ironguides

I don’t want to feel limited in my training or racing by a number. I know my body.
- Chrissie Wellington

How often have you heard "live each day like it's your last?" It's a nice way to remind ourselves that life is short and that we often get caught up focused on or worrying about issues that on closer examination have very little to do with the Big Picture. Living each day "like it's your last" helps us focus on what's important and gives us renewed energy and vigour to align ourselves with our deepest values and greatest priorities.

Taking part in triathlon gets at our deeper desires and purpose in living. Part of the reason we train and participate in races is because we want to remember what it's like to exist fully "in the moment" and to live in harmony with this bigger view on life. In terms of training for triathlon, living in harmony doesn't necessarily mean playing it safe, but means letting go of the need to control and the habit to monitor and define.

In training, being too controlled, too analytical and too numbers-oriented can mean we lose touch with a deeper intuition that can guide us to training "just right" on any given day. Following a generic training regime such as zone-based heart rate training can contribute to teaching ourselves to no longer live or train "in the moment." Instead of keying into what our bodies are telling us, we start becoming fixated on a few numbers that tell us if we are training "correctly" -- often with no correlation to what is going on elsewhere in our lives.

When a new athlete comes to me and requests coaching, much of the initial process involves a re-education and a casting off of notions and ideas picked up on what triathlon "should be like." Many athletes today forget that sport evolved out of a desire to explore and test limits -- indeed, to leave behind "playing it safe" and set out for adventure. At the same time, everyone needs guidelines to ensure that they don't sabotage their training and risk not realizing their dreams.

I like to remind my athletes that true "success" means realizing a dream, and a dream by its very nature should be something we have a strong risk of not achieving! Have you ever heard of a "safe" dream? Would you find a dream that can be "safely" realized to be a credible, in-the-flesh dream - or just someone's minor ambition? Of course not - if you're going to dream it's got to mean you are taking the risk that your dream is big enough that you may not achieve it! Thats a gutsy, courageous dream to have.

When your dream is big -- such as taking on your first Ironman, for example -- you're going to be subject to the normal human tendency to worry! Nothing wrong with that -- a little worry and fear keeps us on our toes. But too much anxiety and you are going to lose focus on what you are doing, risking going astray on your journey. A fixation on numbers and data in your training can increase anxiety by having us believe that we are failing to achieve a benchmark. It can also keep us from "living in the moment" and distract us from fully engaging in the training process.

Like "painting by numbers", training by the numbers can lead to stale, hollow and unfulfilling creations. It looks kind of pretty in a bland, generic way, but somehow the soul, the very essence of the thing is missing. The knowledge that we can sustain a certain workload without actually knowing if we've reached our limit in training or racing frames our accomplishment in a big fat question mark! Plodding by rote through a generic training program fails to stimulate the very essence of why we participate, compete, strive to excel -- because we want to evolve beyond ourselves!

When training by The Method, athletes are encouraged to train by feel: Easy, moderate, hard are about as complex as it gets. A myriad of factors determine how the body feels and reacts on any given day, and what it tells you is a better sign of how to train on any day than anything a heart rate monitor will ever tell you.

If you're tired, head out the door anyway -- go "test drive" the body! Often you can flush out the fatigue and get a great training session in on a day you feel not so good. If you continue to feel like hell, pack it in and trust what your body is telling you.

Don't worry too much about the past training -- what you did yesterday matters much more than weeks ago. How your  body feels NOW and what it's capable of NOW determines what you can accomplish. If your training calls for a hard session and you've been training hard for weeks and you still feel great - go for it! Put out that honest effort, see what happens! That's where improvement lies. By training like there's no tomorrow you don't leave your cards on the table and you maximize your training opportunities -- this is the road to achieving your triathlon dreams.

And at the same time, to truly tune into yourself, to gauge your body and your efforts with new eyes and fresh understanding, remember that you need to let go of preconceptions and conditioned notions of what you think triathlon training should be. So train like it's your first day, too! Be curious - there's nothing like curiousity to still anxiety. When you're curious you open yourself up to all the possibilities in front of you without preconception, judgment or expectation. If you're curious about your training, you'll push that extra little bit to find those limits, to chase down that dream, to make a qualifying slot for Kona reality!

Next time you find yourself worrying about training and your next race - let go! Train like there's no tomorrow, train like it's your first day -- keep at this and you'll make the most out of every workout in front of you. After all, if you've given all you've set aside to give, what else is there?