Something about the compression of the last four weeks has made me really scatter brained, I start a blog idea and I leave it unfinished in my notes app on my phone. Then there are just bits and pieces of thoughts left in my head to upload. So that's what I'm hoping to accomplish here, a bit of uploading. Freeing up space for my head to further decompress!
Though I absolutely dreaded everything about the last few weeks, I actually learned a lot about stress, and how it affects me physically, and mentally. As I already mentioned mentally, it left me really scatter brained, and having difficulty making easy decisions, or continuing through with simple things. I think most notably was uploading my training peaks, honestly it takes 20-30 min and for some reason it was just too much for me! Physically, my resting HR was through the roof, a lot of the time that I spend in the library, just reading, writing or procrastinating. My HR ended up being nearly 75 bpm some times! I couldn't believe that it had that great of affect on me. Workouts were tough to find motivation to finish, and fatigue found a whole new meaning. This all came along with awkward sleeping and dieting schedules so it's likely an accumulation of all of these things, but still what an effect!
I think one of the most complete thoughts that I wrote down, was about controlling the controllable. It's great how much my racing life has applied to my school life. This is what I wrote:
When I wanted to make the shift from being a decent age grouper to a top of the pack age grouper two seasons ago I did what anyone would do. I tried to control everything, even the uncontrollables. It drove me mad, I could write a book for a single race plan. Now a days my race plans are short and sweet. Find some feet in the swim, ride my watts, continually assess how I feel and adapt nutrition, and negative split the run. Basically just run on instinct, trust your experience. My goodness I wish I would have learned that earlier, maybe I wouldn't have sprouted grey hairs so early? Controlling the controllable is a HUGE part of racing, technically it's the only part of racing.
After a weekend in the library studying my life away (after my workouts for the day). I realized how well racing taught, and continues to teach this lesson, and how many people don't seem to learn it otherwise. I was studying with a girl that just couldn't seem to calm down about an upcoming test. In her defense it was a pretty important test, but the stress seemed to handicap her. Then I said: "listen, all you can control is what you study, how much you study, and your answers on the test. Don't worry about what it will be like, how hard it will be, if you have a question ASK, that's all you can do." I was surprised how helpful she thought this advice was. Which made me really thankful for my racing experience and how it's helped me accomplish other things. I am surprised how well this idea applied to this situation, pretty much seamlessly. I think it's pretty applicable to any tough goal that you strive, or stress over. Control what you can towards the goal. Over control is the problem, trying to change the weather on your wedding day isn't going to make you feel more accomplished or happy, it's just going to leave you feeling like you didn't have any role in making this wonderful day happen.
Now I say all of this like I've got it figured out, like its super easy for me to apply this. However, I always seem to forget these things when it comes to accomplishing my outside goals. Specifically, controlling what I eat. I think this applies to "control the controllables" really well because your weight fluctuates so much based on so many things, it's a complicated game to get right. I know this time of the season isn't the most optimal to be concerned about this, but I'd like to get into the habit of eating better with out thinking. The problem is to eat better you have to be thinking about what you're eating. If you think too much, stress over missing certain types of foods, cravings just crawl into your brain. I mean honestly what's the first thing you want to do when your parents said "No snacks before dinner." If you base your success on what the scale says, you're gonna have a bad time. Jesse Thomas explains this a different way, he says "aim for a B+ diet." I think that keeps us calm, and reassures us to not try and control everything, and just let things happen. Oddly enough, I think aiming for a B+ GPA would have kept me a lot more sane than I was these last four weeks!
I think when you break it down, you can apply this to almost anything. If you find yourself really striving towards a goal, and then regressing, ask yourself am I stressing about unnecessary or uncontrollable things? It's a pretty simple process that can be turned into a complex one in a hurry. Just remember what your grade school teachers, and parents always used to tell you. You really can do anything that you put your mind to, and normally before we even make goals we have a process in mind of how to accomplish them. Dissect that process into controllable and uncontrollables and do what you can, but as always have patience persistence and optimism in your plan!
I didn't want this blog to be about dieting, but I thought it was a good example that isn't necessarily thought of all the time. Since I wrote that, I came across a thought that sort of applies to this problem with training and trying to control TOO MUCH.
I recently went on a run with a good friend of mine, Alycia, who just broke her school record in the 6k this season on her school's cross country team. I've known Alycia since middle school, and we have both taken sport through rough times and GREAT times and her recollection of the record setting race, and the training that led up to it gave me a great thought about EXACTLY what it takes to be a "champion."
She mentioned how during the race, she thought about dropping the effort and coming in easy after hitting a "wall" around 4.5k, she mentioned that briefly she thought to herself "I knew if I eased up I would know exactly where the race went bad" (which reminded me of my similar thought about easing up when presented with a wall at Iowa's Best Dam Tri in September). Then she hit the 5k mark and PR'd for 5k in a 6k race, which gave her a second wind of sorts. She maintained the pace through the last kilometer and didn't even know she'd broken the record until someone from her team, the previous record holder of all people told her! It's funny, I never thought about over coming the wall in races as short as 6k. In my half iron man experiences the wall comes, but I find comfort in the fact that I have hours to over come it. To do what she did in the last 1000m, less than 4 minutes, was really inspiring.
We talked about coming home for breaks and how it toils with our consistency, battling the summer heat with morning runs before the sun has risen, trying to convince yourself that a few days off is best during winter illness, both common set backs during school breaks. Alycia described her summer training leading up to her stand out cross country season as "less than perfect." Considering this was one of the hottest summers in Iowa's history, that is easily understandable. Without much thought, training started coming around for her when the season started. With her coaches instruction she held back during through early season races, and ended up third, or fourth. Workouts kept going well, things kept falling into place, and before she knew it she found herself in a school record braking race.
She then told me about this winter break, and how she had been battling a cold, and didn't want to take consecutive days off of running because of it. It seemed to cause her a bit of stress, surely other school record holders, and other competition, weren't missing out on days of training. Sadly, this isn't something we can control, getting sick is a part of the season. What can we control? Recovering as fast as possible back to your original health.
This was oddly relevant to my current situation, or change in mindset after qualifying for Vegas 70.3 World Champs. I find myself saying frequently, "what would a World Champion do?" Sometimes, this is motivating, and keeps me working hard through times of tired body syndrome. I also think that sometimes this is a source of unnecessary, and uncontrollable stress, that isn't that advantageous to becoming a champion. What drives us to pound ourselves further into recovery debt through sickness and injury? I think a lot of the time it's what we think a champion would do. None of this was new news to me, I've had this thought many of times. Like I mentioned earlier, I've gained a lot of experience with controlling the controllable from racing, so what did Alycia's story mean to me?
I've known Alycia my entire athletic life, she's seen early success and has since been patiently working her ass off through injury, breaking mental barriers, and finally battled her way back to the front of the pack. What was really humbling, satisfying, comforting, motivating (insert adjective here), was that since I'd known her for such a long time, I know that she's just like everyone else, just like me, just like most of the people that are probably reading this. I know she's hoped and dreamed of becoming "that" kind of athlete for so long and the fact that she's made a huge jump towards that, after all this time, is what makes her story special to me.
So often we see athletes as super heros, role models, people that you just can't fathom being normal "they must have something most people don't". Bearing in mind that these people devote the majority of their time busting their asses, sacrificing short term pleasures for long term success, they are just like you or me. Don't let the media that surrounds professional athletes fool you with exaggerations of their journey to success. Sure sometimes there are miraculous stories of success, but often they are the product of everyday normal people you grew up watching bust their ass, like Alycia.
I hope you see the sentiment I'm trying to express, ordinary people do extraordinary things by other's standards and become super hero's and celebrities. Really it's just a product of a quiet commitment, whether it's during the early morning heat, or late night chill, that's where regular people are made into champions. What EXACTLY does it take? What does a normal person do to become a World Champion? Ask 50 different world champion coaches, and athletes and you'll either get: A) 10,000 different answers or B) Not a single answer. It takes YOU being your own version of a champion, not doing what previous world champions did, or what previous world record holders did, your path to success is unique to you. Be open with your expectations and find it, don't worry if it's not miraculous or silver screen ready.
A quote from my coach'es blog -Success is a quiet set of daily tasks - Owen Cook.
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