He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. – Benjamin Franklin

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist.

Ask any physician and they will tell you that rest is essential for physical health. When the body is deprived of sleep, it is unable to rebuild and recharge itself adequately. Your body requires rest.

Ask any athlete and they will tell you that rest is essential for healthy physical training. Rest is needed for physical muscles to repair themselves and prevent injury. This is true whether you run marathons, pitch baseballs, or climb rocks. Your muscles require rest.

Ask many of yesterday’s philosophers and they will tell you that rest is essential for the mind. Leonardo da Vinci said, “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.” And Ovid, the Roman poet, said, “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” Your mind requires rest.

Ask most religious leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for the soul. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, and Wiccan (among others) teach the importance of setting aside a period of time for rest. Your soul requires rest.

Ask many corporate leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for productivity. Forbes magazine recently wrote, “You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everybody needs to rest and recharge.” Your productivity requires rest.

Physicians, athletes, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, and corporate leaders all tell us the same thing: take time to rest. It is absolutely essential for a balanced, healthy life.

Yet, when you ask most people in today’s frenzied culture if they consistetly set aside time for rest, they will tell you that they are just too busy to rest. Even fewer would say that they set aside any concentrated time (12-24 hours) for rest. There are just too many things to get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, too many bills, and too much urgency. Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today’s results-oriented culture.

Unfortunately, this hectic pace is causing damage to our quality of life. We are destroying every sense of our being (body, mind, and soul). There is a reason we run faster and work harder, but only fall farther behind. Our lives have become too full and too out of balance. Somewhere along the way, we lost the essential practice of concentrated rest. We would be wise to reclaim the ancient, lost practice of resting one day each week.

To get back into balance, just consider the countless benefits of concentrated rest for your body, mind, and soul:

§  Healthier body – We each get one life and one body to live it in. Therefore, we eat healthy, we exercise, and we watch our bad habits. But then we allow our schedules to fill up from morning to evening. Rest is as essential to our physical health as the water we drink and the air we breathe.

§  Less stress – Stress is basically the perception that the situations we are facing are greater than the resources we have to deal with them – resources such as time, energy, ability, and help from others. We have two choices, either reduce the demands or increase our resources. Concentrated rest confronts stress in both ways. First, it reduces the demands of the situation. We have no demands on us as long as we have the ability to mentally let go of unfinished tasks. Secondly, rest reduces stress by increasing our resources, particularly energy.

§  Deeper relationships – A day set aside each week for rest allows relationships with people to deepen and be strengthened. When we aren’t rushing off to work or soccer practice, we are able to enjoy each other’s company and a healthy conversation. And long talks prove to be far more effective in building community than short ones on the ride to the mall.

§  Opportunity for reflection – Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. It is even more difficult to see the forest when we are running through the trees. Concentrated rest allows us to take a step back, to evaluate our lives, to identify our values, and determine if our life is being lived for them.

§  Balance – Taking one day of your week and dedicating it to rest will force you to have an identity outside of your occupation. It will foster relationships outside of your fellow employees. It will foster activities and hobbies outside our work. It will give you life and identity outside of your Monday-Friday occupation. Rather than defining your life by what you do, you can begin to define it by who you are.

§  Increased production – Just like resting physical muscles allows them opportunity to rejuvenate which leads to greater physical success, providing our minds with rest provides it opportunity to refocus and rejuvenate. More work is not better work. Smarter work is better work.

§  Reserve for life’s emergencies – Crisis hits everyone. Nobody who is alive is immune from the trials of life. By starting the discipline today of concentrated rest, you will build up reserves for when the unexpected emergencies of life strike… and rest is no longer an option.

Properly developing a discipline of concentrated rest requires both inward and outward changes. Consider these steps to reclaiming the lost practice of weekly rest in your life:

1. Find contentment in your current life. – Much of the reason we are unable to find adequate rest is because we are under the constant impression that our lives can and should be better than they are today. This constant drive to improve our standing in life through the acquisition of money, power, or skills robs us of contentment and joy. Ultimately, rest is an extension of our contentment and security. Without them, simplicity and rest is difficult, if not impossible. Stop focusing on what you don’t have and start enjoying the things that you do.

2. Plan your rest. Rest will come only from intentional planning and planning rest will come only if it is truly desired. Schedule it on your calendar. Learn to say no to any tasks that attempt to take precedent. Plan out your day of rest by choosing creative activities that are refreshing and encourage relationships. Understand that true rest is different than just not working. As the Cat in the Hat wisely said, “It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” Avoid housework. Plan meals in advance to help alleviate cooking responsibilities. And by all means, turn off your television, e-mail, and blackberry.

3. Take responsibility for your life. You are not a victim of your time demands. You are the creator and acceptor of them. Refuse to complain or make excuses and start changing your habits. Remember, you are only as busy as you choose to be. Leave “if only” excuses to the kids. If needed, alert your employer about your desire for rest and tell them you will be unavailable on that particular day.

4. Embrace simplicity. Embrace a lifestyle that focuses on your values, not your possessions. It is difficult to find rest when the housework is never finished, the yard needs to be mowed, or the garage needs to be organized.

5. Include your family. It is much easier to practice the discipline of concentrated rest if your family is practicing it too. The fact that this gets more difficult as your kids get older should motivate you to start as soon as possible.

6. Live within your income. A debtor is a slave to his creditor. It is difficult to find rest for your mind when you are deep in debt. The constant distress of your responsibility to another may preclude you from truly enjoying a day off. It is possible; it’s just more difficult. Don’t overspend your income, live within it.

7. Realize the shallow nature of a results-oriented culture. If you live in a results-oriented culture where productivity alone is championed on every corner, rest is counter-cultural. And thus, the saying goes, “If you rest, you rust.” Rest may even be seen as a sign of weakness by others. Unfortunately, that view of humanity’s role in this world is shallow. It is true that many of the benefits from concentrated rest are not tangible; but then again, only a fool believes that all good things can be counted.

Rabbi Elijah of Vilna once said, “What we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so.” The implication is clear. We could live lives that produce countless widgets, but we won’t start living until we stop producing and start enjoying. Capture again the lost practice of resting one day each week and start truly living.

Read more from Joshua at his blog, Becoming Minimalist, subscribe to his feed, or check out his new ebook, Simplify.

As we get more technical, more specialist, more niche the smaller differences make the biggest differences. The Tour de France is won on a difference in strength of a 1 year old child. Not alot in it, basically. So to find the most out of your position on the bike, your equipment, your nutrition, your recovery, can make the biggest change.

The drive by manufacturers for the best equipment is easily then justified. A new frame might win a rider a big tour, get them onto the front pages of all the magazines on their bike, giving them millions of dollars of exposure. This, with the right back-up, leads to sales.

The top of any game is separated by minute changes to differentiate those who make it big, and those who make it. The effort required to gain those tiny improvements becomes more and more hectic as the level of competition/skill/power grows, with the commitment level having to increase exponentially as well.

Here is where 10 000 hours comes in again. The first couple thousand are easy, the improvements made are huge, the fun factor is still there. Once you get to about half way, the changes become much smaller, but the hours you need to put in become much greater for that small change.

Not quite what you want to hear, but its the truth. Varsity, first couple years work, then a lucky break. That’s merely phase zero. Phase 1 comes after that with it only getting harder from there. Knowledge bases become leveled. Time becomes irrelevant, its the process that becomes the key.

If you can grasp this success will come your way. This is why its so important to focus your efforts, do not become a guy with 3 000 hours of skill in 20 different avenues. You are a jack of all trades, wealthy man of zero. Nobody cares, and the guy who has put in his 8 000 hours into one avenue will be much further down the line than you are.

Have a great day. The video obviously relates to the tireless process for seconds. seconds. not minutes.

1. It had been quite a year for you. Give us a quick run-down where you were a year ago and the year that followed you to here.

It was quite a year! I can hardly believe it has been only 12 months with the amount that has changed and how far my career has gone in a year. A little over a year ago I was what I guess you could call a ‘wanna-be’ pro, training almost full-time, but making little to no money out of the sport. I was then introduced to Brett Sutton and invited to a try-out camp in the Philippines, where I secured a spot on TeamTBB. The year that followed was exceptional and a lot of dreams started turning into reality. Briefly, it consisted of another camp in the Philippines and a subsequent 6th at IMSA, then a breakthrough summer in Europe with multiple podium places in big races such as Challenge France and Germany, Alpe D-Huez triathlon, Embrunman and of course Ironman Austria. I also made my first trip to Kona and that was a good experience, if not a great race for me.

I am no longer a ‘wanna-be’ pro and am now making a living from the sport I love! Living the dream!

2. Training hours are quite the debate in training. Won’t you give us a typical breakdown in hours, of a base week, a peak week, and a taper week for yourself.

Whether I tell you 20hrs or 40hrs a week, it means little unless you know what was done in those hours (and that would be telling!). Actually it probably varies somewhere between those two numbers, depending on many factors. Within a camp environment, where there are no distractions and all we do is eat, sleep and train, 40hrs is not that hard to hit. But normally it is around 30hrs I think.

As for base/peak/taper numbers, we don’t really follow a normal periodisation. Generally it is more like ‘at home’, ‘at camp’ and ‘off-season’ mileage. Ironman doesn’t really have a season, so although we work towards specific races we generally try to simply build up our training performance. If you can hit your goal numbers in training, the races take care of themselves.

It’s important to remember that your mileage or hours done in a week plays a very limited role in performance improvement.
The secret: If you can push your body enough that it is stress beyond normal and recover enough that it adapts to the stress, you will get stronger and faster.

Period.

Whether you achieve that with more hours, higher intensity or new and varied challenges is up to you, your lifestyle and your goals.

3. How do you find balance as a pro athlete – surely it can be all consuming to eat, sleep & train ALL day.

The previous year was my first as a full-time Pro, and finding the balance took some time. Having a good coach made a big difference and I can certainly see why so many new pro’s burn themselves out in their first year or two. It is VERY difficult to spend enough time recovering when you have nothing else to do! After 2-3 hours of couch-sitting you feel completely recovered and ready for another session, but of course your body is barely beginning the recovery process!

Finding ways to keep yourself busy with other things is important, and trying to keep those things limited to non-physical and non-triathlon related as much as possible is the challenge. I think that focusing on triathlon 24-7 also is a major factor in newbie-pro burnout. I spend a lot of time watching TV and movies, and when in SA I try to spend time with mates who are not into triathlon as often as possible.

4. There surely is enough training advice out there, but what were they key adaptations you made to move from being an age grouper to a pro in terms of your training?

As alluded to in the previous answer, the biggest difference is probably not so much training related, as it is recovery related. Having the time to sleep or just veg out between sessions allows for the sessions to be that much more effective.

This improved recovery also allows me to do more high-intensity work and sessions that drain me completely more often – 1-2 days of real recovery and I can be back at it, where it would previously have taken 3-5 days to recover.

5. Who is supporting your cause this year in terms of sponsors?

In 2010 I will again be in the colours of TeamTBB, and the team is my main support providing a salary, coaching and training camps to attend. The team itself is sponsored this year by The Bike Boutique, Cervelo (new P4 next week!), Avia shoes, 3T, blueseventy, Louis Garneau and Scody clothing.

Oakley has also come on board and have given me some awesome eyewear!

6. Your view on the new professional license from the WTC?

Urm… Well, it is a tough question and I am not yet too sure of my answer.

On the one hand it seems like a big positive step in the direction of getting Ironman professionals and the sport as a whole organised, something that is badly needed. Improved drug-testing protocols have been needed for a while and having an official body providing pro-licenses helps to give the sport a professional face.

On the other hand, I can’t help but feel it is another money-making ploy by WTC. WTC promotes the system by saying that it will save me many entry fees as they are now all free with the license, but in my last 2 years as a pro I have never paid for an entry fee (except to WTC at Kona). Now I am forced to pay $750 and still have to pay Kona entry fee, meaning I will be paying upwards of $1350 to WTC this year, compared to the $500 paid last year for Kona. That extra money should be covering better drug testing, but we already see that failing as no-one was tested at Ironman 70.3 in East London this year!

What I really hope is that this system provides the catalyst for forming some sort of Pro union that can stand up to WTC and its monopoly on the sport, demanding bigger prize purses, better testing and giving the athletes themselves some say in the running of their sport – something that is badly lacking with WTC’s current dictatorship.

7. Who are your biggest competitors for IMSA in April and why specifically?

Honestly, I have no idea who will be racing Ironman SA yet! And probably won’t until I get to the press conference before the race. If Marino Vanhoenacker returns, he will be the hot favourite, and obviously Raynard Tissink is always a contender. I will be focusing on having my best possible race on the day, and we’ll just have to see who can keep up…

8. Is there anything specific you want to show us? I heard you got a new bike this week.

Unfortunately I don’t yet have my new Cervelo P4, but will be getting it on Tuesday. I fly out to Singapore on Monday (22nd) and pick up my new P4, kitted out with SRAM Red and 3T bars, before heading on the Krabi, Thailand for a 7 week training camp with the team before I return for IMSA in April. (I will send you photos of my new toy as soon as I have it!)

9. If people wanted to follow your movements, what are your blog addresses, facebook pages, etc?

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jamescunnama
• Blog: http://blogs.teamtbb.com/jamescunnama/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/JamesCunnama

10. Are there any secrets to the IMSA course that you feel make your day just that little bit easier because you know about it? Local knowledge is often the most powerful thing.

Having some local knowledge certainly helps, and I live on the course so I know every pothole personally. But the IMSA course is not technical at all so the advantage is limited. Perhaps the only thing you can learn is where there are ‘false flats’ as there are a few areas of the course where things suddenly feel tough despite being on seemingly flat road. Knowing where these are and how to push through them helps a bit.

Trying to describe the emotions of a race like Sani2C would be impossible just in words, no matter how good your lyrical skills are. The race is a beaut, lived up to more than what I expected and I will be back, year after year.

It was a test on so many levels for the Multisport Team element of Team Fairbairn Private Bank. My partner turned out to be a beast, more than I ever remember. I turned out to be hugely impressed with our team morale and even impressed myself a little, which I am quite stoked about. To grasp what happened, we need to go back a few steps, to August last year. I was fat, unfit and wanted to revamp my riding. I was a strong triathlete, but probably the weakest cyclist in my peer group.

I was determined to change this, and went on a new program, a new outlook, a new body type, etc. I went all in on the biking. I committed to multisport events, which were new to me, and to pure mountain biking events, which was weird considering that until November, 3 months later, I would not ride a mountain bike.

Events went well until now (barring Xterra), and I was pleased but not really sure how I would go against the pure MTB’ers, who are world class in this country.

The start of Day 1 was a nervous one, and reconfirmed that I take a while to warm up, something I need to work on for next season. Our first 30min on each day were spent with Brett looking back at me and me internally shouting at my body to go faster. After 30min we were in about 40th team overall, but we were catching guys continuously, slowly, with purpose.

The technical sections at Sani are totally unlike the Cape and are smooth and fast. I went through a particularly tough patch from 40-50km in the day. When I came right I wanted to go go go, and totally miscalculated a really tough corner, and paid for it in the worst way. At roughly 50km/h, I went down onto my left hip and shoulder, knocked my wind out completely and left me with an instant thought of “what the hell have I just done”. I slowly got up and back onto the bike, but the entire left side of my body was locked up and my hip hurt like hell. I was SO SO mad at myself. I had put the entire experience at risk, put my partner at risk too, all for a few seconds on a sharp downhill. Total talent failure.

The adrenaline of the fall ran out and I was left with a slight hunger knock of sorts, but moved on, Brett having to push a little on the hills for me. I remember going up this huge climb, thinking that it has to be the last hill. It was misty, muddy and I was tired. I even confirmed my case with a team we had caught, but as I said it, the actual climb marker was noted, and we had 2km of hills to go. You can tell by my face here that I am glad that day 1 was over. I was sore, tired, hungry, but happy. We were told top 20, which I could almost not believe.

I hobbled around, got my hip checked out, and struggled to sleep into day 2. I woke up worried as the day promised to be longer, muddier and with twice the climbing of day 1, with a hip I could hardly stand on. I put my game face on, sucked up the first 30min, consolidated our position and tried to repeat our efforts of day 1.

The first hour was spent going 50km/h down a long hill in the rain, with mud pouring into your eyes, other riders switching track all the time, reconnecting with God to confirm you would make it out of this and calling for your partner as everyone looked the same at this point, with our kit being totally covered in soft, slick mud.

By halfway we were finding our engines to be running hot and the Nandos stop was great. The walk around trying to fix Brett’s gears was hard on the hip and I seemed to lose some power after this. My engine felt stronger, but the variable power coming from left and right hips was a disappointment of note, as we lost a few places from there towards the end.

Convinced we had lost quite a few spots, I was amazed that we made it to 20th overall again. I got my hip treated, my eyes flushed and a massage to help the cause. My back was now totally locked up from the effort of stabilizing the bike with my hips and I lay down for quite a bit of the afternoon. I was determined to have a better day 3.

We were prepared to race hard at the start of day 3 and I was committed to going beyond my usual slow start, and 83km/h through a muddy downhill confirmed just how committed the entire bunch was for this. Great day however and we were smoking it with no technical issues, riding in a group of guys who had beaten us on each day. My hip felt about 50% better than the previous day and I was over the moon to get an 18th on the day and an 18th overall. We had a few laughs on day 3 and were quite disappointed to be done, finally seeming to settle into a groove, which boats well for Cape Epic in only 13 days time.

The organization cannot be praised enough, the local commitment from farmers applauded loudly enough and the passion of the riders for riding shouted from the rooftops enough.

A great adventure, which has given me huge energy for the next few weeks, which are set to drain it totally. On a personal level I cannot thank my partner Brett enough for being patient at the start of each day, putting up with a sub par Ninja on day 2 and making the experience one to never forget.

A few notes:

1. Our Morewood bikes were incredible. Seriously. WOW.
2. Our nutrition from Whasp and Sport-X, also perfect.
3. To our support crew in Biosport, thanks for looking after my broken body.
4. To our pro cycling team, well done on finishing 11th. You hung tough boys!
5. Rockets compression rocked our recovery. Slept in them every night.
6. Continental tires are the bomb!
7. It should be noted that we had zero punctures between 6 of us. Thank you Sludge!

That’s it. Time to get back to the real world. Mad love.

Puma are the headline sponsor for the event, and one of my sponsors too. Their focus this year is to run with JOY, to make running a total JOY, so I am going to put together the Bolt JOY bus. I am swopping my sleek aero outfit and heart rate zones for a day to be a part of the masses who finish around 2 hours for the race. We (possibly just me at this point) will depart en masse from the start, with music, lights and vibes. I will be donning the Bolt arms in the picture here:

We’ll have a dedicated photographer (also probably myself but I promise to work on it), a dedicated refreshment stand at the top of the big hill of the day and some great laughs guaranteed on the day.

Joining the Runners World 2 hour bus, we`ll create what the Two Oceans & Puma’s vibe is all about – that the JOY of running is whats important, not the overall time. Yes, some among us want to race for 2 hours, but we may as well have a laugh along the way, listen to some music, pose with the Bolt Arms (will do my best to get a few more sets organised – mail me if you want to wear them) a few times and cheer on the crowds as we go. 2 hours seems an arb number but its a milestone for a lot of runners.

If you are at all keen on this, please drop me a mail on the contact page HERE to let me know you want to be a part of this.

Now copy the page address from this, and send it out on an email, tweet it, put it in your facebook profiles, and lets get the ball rolling on this.

Let’s experience the JOY of running, have some fun and just generally rock out!

I got a mail from an old friend about a new event she is highly involved in. It’s possibly the easiest challenge ever, and the zar raised goes to a charitable cause: Child welfare.

Background

Created in 2002 by British charity Comic Relief and BBC Sport, Sport Relief is a charity event which brings together the worlds of sport and entertainment to raise money and support vulnerable people from all over the World.

At the heart of the campaign is the Sport Relief Mile, an event open to everyone regardless of their athletic prowess or mobility. This year South Africa will join the cause as the first Sport Relief Cape Town Mile takes place on 21 March, at the V & A Waterfront.

The Event

The event is open to everyone and you get to choose your distance – 1, 3 or 6 miles (in Cape Town talk that is 1.6km, 4.8km and 8km) – which ever’s a challenge for you.  That means, from teeny-tots with their mums and dads, to super sprinters up against the clock, there’s something for everyone on the big day. The scenic course goes through the Cape Town Stadium, Granger Bay & Green Point.

UK celebs presenting on the day will be Alan Shearer (legend of British football) and Dame Kelly Holmes (Olympic Gold medalist in 800 & 1500m).

SA celebs and patrons of Child Welfare who will be supporting the event include:

Aaron Mokoena (Bafana Bafana Captain)

Bruce Fordyce (Comrades Legend)

George Meiring (Singer – winner of “Supersterre”)

Mavis Hutchinson (W80+ master records holder, first women to run across the USA in 70 days in 1978)

Mara Louw (Idols judge)

Doreen Morris (TV presenter)

Nataniel (Singer/songwriter & entertainer)

Tanya Visser (DSTV garden show host)

Cathy Del Mei (Musician)

Vernie Peterson (Director General of Sport and Recreation South Africa)

Please let me know if you need more information? Most of it is easy to access on the website www.sportrelief.co.za

How much will it cost:

The entry fees are R35 until 14 March. Late entries will be taken at The V&A Waterfront from 19-21 March at a cost of R40.

The route:

Starting from and finishing at The Lookout at the V&A Waterfront, the route will take in the magnificent beachfront Promenade and will give walkers/runners an upfront look at the glorious new Cape Town soccer stadium.

Who can enter:

The Sport Relief Mile is open to all. It’s much more fun to do it with your family and friends, so why not enter a team? Inspire your family, your friends, teachers, and colleagues and together you can make a whole lot of difference while having a great time. Give us a call and we will pay you a visit to personally present to your school, club or company the details of the event, to supply you with entry forms and Mile Welcome Kits.

go on…