Life

Life, Triathlon

Slow and Steady Does Not Win the Race

Or does it?  I never really thought that story made sense.  Yes, in the end, the tortoise wins the race against the hare, but honestly that was the hare’s fault.  The hare took a freaking nap!  Let’s be honest here, if the hare hadn’t been a cocky jerk who was so dismissive of his competition that he literally slept through most of the event, he would have won.  Can anyone argue otherwise?  Not really.  I mean, if I go to a 5k and run slowly and steadily, will I win or even get on the podium? No.  So how in the heck can slow and steady win a race?  It can’t.  Or so I thought.

We’ve been doing renovations around the house, and I decided I wanted to display my medals in a different way.  When I began to take them down, I noticed how many there were in 2017 as compared to 2018.  In 2017 I did a ton of events.  I finally did a 5k in 30 minutes and tried all kinds of new things.  I posted like crazy on Instagram and was having a blast.  I felt like that streak would never end, and yet I look at my medals and there’s a fraction of them in 2018.  I had my challenges last year, it felt like every time I turned a corner, something else came up.  I’m pretty happy with my acceptance of those things and trying to be a positive as I could be, but at the same time I did let it get to me to a certain extent.  Part of me was looking forward to starting over in things like running, but that part of me was a little assuming.  I thought that it would all come back to me in this glorious wave and I would be running 5k’s in under 30 minutes in no time.  I’d jump on the bike and well, it would be just like riding a bike… that’s another saying that doesn’t really work well for me since I feel like a wobbly fool when I haven’t ridden in a while, but I digress. 

I was given a big dose of reality when those things didn’t come to me quickly.  It was a bit disheartening and left me wondering if I even wanted to start over.  When I started, I hated running, then learned to love It, and then hated it again.  Did I really want to go through all that again?  Cycling, I was ok with in a way.  I was enjoying the mountain bike trails.  It was something totally new and a way train that wasn’t tri specific really.  Did I want to bother with all those swims that make me want to cry?  All those hours early in the morning on the trainer while everyone slept?  That’s what I was going through once I got clearance to train again.  It was an uphill battle that I wasn’t really 100% sure I wanted to fight.

I decided that since I was undecided, I would do what was scheduled on my training plan and see what happened.  I was phoning in my workouts.  Yes, I got up, and I got them done, but I was not “present” during them.  I didn’t care what my time was, how many miles I did or even wear my heart rate monitor.  I just didn’t really care other than at least doing something.  Every time, I repeated to myself that I am grateful for at the very least, the ability to do this.  I didn’t post on social medial, because quite frankly it felt like nothing worth posting.  Looking back, I wish I had posted.  I wish I posted those mornings where I ran and didn’t feel any better than I had when I rolled out of bed.  I wish I had posted that I had a bike ride that sucked.  That was my reality and I don’t think we see enough of that on social media.  All I see is people doing epic stuff, beating yesterday, and all the other popular hashtags out there. 

Then something happened.

Throughout all of my time off for surgery, broken foot and just not “feeling it,” my coach has been understanding.  He told me to ease back into it and he was sure it would come again.  He scheduled my training accordingly.  In November, just after our vacation, I checked Training Peaks to see what next week’s schedule was.  I kind of chuckled.  Darin asked what happened and I said “oh, coach loaded someone else’s plan into my calendar by mistake.”  I texted my coach and the “conversation” went something like this… Me: Hey Coach, I think you loaded the wrong plan in my calendar next week. Coach: What makes you say that? Me: Well, it’s a lot more than I have been doing, no days off and really big swims. Coach: Yeah…. and those swims are not that big. Me: <after a long pause wondering if he was serious> Ok, I will give it a try…

I was kind of in shock.  Doesn’t he realize that I have been struggling?  Doesn’t he see that I am barely making it now?  I make comments in every workout about how I felt, “zombie” and “phoned in” were used quite often.  I soon realized exactly what he was up to.  I could not phone it in on some of these.  He was pushing me, and I needed it.  He had something on the calendar for me every single day.  Some could be as small as a 15 minute run.  A 15 minute run seemed like a waste looking at it on the computer, but the more I got outside and ran, the more the habit took.  I had gone consistently for 20+ days straight before I got sick on Christmas even and took two days off of training.  Those two days sucked.  Not just because I was sick, but I actually missed training!  I wasn’t completely well after those two days, but I wanted to run, so I did.  Could it be?  Am I falling in love with this again?  The answer was yes, and so far it’s even better the second time around! 

What changed?  This time, I had no expectations, and therefore couldn’t be disappointed.  I couldn’t beat myself up over the data because I didn’t even bother looking at it.  All I wanted to see was green on my calendar.  All I wanted, was to complete the workout, regardless of the outcome.  Little by little, I started progressing.  Don’t mistake not having expectations for not having goals.  I want to get back to doing my 5k in under 30.  I want to successfully do a swim in a triathlon.  I want to go fast on the bike without feeling terrified.  I want to keep eating healthier.  I want to be stronger.  I want to be fit and fast like the hare, but not have the expectation that I will win just because of that and take it for granted ever again.  The difference is, I’m focusing on doing the steps to get to the goal, rather than the goal itself.  I don’t care, in the best way!  I hope I can hold onto that.  If I do, if I make these small incremental changes and I am successful, then slow and steady will have won this race in the end.

Life

Am I ABLE?

I’ve been working on this particular post for a while now, but felt like I needed to get that weighty one off of my chest first. (See what I did there?  Because I wrote about being heavier?…)  Anyway, I wanted to share something of a mantra that I have been using for a while now.  I already had two mantra type sayings that absolutely love, but I find that they have their use in different situations.  My absolute favorite, of course, is “SoPossible.”  I’ve explained where that came from in my about page, and I love using it when I am doubting myself in a particularly hard moment.  Could be that last mile of a race, or during that first mile of the swim.  Amor Fati is something I have been trying hard to achieve.  It means, love of fate.  It’s not about acceptance, but really loving what has happened no matter what.  The concept is fabulous, but in practice very hard to do.  I came up with my own stepping stone to my Amore Fati goal.  I ask myself if I am ABLE.  Not physically able, but able being an acronym.  It stands for Accept, Balance, Love and Evolve.

Accept

I first ask myself if I am accepting the things I cannot control.  If I am fighting and putting energy into something I cannot control, that is a waste of valuable resources.  Too often in the past, I have found myself reacting to something I cannot control in a way that does nothing to remedy it, since again I cannot control it, but only proves to make me more unhappy.  How many times do we shout out and wave our hands at the person that cut us off in traffic?  What good does that do?  Most of the time, that driver isn’t phased at all.  They don’t see our arms waving like mad, and they certainly don’t hear us.  Maybe they don’t even realize they cut you off in the first place.  We cannot control the diagnosis of certain illnesses, or the outcome of the fate of the Avengers in Infinity Wars! (Let us take a moment of silence for Spiderman, please.)  When we identify and accept the things we cannot control, we can move on to better things.

Balance

Sometimes, accepting your fate can easily go too far the other direction and become a crutch.  You have to find that balance between what you cannot control and what you can.  If you plan to go out for a  walk or run and you get to the door and it’s raining.  You can accept that you can’t control the weather and maybe can’t go out for that run (you can, it’s actually fun).  You can then tell yourself, it just wasn’t meant to be for me.  Guess I will have to start tomorrow, fate just doesn’t want me to be fit.  That’s BS!  That’s taking accepting fate and making it your excuse.  Like I said, you can run in the rain, but even if you don’t, you can do bodyweight exercises.  You can have a dance party like nobody’s watching and burn a couple hundred calories (I’ve done it, it’s awesome!).  The point is, that bad stuff can happen, things won’t go according to plan.  We can’t control it, but we can choose not to just sulk and blame fate for everything that follows.  I try to remind myself of this in my reactions to things, in my outlook.  We have more choices than we sometimes realize.

Love

Accepting your fate can become easy if you work at it.  Loving it is a bit more challenging.  I will literally list to myself ways to love whatever fate has brought me and eventually I realize that it’s possible.  At the very least, I can find something I learned in an experience and be grateful and love that part of it.  When you take a moment and try to love something that happened to you, especially some bad, it really brings an inner peace I cannot describe.  It makes you think about how much more there is to life.  It brings clarity to the fact that most bad things that happen to us, could have been so much worse.  People say that god or fate ,only give you that which you can handle.  I believe that to be true.   You can handle it, but if you can learn to love it, man,  that brings you to a whole new level!

Evolve

For me, and in this little mantra of mine, evolve means to get just a little bit better as a result of whatever is going on.  That could be as simple as learning something from the experience, or making a change that makes me a better person as a result of something that happened.  It could be the fact that I did the first three parts of this mantra very well in a given situation!  Having this last part of the mantra kind of closes the loop for me.  If I can accept the things I cannot control… If I can balance that acknowledgement of what is out of my control and take control of what I can… If I can truly find a way to love my situation, my life and even more importantly, myself…. And be cognizant enough to learn from every one of those experiences…. How can I not have evolved?  As a person, as a fellow human being, as a friend, the list is endless.

I have been using this little acronym for quite a few months now.  I use it in so many situations and have found that it is always applicable.  At first I felt a little silly thinking about sharing it.  I am no motivation speaker after all, but it has helped me so much that I just wanted to share it.  I would encourage you to give it a try the next time you feel your blood pressure going up as a reaction to something, or you feel down about something.  It works wonders for me and I hope it does the same for someone else.  Remember, we are all ABLE!