Tag Archives: elite sport

Losing Five To Ten

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Undercover

Every athlete that I’ve ever coached has thought that their life would be better if they lost five to ten pounds. This belief flows through most of my friends, my coaches, my wife and myself.

Nothing in my life, requires me to be in a state of perpetually losing weight, yet I spend 95% of my year trying to whittle myself down. In case you’re wondering, the other 5% of the year sees rapid weight gain. My personal best is gaining more than 20 pounds in the two weeks after Ironman New Zealand 2004.

Similar to my athletic goals, my desire to be unnaturally lean has caused me to make poor decisions.

Where do my irrational desires come from?

Can I moderate the influence of irrational desire in my life?

As a recovering addict can tell you – if you want to make a change then you need to take a break from the sources of your addiction. The first step in freeing myself was changing my health club.

I used to train with the fastest group of triathletes on the planet. For an athlete with ample self-confidence, it is an ideal environment to motivate oneself to do whatever it takes to win races.

As my life shifted, I noticed the group was having an adverse effect on my self-esteem and I was being a dick to people. I listened to how we spoke about each other and what we valued in ourselves. I’d get a kick out of the most-skinny triathletes in America commenting about which one of us was “too skinny.” Of course, Mr. Too Skinny would head out the next weekend and crush the field – reaffirming our collective desire to get lighter and lighter. With my pals, losing weight is always the right answer.

Here’s the lesson – the neuroses of our peers will become our goals.

We can’t create self-esteem by changing to match the requirements of others. However, we can change the people with whom we spend our time, and let behavioral psychology do the work for us.

What do you need more of?

Spend time giving to people with less.

Staying Young

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Following my Endurance Corner article last week, Alan wrote a blog with ideas about what’s required to stay young. Alan excels at capturing the psychological reality of being an athlete.

Specifically… What’s truly driving my compulsion for excessive exercise and performance?

What rang true to me was Alan’s observation about “staying young.” When I think about my fears, and choices, that desire explains a lot.

Past 40, my athletic errors have started to stand out. Some of these errors make me feel “old.”

Would it surprise you to find out that big training screws up my sex drive. I could supplement around the issue but I’ve made a choice to experience things more naturally. This is a seriously adverse side effect from athletic greatness! When I was crushing it, and living alone, it was a weird sort of blessing.

Take home point: if virility is a consideration then high training load will impair off-the-field performance.

Strength training, particularly anabolic phases where I lift heavy on my legs, boost my recovery response, and sex drive.

+++

When it comes to performance, if you’re focusing on age then you’re missing the point.

For highly active populations, aging isn’t the real concern. I have coached world-class athletes into their 70s, the key thing that screws up fitness is injury, specifically the loss of strength that results from taking a forced break. Injury is mostly caused by bike crashes.

Cycling is the most dangerous thing I do and the statistics greatly under report the injuries that cyclists sustain. I denied the reality of cycling danger because I knew that I had to maintain high cycling volume to achieve my reason for living (AKA my athletic goals).

Tip the balance in your favor by:

  • Becoming a more polite, more cautious, cycling version of your current self.
  • Protecting the capacity to run daily. Daily running is more important than great run workouts. A daily easy run, when combined with twice weekly strength work, captures everything you need from long term sport.
  • Stay strong – the difference between a soft tissue injury and orthopedic surgery is often the amount of lean body mass you have (on impact).

I’ve gone further by shifting most of my cycling volume to a full-suspension 29er (disc brakes and fat tires are safer) and avoiding most highways.

+++

I also had to face that my ambitious race goals were encouraging me to make poor decisions.

However, I can still remember when ambitious race goals were my top priority.

How to balance?

If performance matters then know that you are playing a game of attrition. To stand out, you must become crafty at managing your total stress load. Injuries, divorce and lack of motivation are, at their root, a product of excessive stress.

Every great athlete that I have worked with has been caught by the season-ending trap of:

  1. Fit
  2. Fitter
  3. Fittest
  4. Totally Blown

You must get crafty!

Specifically, change your focus from chronic load to acute load. If you can keep your life in reasonable balance, and your body ticking along then you’ll be able to “act like you’re 25 again” for 2-3 days a month with your pals. With the realities of our busy lives, that’s going to yield nearly all of the benefits and have minimal costs.

Every few years, the stars will align with your family, job and connective tissue… when that happens you’ll be able to hit-the-gas for a month and get yourself into great shape.

The best case study that I know is Molina’s race report from Ironman New Zealand.

My buddy, Scott Molina, just went 10:10 at Ironman New Zealand, on his 54th birthday. That blows my mind! I know he wrote the race report so he can remember that day for a long time.

When Scott was my age, he used to smile and tell me, “I’d rather look fast than be fast.” More and more, I understand Scott’s decisions.

At the end of my elite career, I felt sore, blown and kinda old. A few years on, I’m grateful to be feeling much better. I can’t dominate my pals but, like Molina, I can sneak in a KOM when they are distracted.

Whatever your current path, remember that it’s OK to change. The tenacity that serves us well as young athletes can cause us to make choices that hurt ourselves.

I didn’t expect to have this much fun from doing this little training.

Only One Childhood

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If I knew the changes that would be required before I had kids then I would have probably not had kids. The irony is that would have been a mistake because I didn’t know the scale of the changes that were coming, regardless.

In my life there wasn’t any real impact until my oldest was two-years old then I was faced with a decision:

  • Let my wife’s mental health suffer and risk the health of my marriage
  • Get involved

My choice, somewhat reluctantly at the time, was to get involved. At first I didn’t notice much change but it became clear that to be at my best as a parent, I had to avoid being tired. Here’s the dilemma of the parent-athlete:

  • Parenting is misery when exhausted
  • Fatigue is an essential component in the journey towards improved athletic performance

So, you’re likely to find yourself at a crossroads for a period of time. I suspect that time will last until our youngest is about five years old. Within my own family, I’m guessing that 2010 to 2017 is going to see a reduced focus on athletic performance. I have many ideas about being an athletic parent that I’ll share in an upcoming article.

At the end of my family’s preschooler phase, I’ll be faced with another choice, ramp my training back up (perhaps Monday to Friday during school hours) or put that time into an area that benefits my family directly.

When my youngest starts her formal schooling (2017) will be the same time that my oldest has the intellectual capacity to begin to absorb the lessons that I’ve picked up outside of school. My teaching style is instruction via “hanging out.”

I suspect that my children gain more from having a healthy and engaged father than a parent who chooses winning over spending time with them.

At the other end of a spectrum, a famous parent once shared that his #1 focus is being the fittest masters athlete in the world. I felt for the children in that family.

The rationalizations elite athlete-parents spin in their heads color their judgement in all aspects of their lives. For me, the likelihood of regret: for my marriage and for my kids; makes that path unappealing.

That said, I have a passion for sport and sustaining a personal passion makes me a better parent.

As a group, the actions of elites and elite AGers show that we value winning over all else. My kids learn far more easily, and deeply, from observing my choices, rather than listening to my words. Don’t let our twitter feeds convince you otherwise – look to our choices and our daily actions.

Our children only get one childhood – opportunities for personal glory will remain far beyond their school years.

Vanity And Victory

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Kids have an amazing capacity to reflect and absorb the world around them.

I can see this ability, most clearly, in how they pick up the phobias and idiosyncrasies my spouse. With regard to my own traits, I see my strengths reflecting in the kids. By the way, my wife sees the same thing – just reversed.

There is a great scene in the movie, Parenthood, where Steve Martin exclaims, “I just can’t figure out where he gets this obsessive behavior from!” I think about that quote a lot and smile at myself. I own obsession in our household.

As an elite athlete, I valued physical power, domination and winning. You can see these characteristics expressed in other fields (finance, business, perhaps the military). These values have strengths and weaknesses. For a young person, they help you get a tremendous amount of work done (good) but they can leave you blind to the feelings of others (less good). Lacking empathy isn’t always a bad thing, say if you’re combat infantry. However, when that value flows up the organization, it can lead to harassment and corruption.

Over the last two years, I saw the risk of maintaining my values of vanity and victory. I became aware of corruption and scandal throughout the lives of my peers. We always tell ourselves that we’re different but the evidence was so overwhelming that I had to admit that I was fooling myself. Elite performance is a high risk field for ethical strength.

Most athletes sort the world into fast/slow and fit/fat. This differs from business, expressed as rich/poor and beautiful/ugly.

I get resistance when I point these splits out of people (they are obvious in my own thinking). If you can’t see them then listen to other people talk about individuals with mixed characteristics. For example, fast/fat and slow/fit create confusion in athletic populations.

Back to the start of this piece – my children learn little from what I say but they learn most everything from what I do. Bringing them up in a household that prizes winning, and looking good, above all else might not be the best way to play it. They’re going to get plenty of that in the local Boulder community.

Widening the net, consider an individual that achieved the difficult task of creating a lot of wealth. If your #1 value (expressed in peer admiration) is wealth then you are setting up a conflict with your kids, who crave your admiration. If they reject you then they might be protecting their self-image from realizing that they can never be successful on the terms you prize. Look outside your family for examples, they are easy to see.

Millionaire, Champion, CEO… these are difficult to achieve – you deserve respect for the work required to achieve.

  • Achievement become identity
  • Identity becomes values
  • Values become skewed
  1. Remember that the value lies in the work, not the achievement
  2. Goodness requires neither beauty nor money
  3. Listen to how your friends speak about others
  4. Consider if you may need to adjust your friends

As always, I’m talking to myself, not you.

28-days away from elite sport

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Today is the four-week anniversary of my pause from focusing on elite sport.

For moral support, my wife’s been taking a 28-day break from Facebook . I think her break has been tougher because Facebook started an email campaign against her. I had a similar thing happen to me in 2010 and forewarned her that the spam-bots were crafty!

I’ve been Facebook free since the start of 2012 – it can be done.

My break has been 100% positive – I can’t find a single drawback to my life from pausing from professional sport.

Training – with less web usage (particularly twitter), I suddenly had time to train in the morning before my kids get up. While it was “only” one extra run per week, I felt great that entire day from the early session. It’s worth noting that 1 extra session per week, boosted 14% of my waking hours. Early training is high-return exercise.

Reading – I’ve been talking about reading at home for more than a year. I do most of my reading on airplanes and, subtly “blame” my kids for not being able to read at home. In the last month, I’ve managed to read three books at home, which is more than the previous twelve months! The books were: The Gift of Therapy; Living a Jewish Life; and Life’s Greatest Lessons. Turns out I was the issue, not my kids (who remain full of energy and a source of self-knowledge).

Patience – It could be the normal ebb and flow of parenting relationships but, as I reduce my time online, I’ve had more tolerance with my kids. Less in-bound noise seems to result in better relationships around me.

As for the outside world, Life Goes On…

My media filter isn’t complete and I heard all the major stories (and a few that haven’t hit the press yet). The difference is they filtered through gradually, rather than having to ferret them out. While I might be less informed on athletic gossip, I know enough to meet the needs of my friends, family and team. “Fresh news” is nearly always incorrect – I’m better off without it (links to my blog on improved thinking).

Turns out I was fooling myself about my need for constant input on, and criticism of, the choices of others. Not the first time.

Another debt of gratitude to my wife (links to my gratitude list).

The cost of the status quo is always hidden. I’m glad I was willing to try a change.

Scripted Racing

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Watching the USA Pro Challenge in my home state of Colorado for the last two years, I was struck at how the race unfolded like a Hollywood script. The sponsors couldn’t have wished for a more dramatic outcome to the way the final days of the race played out. In both years, we had a happy ending with Americans winning the overall.

Personally, my favorite stage was when, the big man, Jens Voigt won a high-altitude mountain stage. The Jensie won with with an escape at 12,000 feet above sea level. He dropped America’s best climbers and solo’d to victory. We loved it.

How often does scripted racing occur in cycling?

Reading Millar’s book, it seems that the practice is common in Europe and can be a source of (undeclared) cash for the riders. I’ve read accounts of payoffs in US racing, when there was a multiplier in play for stacking wins, but we hear little about the practice on home soil.

What about triathlon?

I’ve only heard of a few athletes being prepared, paid and trained to race for a leader. Even at the Olympic level, there aren’t many countries that are able to assemble a team to work for their medal hopes.

Triathlon appears to be much more of free-for-all at the competitive level.

Which makes me wonder about the plausibility of a clean athlete dominating. History makes me wary of a clean athlete’s ability to sustain undefeated streaks, or multi-year championship runs.

What happened to triathlon performances when EPO entered the Pro Peloton?

Who dominated across the modern era of my sport?

Which great triathletes decided to retire as EPO entered cycling?

These questions make me uncomfortable and, perhaps, are better left in the closet.

I remind myself that it’s not all bad news. As EPO arrived, many elite athletes left. Over time some may share their reasons why. There may be an untold story out there.

With cycling there’s the option to pay off your competition directly, or indirectly by hiring them onto your team. In triathlon, there are only a few elite athletes that assemble a team around themselves.

Elite sport has shown, repeatedly, that implausible performances are implausible.

When I was emotionally attached to my heroes, it was easier to look down the results sheets for a foreigner, who would become the focus of my ethical concerns. The best cheats are skilled at getting us focused on something other than themselves.

Ten years ago, it was to painful to consider the scale of corruption that was happening in front of my eyes.

We share a need to believe.