (of the right foods) to get their workouts done with the right vigor.  Overkilling the diet makes you weak.
• Too much junk on long rides, runs and races.  First, go find a pro or elite racer and scope out what they take with them.  It's surprisingly little.  No socks, no bandanas, no handheld GPS's, no excessive blinky lights, no gloves in races, or turning themselves or their bikes into water trucks.  To be fast, imitate the fast people.
• Eating energy food when you're not working out.  Unless you're out of base training mode and in the middle of an intense workout, you shouldn't be eating "energy" food.  If you are eating a powerbar, a gel, drinking gatorade or similar and you aren't in the middle of a very intense workout or race, then you're training your body to fuel on sugar instead of fat.  Fat has twice the potential energy of sugar, so save the sugar for when you have the accelerator pegged to the floorboard and need it.  Otherwise, you're putting on weight you'll have to burn off later.
• Excessive planning.  Until it happens, it's just guessing.  All that time spent trying to pick out the perfect route and coordinating people is wasted when it rains and you have to change plans anyway.  Just go outside and... just go.
• Excessive documenting and analyzing training data.  Just like some people don't document enough, some document way too much.  Athletes often spend valuable training time recording every watt from every split when what really needs to be recorded is not much more than how hard for how long.  I have my own coaching clients record effort level, time, distance (as an effect - not a goal), and comments about how they felt.  It keeps them extremely focused and teaches that training is training; nothing can take it's place.  Extremely detailed data is saved for key workouts and races only.

Have any stories about how you eliminated overkill in your training life?  Leave them in the comments and discuss!

Podcast - ZenTri in Boulder, Colorado!

 

Brett with Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington

Join in for a listen as ZenTri hits the road and heads to the triathlon Mecca of Boulder, Co. for a week of fun!  See what it's really like in the city with the highest density of outdoor athletes anywhere.  We swim, bike, run, and eat with the world's best! 

Shownotes:

• Black bean burger with a side of cigarettes.
• At Cracker Barrel, "veggies" means ham.
• Morgan is the man!
• Wind-meals!
• Trail running around the Boulder Reservoir.
• Made Emily a promise I can't reveal yet.
• I blew out a flip flop, had to walk barefoot down a mountain.
• Interview with Kate Brown of Dailyburn.com.
• Hanging out at the Boulder Teahouse.
• Interview review with Jessi Stensland.
• Encounter with Chrissie Wellington.
• Bouldering with Emily.
• On the bike, climbing up to Ward, CO., Elevation 9,000 ft.
• Another trail run experience.
• Full on double chipmunk, across the sky.
• 142 BPM at 4.7 MPH. = STEEP!
• Fix your back pain by strengthening your abs?
• What's great about Boulder.
• Spotted the Japanese women's Olympic marathon team.
• Cresting the climb into Ward.
• Soaking feet in a cold mountain stream.
• No cell phone signal for hours causes a little fear, but is also exciting.
• Hanging out downtown with Emily on Pearl Street.
• Morning swim in an outdoor meter pool.
• In Estes Park, heading into Rocky Mountain National Park.
• Kai has a pet slicing penguin.
• Our trip ends up being more epic than we bargained for.
• Double rainbows, everywhere.

Click here to listen!