The plan, reality, emotions and adaptability.

This time of year is the period that triathletes like to sit back and ask themselves, "What am I going to do next year?" They schedule their races and then they look at their training plan, figuring out how to get to those races with the best fitness possible.

The last month has been a period for me to sit back and reestablish a level of balance in my life that hasn't existed for the last 16 months (about the time Nikki and I moved back to Kentucky). There are areas that need a little balancing out to create a more harmonious wellness in my own mind. Some of the action steps I'm trying to take include:

1. personal awareness and involvement in my spiritual life
2. increased attention to Nikki and I's relationship (outside of work and training)
3. dedicating time to quiet and calm - peace
4. raising awareness of my emotional balance

I haven't been able to act in all these areas yet, but hopefully there will be patterns of habit that I can facilitate and develop that will impact my future self in a positive way.

So what does all of this have to do with training and triathlon? I personally believe it has a lot to do with it. The one thing that I fell short on in 2005 and 2006 was having a sound mind ready for peak performance. The obstacles that got in my way were things like: ego, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, lack of humility, etc.

The numbers, the goal, the outcome, these are things that became the obsession which, for me, lead to an inability to manage my mind optimally.

As I work on these things, I like to increase my reading list too. Reading is one thing that helps me bring awareness to my own thought patterns, as long as I'm reading the right titles. (note: if you have any good ones, let me know).

Currently I'm reading a book titled "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" by Laurence Gonzales. It is an interesting book that talks about different aspects of survival and why some people make really poor choices when faced with a dangerous situation, even if they know better. Here's a section I'd like to share:

page 85

"we all make powerful models of the future. The world we imagine seems as real as the ones we've experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And in the thrall of that vision (call it "the plan," writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don't go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult. In an environment that has high objective hazards, the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It's a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan too."

There are two good lessons here for the triathlete or runner:

1. As you create your annual training plan, are you creating a plan based on what you hope / wish you were (an imagined reality) or are you basing it upon what your current level of experience and ability actually is?

That ability to self-assess our abilities is very difficult, especially when projecting ourselves into the future. My assumption or guess is that the average triathlete assumes they can handle 20% more training stress than they can actually manage. And some assume way more than that.

2. Can you adapt? In survival, the plan is great but it is the ability to adapt that keeps a person alive. Remember that the plan is meant to be fluid and not concrete.

This seems easy to comprehend from a distance, but what do you do when you're in the middle of the season and the wheels start to come off? Do you possess the emotional maturity to understand what is going on around you? Can you handle the mental stress of having to change your plan or your goals?

The off-season is a great time to plan for next season. I also believe that it is a great time to develop the abilities you need to be more adaptable. What does it take to be a more adaptable person? I'm not completely sure, but I'm going to be working on balancing out certain areas of my life. When one thing dominates your life, mind and spirit, it becomes difficult to adapt at times of high stress. Just remember Norman Stadler trying to adapt to his flat tire at Ironman Hawaii in 2005.

As a last thought on this, check out this video of Chris McCormack talking about adapting during the 2005 Hawaii race, remembering he hadn't been able to adapt well in his previous tries at Kona. Interesting thoughts. And I agree that we all could learn lessons from Mark Allen in this area.