yesterday this arrived on cue in my Google Reader. Gordo nailed it so hard that I actually sat up and couldn’t function for about 10 min after I read this.

Who Are You Emotionally?
Where do you go to when you are under stress?
Physically, what does it take for you to feel stress?
What’s your definition of ‘fun’?
In a group, what is your single greatest fear?

Each of us will have slightly different answers to those questions but there are certain themes that run through the human experience. These themes can help, or hinder, performance.

I have done a lot of training camps in my time. Camps are fascinating experiments in social psychology. If I want to know who you really are, then getting you really tired and watching… the answers to the questions above become apparent.

Do you default to anger or openness?

At Epic Camp, we have a saying… when all else fails try anger. It’s a powerful emotion but you don’t want to get there too soon! We don’t make very good decisions when we are angry.

Now some races don’t require much in the way of decision making. Part of what makes me a good ultradistance athlete (and an effective “trainer”) is that I have a strong psychological governor against high intensity exercise. Call it a fear of blowing up. This fear actually served me VERY well over the years. Each time I blew, I would learn the lesson. As a result, I have always placed very consistently relative to my fitness. You could say that I’ve maximized my expected value from my racing.

My pals that are good at winning — they note two things:
#1 – you need to put yourself in a position to win
#2 – you need to be willing to lose

The points above are useful if you happen to be (close to) the fittest person in the race. However, you need a lot of skill (and fitness) not to beat yourself when you apply them. When you beat yourself, learn the lessons.

Physiologically, the athletes at the sharp end of the course are closely matched. However, it’s pretty tough for the rest of us to tell who we are racing. To have our best day requires getting the most out of ourselves. How do we do that?

---

Habituation
Going at an appropriate speed for your event has a certain “feel” and these feelings change as the race progresses.

Do you know how fast you will be going?
Are you used to how that feels?

Most athletes have SEVERELY limited pace awareness and, for most of us, triathlon is a pretty slow sport! Ask any novice to describe how they expect their endurance _training_ to feel and compare than description to the description of a world class endurance athlete.

There is a GREAT video of Ironman Canada out there where they hooked a microphone up to Paula for the entire race. At 20 miles into the bike she is CRUSHING the field and chatting with the camera team. Totally comfortable. Later on she’s in a lawn chair on the marathon! Now, her tactics worked, she won the race. However, what strikes me is how easy lawn-chair-marathon-pace looks two hours into an Ironman… for one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time!

We have GPS, heart rate monitors, power meters, watches… often we have not integrated these tools into our spatial awareness. The pressure of water against our bodies; the pressure of our feet on our bike shoes; the speed that the world is passing us by — these are important queues.

What does 12-hour race effort feel like for the first two hours?
What does 2-hour race effort feel like for the first ten minutes?

When we hear “race pace” most of us default to quite a high intensity — even if you are training for a 1-hour event, “race pace” is not going to feel that difficult for the first 15 minutes, or so.

By figuring out what your likely race effort will be — you will be able to see if you are making your life more difficult. Most the athletes that I work with can improve performance by 5-10% by learning how to pace more effectively.

If performance is a goal then we need a heck of a lot of talent to make up for habituated stupidity. When we are under high levels of stress we will default to our deepest patterns.

Are you building the patterns required to achieve your performance goals?

---

Fatigue
So we need to train our brain about how our optimal paces are going to feel and we need to be emotionally coherent enough to manage those paces. With smart race simulation workouts we should have a reasonable idea with what’s feasible (or at least what’s unlikely to be feasible!). We can then use our gizmos to improve our execution.

Even when we have the right effort dialed in, we are going to have to deal with sensations of fatigue. If we are pacing any distance appropriately we are going to fatigue.

Have you ever considered the mental specificity of your training protocol and life habits?

Mentally, what habits and patterns are you training during each day?

Besides a common stamina limitation in most of the adult population, one of the reasons that I tend to steer clear of intensity driven protocols is their effect on reinforcing our mental limiters.

Think about it.

If I tell you that you’ll have to wreck yourself daily for weeks then you are likely to accept it – perhaps even embrace it with a HTFU baseball cap! You’ll get injured and maybe blame yourself for not being tough enough.

If I tell you that you’ll have to moderate your approach and serve a multi-year apprenticeship of moderate aerobic training with strength work to address your personal limiters. You’ll likely tell me that it requires a huge leap-of-faith on your part.

You might have a decent season on a wreck-yourself-protocol but are you likely to achieve your ultimate potential? Within my own team the #1 reason for underperformance, injury, and DidNotStarts is a lack of moderation in approach.

We make our own luck with the amount of stress we bring into our lives.

So coming back to fatigue…

• Does your training program train the mental skills required to cope with the fatigue associated with your goal event?
• What event duration are you most psychologically skilled at?
• Do your mental skills line up with your physical skills?
• What are you willing to change in order to improve at your chosen race distance?

The questions above are important because the majority of athletes are not physically limited on race day. Equipped with our gizmos, we can look at our late race performance and see that it was slower then we might have predicted from our training.

Self-management limiters are tough to admit — there is a fair amount of social stigma around being a head case!

If it helps then I’m just as much of a head case as anyone! I have simply gained clarity on the way I am, and trained to enhance the way I want to perform.

Being a particularly hard case, I had to ride across America to learn how to completely accept fatigue. Even then, things change, we get older and racing well is challenging. That said, I tend to get what I deserve (physically) on race day.

---

Flow
Do you think smiling female athletes are deeply enjoying the physical sensations they experience late in an Ironman race?

Racing fast requires coping with certain sensations, many of which are uncomfortable. Outwardly, the best female athletes seem to transcend the stress. I never quite pulled that off — the best that I’ve achieved is learning to accept fatigue.

To gain control over our surroundings and ourselves – I recommend that you practice acceptance of the feelings, particularly fatigue that is specific to the nature of your race.

I don’t know how it feels when YOU crack. However, I do know how it feels when I crack!

I’m good for about an hour of significant duress. If I am having a good day then I can last a bit longer. Likewise, if I am close to the end of the event/main set/interval — I can typically hang on a bit longer.

So I need to build my race strategy to reflect my current mental skills. As well, I can choose events/training strategies that gradually extend my “zone of discomfort”.

If you find yourself breaking down then you might have exceeded your capacity to tolerate discomfort. This is a BIG issue for long duration events.

It is worth remembering that life is our longest duration event!

gordo

seriously…. that just happened.

Continue Reading →

So its my birthday on Thursday. I am 30. to celebrate I am giving away a prize, but you have to do something for me.

I need you to wish me a happy birthday – on your blogs, in your facebook profiles, etc. You have to send me proof. Most creative one (or best one) wins. My decision is the final decision.

mail details to raoul [at] urban-ninja.co.za

The prize to be won is:

1. A set of shoes in your size from Puma worth R1000
2. A ltd edition Roco shirt, worth R300
3. A tub of Whaspgel 100mg green gel, worth R100 to power you through any day.
4. Phyto Organix Anti-Oxidants worth R200
5. A R200 discount voucher off any Suunto product.
6. One case of Kleinhoekkloof Sauvignon Blanc 2009 worth R270
7. One case of Jack Black Beer, worth R200
8. R100 discount voucher off Rockets Compression gear.

Call is R2500.00 worth of prizes, all in, because I love you.

Make it happen…

Continue Reading →

Maybe that was the major outcome of this party weekend. It was a large weekend, filled with anticipation and hesitation with the weather. The party was large, possibly too big for some people, and there were some casualties, but there were amazing stories which came from it.

Having had some amazing people come down for the weekend, purely to party with me, I was pleasantly suprised to see the change in some people over the last while. Good change. Settling change. Even through tough times, there are people who go through the tough times well, deal with things and don’t let them sit and burst out in a moment of ridiculousness. One of the best has been the transformation in comfort of James Cunnama. A pro athlete now, him and his girlfriend, Alexa, spent the weekend with us, and it was awesome to see how a year of real pro life, making it, has kept him just as he is, where is is solid.

He hasn’t changed at all, but there was something different, if you know what I mean. Its possibly a confidence thing. What used to be words is now written in the history books under the “results” section. Hard work does pay off, after all, it seems.

James trains harder than anyone I know. At the moment he is working on his limiting factors, which is way harder than working on your superb strengths. Its easy to get better where you are good, and stick in that zone. James is good enough to win any long distance duathlon in the world. But he wants to win in Kona, Ironman world champs.

To do that he is swimming twice a day, 50km a week. For someone who is not comfortable in the water naturally, this is the equivalent of riding 4 hours a day on a bicycle seat that hurts you from the first moment you sit on it.

Why do it?

For 4 minutes, that’s why. If he can swim 4 minutes faster over an hour, he will be where he needs to be, otherwise he might as well have the most superhuman bike on the planet, which will still probably not win him the race.

World class vs world champion are two different things totally, and the ability to go from one to the other means doing the hard yards without asking questions.

Great lesson. Great guy….

Continue Reading →

As you may or may not know, I am approaching 30 with an inevitability that scares even me at times. Mostly I am calm about it and quite looking forward to the experience of entering a new decade fresh with knowledge and with a few more wrinkles for people to take me seriously on.

But something to consider is how we approach these milestones in our lives. What is the process just before you get to the milestone, in order to maximise the stimulus from the experience of undergoing that milestone?

Nobody has ever explained it to me. I have to take this one by personal experience. On that note, its time to read my favorite poem, which you can do here to set our minds in the right frame.

Oriah talks about not caring about the worldly, instant-satisfaction, plastic society stuff. She wants to know about the real stuff. I love real stuff.

Ok… wandering minds…

As I approach a milestone in my life (a particular finishline, a moment in business before a big contract gets signed, a new emotional level of love, etc) I like to slow it down. I like to clear my mind from the clutter and really experience the moment for what it is, and all the pure emotion that goes with it.

There will be no cellphone click, buzz or twitter/fakebook/tumblr/asdlhjsgfofdfvlh update as I approach it.

The moment will be devoid of worry, of stress, of anguish. My milestones are arenas of love, laughter, success, achievement and experience. They come from knowledge and hopefully, its smarter cousin, wisdom.

Walk slowly, breathe deep and relish in the moment as you go towards your milestone. My 30th is a definite milestone, and today I had to slow myself down as there was alot on the go and I was missing out a bit on the fun element, worrying about everyone else.

Approach your milestones with a smile, they pass so quickly, you might just me missing a whole bunch of them….

Continue Reading →

Hello Everyone. I have been talking about this for a while but its in actual progress at the moment. I am busy with a redesign to make this site:

1. Faster
2. Easier to read
3. More interactive
4. More balanced

But I would like to hear what you would like to see as well, considering you are my readers. Anything in particular you would want me to change on this site, for good, and bad??

Just leave a comment on this post and I will take it to heart.

Continue Reading →

There was so much hype around the Epic route. Its like guys imagined there would be an easy day in there somewhere, that magically, a pan flat 25km stage would be announced on day 5 to make it easier. Its the Epic people….

Here is my personal take on the route, now that its been made public:

Day 1: In keeping with economic scales, this is the day that I presume the Epic bank on having 1/3 of the field bailing so that they can save on food, etc. So, as its traditionally been, its a day where they try and break you. Its no different. Its brutal. The last 12km are along a railroad, going uphill along the railroad, on a mountainbike. Nuff said.

Day 2: The Yawn before the STORM. I bet there is epic soft sand in there in the last 20km. This day will be harder than expected, because you are going to expect to be going a bit easier, because of day 3. Don’t be that stupid.

Day 3: GET ERR DONE. Imagine your car stalling in your driveway because its too steep. We are going to do that on our bikes on day 3. Basically going from Camps Bay to about 200m above the Cable Car, in 20km. On our bikes. Offroad. WTF!?! Only to be topped by a ridiculously technical descent of terror to the finish and a long, flat section which will destroy your mind. I bet every single guy in the field will want to quit at some point on day 3.

Day 4: to add insult to injury, day 4 looks like a heart beat chart. We too, will be wondering if we are dead or alive… countless little hills. By little of course I mean like 2-3km of pain, so lots of Chapmans Peaks from Noordhoek side. I will put cash on it that they are covered in sand and molasses.

Day 5: The route profile of this stage is not online yet, so it must be so scary that they can’t put it up. I am personally looking forward to it. Can only be fun going 860m vertical in roughly 13km. So Camps Bay to 100m over the cable car station, but this time in 13km. Oh, then vertically straight back down again.

Day 6: In my opinion, the hardest day out there. You will be too far in to give up, but so tired by this stage you might do permanent damage. A nice climb up to the cable car at 106km INTO the race should sort the mongrels from the township hounds at this point. I expect to be crying on this day. I bet there is sand… can’t wait for the sand.

Day 7: this day will go by in a blur. Its the auto-pilot day. nothing will make sense anymore. people will be speaking in tongues. there will be delirious giggles.

Day 8: last day. somehow the power will be back. we will be flying towards the finish with purpose, excited to be done, but wishing it could go on forever, but with more personal support from our loved ones. It will all seems so quick, like it went by in a flash, even though in the moments it felt like forever in hell.

Not one day will be easy. Not one day will have you thinking the whole day that it went well. Its just not designed that way. Its meant to push us beyond out belief of what we are capable of. Its just freaking awesome…

The full route profile, by the way, is here. Just look out for the 2010 route button near the top.

Continue Reading →