How

"If you have it, you don't need it...if you need it, you don't have it...if you have it, you need more it...if you have more of it, you don't need less of it...you need it, to get it...and you certainly need it to get more of it...but if you don't already have any of it to begin with, you can't get any of it to get started which means you really have no idea how to get it in the first place...do you? You can share it, sure, you can even stockpile it if you like....but you can't fake it...wanting it, needing it, wishing for it...the point is if you've never had any of it...people just seem to know..." Old Spice and commentary. 

What is it?

Money? Happiness? Enlightenment?

No x 3. The IT in question is experience. An element of success that you simply cannot do without. Consider the role that experience plays in creating confidence. Knowing that a task, effort, drill, time, distance, speed can be reached as a result of your personal empirical demonstration, makes it possible to repeat. You know how it's done. You know the effort level necessary to achieve and you understand what it feels like. 

There is some very good news following. We can practice this. We can practice success. We can rehearse the requisite skills necessary to achieve. We can visualize ourselves as winners, champions even. Every time we engage with the positive, the affirmative the power of yes, we enhance our winning potential. We take a step closer. 

Remember the trite old saying that it takes money to make money? Same deal here, it takes energy to move and energy squared to move fast. And once you have that sexy sensation of speed and power, you never want to let it go. So we practice the big picture, the holistic, the all-connected mash-up of mind, muscle and machine to add a feather or two to our experience caps. 

I want to get to the crux of the race in a hurry, even an Ironman. I want to start my management of movement as soon as possible in order to accommodate the flow. If I have a knapsack full of understanding about the suffering threshold necessary to execute, my chances, and choices will reflect that knowledge. I am accustomed to this level of output, no need to panic. Measure and manage, breathe and relax, keep it steady and strong. As longs it takes. I have done it before, this is not a virginal attempt. That is what practice, drills, sessions, workouts and progressive overloading is for. To be ready for this.

Experienced. Having been here before. Knowing. Understanding. Wise. 

Every time we step into our dojo we bow to the challenge in respect of the sacred journey. Upon completion of every race we do the same - turning to thank the course, the hills, the distance and our fellow competitors for the opportunity to reveal ourselves to us, to unveil the truth. Experience is IT.

And if you have it…you don't need it. And you can't fake it Paleface. 

Powerful Asskickery

Where do I go when in need of motivation?

I seek change. I explore. I dig. I mix it up and experiment with new synergies. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I find that someone has already been there and done them before me. And that is quite alright because the folks that have been there before me are my kind of people, risk takers, adventurers, artists, nomads, gypsies, renegades, rebels and rouges. My motivation is change. Something different. As far from the status quo as I can get. So far outside the box that it vanishes from view. No more cardboard walls to enclose my freedom.

There is no more powerful an emotion than wondering what is going to happen next. In the box, you know, it's the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that. It is, in this context, safe. At least controlled to the point of a false notion of security. Nothing is safe and security is a marketing illusion invented to sell you insurance. You are, and will always be, as safe and secure as your awareness allows. The very nano-second that your awareness begins to wander, you are a walking time bomb. A distracted and disgruntled suicide bomber looking subliminally to take somebody out with you. 

You want motivation? With every ounce of your focus do what must be done, despite the obstacles, hassles, issues, hardships or roadblocks. Seek better. Do something right now to push your highest agenda. Make it hard. Make it ridiculous. But make it happen.

And stay in the moment until it is done. Own your time. Take ownership of your space. Do the absolute best you can with what you have to work with. Consider alternatives, isolate possibilities, engage, flow. This is a dance. There is music, movement and grace in work, the mundane, just as much as there is in running, riding or using the pull buoy. 

Challenge yourself. Do something stupid just so you can reflect after dinner on the accomplishment. We rode three hard indoor hours yesterday at an insane level of intensity, wattage and heart rate. It fucking hurt. As high as I consider my personal tolerance for pain to be, this session was un-chartable. Afterwards, as I rammed as much protein as was available in a twenty mile radius, a strange and familiar sensation began to emerge. My legs were still pinging with spasms, quivering like jello, but as the recovery began to segue to repair and I could actually feel new mitochondria being sworn in, the afterglow of solid effort began to warm my soul like a fire in winter. I was happy, satisfied.  The effort was a keister-kicker. We both survived, stronger in many ways from the drill. 

If it is motivation you seek, try change. Dial it up. Get out of the box and out of the saddle. Do mind-numbingly hard or butt-bustingly long. Wonder what is going to happen next. 

Today, even after another Monday morning hour session of intervals, I feel great. My motivation? Renegade change. Digging up some hard. The rogue challenge. I owe it to the absolute asskicking power of change.  

The Primary Task

"The situation facilitates concentration, the primary task is the only thing happening. so there is nothing else to prevent you from immersing yourself in it. This condition is manifest to some degree in virtually every running race or challenging workout. Seldom are we distracted from out efforts to concentrate on running by things like trying to solve math problems or wondering how we look to the others running around us. Less obvious distractions, however, such as performance relate fears and doubts, are common spoilers of concentration, hence flow, during running."

Matt Fitzgerald, Brain Training for Runners, page 161.

Matt nails this one with the big hammer. This is a crucial point. One might even call it pivotal (an adjective I used TWICE this morning to illustrate). The zone is where everything comes together, your training, your motivation, your heart rate, your octane rating, your focus and your cause. It is a magical blend of mind, body and spirit. You are in the flow and it's GOOD TO GO. 

This doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't happen every time you head outside for a run or ride. It does not accompany every workout. Most often, matter of factly, we struggle with the load, happy to simply get through. There is no flow, not a lot of go and very little synergistic harmony. 

As far as why this is, I wish I had the answer, but I can only guess. And here is my take:

We lose focus fast. We get bored with the routine and our heads start their diabolical and destructive game of convincing us that it would be in our best interest to cease the current activity, or at the very least back off the throttle to a more manageable level. And POOF, the flow is gone, the magic fades and what started out as a quality session downshifts with double-clutch deterioration into survival mode. You are walking or watching your effort provide barely enough power to sustain the vitals. Your heart beats and your lungs bleat, but you move nowhere fast. In the realms of time and space, you are lost. 

All because you have failed to train the most important component, your brain. When the going got tough, you got going (home). You went scurrying for the cover, protection and safety of the understood commodity of normal. Back in the box. Whew, that was close. 

Every session, every ride, every run we have a unique opportunity to challenge ourselves to this duel. To take one more step, to keep the output high one more minute, to maintain our focus one more mile. To practice the flow. Feel the power of the triad. Keep it here. Live in the now. Fully. Completely. Totally. 

The Olympics are just around the corner. The Tour de France prologue is today. There will be many graphic examples of this practice in the weeks to come. Please pay attention to how the best in the world address this function. We can learn from them. They are Pros at this. It is the singular skill separating the Pros from the rest of us. 

The ability to maintain focus. No matter what. A primary task.

Pic: Tim O'Donnell of The US Naval Academy, keeps his focus during the last mile of 140.6 last week in CdA. 

More fanfare

Can you hear the refrain of ABC's dramatic trumpet opening fanfare for the Olympic Games? Da da, da da da duh-da. Can you recall a Jim MaKay or Al Michaels commentary?  Does the thought of watching the absolute best in the world compete every four years get your motor runnin? Have you ever wondered how you would matchup with a gold medalist? 

Now is your chance. The games are about to begin. On August 1, in London the top time trialists on this planet will compete on a 44km course to decide who has the most efficient combination of power, speed, endurance, aerodynamics and mental dexterity. It will be exciting. And so will this:

We have secured the necessary components to do a virtual time trial in the infamous House of Mirth at the Bainbridge Athletic Club. We have created the course from actual GPS data captured live on the streets of London. We have enough course video to create a challenging representation of the actual event. We have the technology to put YOU in the middle of all this drama. Here is the format:

We'll seed four person teams using our most recent FTP data. Teams will consist of two males and two females. We will create a seeding committee to (best) ensure the competitive fairness of the process. Once teams are established, each team will have one practice stage, to view the course profile, see the video and practice riding with the CompuTrainer drafting feature enabled. Just like a team TT! After the practice run, you're live, each team with a single shot at best average team time. Pretty simple from there, the squad with the fastest average team time gets the gold. 

There will be prizes and awards and of course the official viewing of the live event from London on the very same course on August 1st. 

You don't want to miss this one folks. It has gold written all over it. 

But we need to act fast to get all the heats in by August, so PLEASE respond to the invite so we can establish the committee and align the teams. There is no cost to participate. We do, however, strictly adhere to the CT MR @ BAC code of racing ethics:

SHOW UP

RACE HARD

HAVE FUN

Please respond today. If you are interested in a spot on the seeding committee please let me know asap.  Da da da da da duh-da.

More fanfare. 

More Dots

I hypothesize that cyclists with this degree of training increase the proportion of their power that comes from fatty acids from body and food fats. In the normal person who exercises seldom, fatty acids largely fuel the constant power load of normal activity, whereas glucose largely fuels the extra power required for unusual activity. (There are exceptions. Glucose is the only fuel for the brain and the heart, which operate all the time.) I hypothesize that if the body can be convinced that damn hard riding is normal activity, then it will adjust to a higher average rate of fatty acid consumption, thus freeing glucose for an even higher level of physical activity. Again, body fat is an emergency reserve that should not be touched until an emergency (such as famine) occurs, so the body is loath to burn body fat unless conditions are critical. John Forester.

There is no such thing as reality. There is only ‘your’ version of it which is essentially your perception. Remember that what you believe to be true is only as true as your worldly experience and it doesn’t go any further than that. Even many scientific theories are just that; they are theories! It doesn’t make them so. Unlimited Choice. Org

Aight, fasten z chin strap, mates, we're gonna hoist anchor once again to do the dash of dots. Connect some seemingly random abstract ideas into something of value, defined as something we can, you know, use. Or, as they say in among the ranks of the racing elite, put it into play. Here are the dots:

D1: What we know is most likely wrong.

D2: Perception is reality. 

Let's frame the experiment in the context of your training (and racing), because that can have a measurable result, as in your finish times. And, to be fair, for those of you that don't race (Lord only knows why) we can measure in other areas such as percent of body fat, cholerestrol levels, and my favorite subjective acronym QOL, your quality of life. So here, today, we find ourselves in the midst of a plan, we have launched the offensive, strategy and tactics designed to accomplish the objective. We are on the road. We understand the importance of consistent training, rest and recovery, stress management and optimal fueling. We are disciplined and daring. There is excitement, drama, paradox and humor along the way. We feel the tug of life's accompaniment when the winds blow and the vultures show. All systems are go. 

One would naturally think that this is all well and good. And it is. BUT, at a certain point in this personal melodrama, you need to make yet another strategic tweak, BECAUSE WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING, WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING AND WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN FEELING needs to change. You need to dial it up sweetcakes. What you thought was hard, long, fast, challenging, demanding was just phase I. What you thought about what you are was wrong. Sorry. You can now (and only now) shift into the high gear of your soul (and run like an antelope outta control*). As John Forester notes above, when this dot on the timeline is marked, you can convince yourself that an extremely high degree of efficient power output is normal activity. And the neuromuscular adaptation process ratchets up another notch. The only thing holding you back has been time (to allow the process) and attitude (your awareness of the process). 

Which links us to D2. Is the reality of your current physical capability real? Or, are you limited by the perception of your reality? I am constantly amazed at how we 'govern' ourselves and fail to attain results due to this. Don't hold back. Go for it. Give it up. Sell the farm. Have no fear. What have you got to lose? I (nor I trust your friends and family) will not disown you because you had the courage to walk (or run) down that path and fail. THAT is the victory. THAT is the reward. I will say it again, IF you have done everything right in preparation (the process we call the road) all you can do is go out and play the game. Your perception will become your NEW reality. Experience will take you higher. You must embrace this paradox. Your very QOL depends upon it.

You are right when you're wrong.

* 

CDA2012 Video

Every time I work an Ironman I walk away inspired. Over the course of 140.6 miles there are countless opportunities to witness many of the traits that separate the bland from the brilliant, the average from the outstanding and the meaningless from the meaningful. My faith in humanity is usually restored by T2. By the finish all my petty problems, fears and anxieties dissipate under the awesome power of the success, courage, will and achievement of others. Sometimes I wonder how it felt to be a war correspondent in one of the WWs. How do you put these emotions, uniquely personal, into a string of words? Today, THIS is life and death. There is great meaning here, every time I watch, film or participate, I must redefine my definition of success and failure. Surely they are the same. The same road. 140.6 miles. There will be pain. There will be joy. There is suffering and there is an endorphin buzz that mirrors the purest love. Highs and lows. Heavens and Hells. All of these available to the brave, to the starters as they enter the gray water, as they find a cadence-power groove on the highway and as they slug out a marathon in the afternoon sun and heat, and to us, who watch. 

I find all this fascinating. Why we do what we do. How we do it. Art and science. The dance. 

Here is my four minute piece on Sunday's 10th annual running of Ironman Coeur d' Alene. Congratulations to champions Victor Zyemtsev and Meredith Kessler. Congratulations to all the finishers. Thank you once again for being such an inspiration. 

Click on the title CDA2012 to watch in Full HD on the RCVman YouTube site. 

CDAIII

My return was 0-dark thirty hours form the whirlwind CDA trip. You will recall that this one started towards Montreal but was diverted due to, ahem, shall we say, 'political technicalities'. There will be more (probably MUCH more) on this in the next few weeks. You know I love Warren Zevon, so maybe Send Lawyers, Guns & Money is the applicable inclusion to the post soundtrack. 

But today we celebrate the 10th anniversary of IM Coeur d' Alene. I have some history there, having completed the inaugural event waaaaay back in 2002 and subsequently filming all three courses. Yesterday marked the initial running of the third course (CDAIII)  and despite the usual suspects (wing and rain) it played well. Gone is the Centennial Trail, Dogtrack and I-90 crossing of the first course, as well as Hayden Lake and the rural country feel of the second. CDAIII puts you on the freeway (95) and says see-ya!!!! To be fair, the new course maintains the marquee out 'n back along Lake Dr and the infamous turnaround at Higginspoint cul de sac as well as two high-speed-go-fast with your race day face on jaunts through downtown. The new section has its share of intrigue with a series of 2-5% long-rollers and a "no-passing" section that can bottleneck and frustrate. 

I would like to pass along a couple of special thanks, If I might. 

To Jessica at Ironman for her 'above and beyond' work on our behalf. Remember she didn't even know we we coming until Friday. 

To my Honda pilot Ken for a superb three hours of safe and successful navigation of the challenging course. And for beating cancer.

To RD Mac Casavar for being the first race director in my twenty years of working IMs to get the pecking order nailed. The volunteers, security and staff WORK IN HARMONY with the media. We are not the enemy. We do this together. 

Thanks Mac, Jessica and Ken, you were terrific. 

I am processing the video and, again, despite some raindrops, it looks great. Way back in 2008 we released our first CompuTrainer Real Course Video, Ironman Coeur d' Alene. In the subsequent  four years it has sold thousands of copies and prepared hundreds of thousands of triathletes for the demands of the North Idaho 112. You know I love BTO, so this simply gives me anther chance to spin the lyric: CDAIII:

You ain't seen nothing yet!

A few pix from the day: A choppy swim, cold bike and hot run. Welcome to CDA.