Willpower

This week work took me to San Francisco which is a beautiful city.  As we worked on an opportunity for a large client, our schedule was difficult to say the least and finding time for training certainly wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.  Business travel is also an opportunity to socialize with co-workers a bit.  Since I telecommute most of the time, I don’t often have a chance to spend much time with my co-workers and these trips often provide the venue to get to know them.  As we dined in San Francisco’s Epic under the Bay Bridge I found myself torn.

There was a time (the time when I weighed 210 and couldn’t run past the corner at my house) when I would be one of the first to indulge in the delicacies of fine cocktails, martinis, wine and of course after-dinner drinks and I won’t talk about the over-indulgence in food.  The team has been working hard on this proposal and we haven’t seen each other in some time and after a long day there was a clear need to unwind.  Martini orders started flying around, wine, better wine, more wine, appetizers, salads, entrees, deserts and after dinner drinks ensued…the atmosphere was jovial and all I could think about was my bike work-out that loomed when I got back to the hotel.

It really is a tough balance in that I truly enjoy the company of my co-workers and I learn much from them in and outside of work.  I know plenty of people out there that couldn’t be paid to have a drink with the people they work with but I really do enjoy the work and the people.  Willpower was key to that evening and it was hard for two reasons.

The willpower to avoid drinking, limit myself to a steak salad and avoid the sweets was hard but the impending workout helped.  I’ve tried before to drink and then go work out, and I promise you that it’s not an experience that I care to repeat so in a sense the threat of misery should I choose to indulge was enough motivation to keep the temptations aways.

What was harder than willpower however were some of the comments.  People were having fun at dinner and used to know me as one who would partake easily in the excess.  As such, there were several comments about it, some of which not exactly flattering circling around the fact that I wasn’t as much fun anymore.  More than not drinking (which I enjoy) or eating (which I love), the comments that perhaps my more disciplined attitude now somehow made me less attractive in social settings were a bit hard to take I admit.   I haven’t been in that situation before and it was new to me.  While I was able to plan and prepare myself to eat right, limit drinking and train, I just hadn’t planned for this and it took me by surprise.

The night ended close to midnight and my doubts subsided when I was on the bike and felt good enough to enjoy the workout and not suffer too much.  After a short but solid 5 hours of sleep, I woke up at 6:15 for a 6:30 run with one of the individuals who chose to partake in the festivities the night before.  Though I was very impressed that he joined me for a run, I also enjoyed a bit of a revenge as he clearly was recovering from the alcohol he had the past night and struggled a few times on the run.

Though travel is hard on the body and makes it very difficult to maintain a proper training schedule I have to say that San Francisco makes it much easier.  With well equipped hotels and healthy food stores everywhere it’s difficult to truly have an excuse not to train and eat healthy.  The mild weather made my morning run along The Embarcadero very enjoyable Tuesday morning.  I certainly understand why so many professional triathletes choose the Bay Area as their home.

2010 Goals and Season Planning

Successful businesses are run carefully, methodically and with a distinct focus.  One of the business lessons I always learned both in school and in practice is that a in order to succeed a business must have a clear vision and established goals that can be measured.  Successful businesses are those that remain focused and there is no reason to believe that other aspects of our lives have to be any different.

As I started planning my 2010 season and was faced with the complexities of race schedule, the training plans, identifying equipment, coordinating with the family schedule, welcoming a new child and managing work requirements, I realized that the approach had to be structured just as a business needed to be.  To that end, defining a clear long-term vision, establishing challenging yet achievable goals and measuring those goals was the next logical step to my 2010 season planning.

In my opening post to this blog, we discuss my vision but for the sake of repeating it:  My vision is “to complete an Ironman in my lifetime while balancing family, business, technology and sports“.  This seems easy and clear enough and once the vision is established, defining the goals becomes important.  For 2010 my goals are the following and in fact build upon each other:

• Remain injury free
• Complete Ironman 70.3 Miami
• Complete a minimum of 2 Olympic distance triathlons
• Improve my first sprint triathlon time by 10 minutes or more

I feel these goals are clear and measurable.  The first three are very binary (either I did or I didn’t) and the last one is very measurable.  Virginia Run was my first triathlon and I finished in 1:23:49.  As we get closer to the race we’ll break this down and how I plan to shave 10 or minutes off of my time.  For the other races, I don’t intend to establish a goal.  The 70.3 will be hard enough to finish and the olympic distance races will be to help prep for the 70.3  While they will help me gage my performance and assist in tuning my season, I don’t want to put too much focus on these races out of fear of getting distracted away from my top two goals of remaining injury free and finishing Ironman Miami.

Now that we’ve worked on the goals, I’m sitting down with my partners in crime in this triathlon endeavor to work out our specific race schedule for next year.  I never thought that planning a season would be this much fun or that I’d be this excited about it.

Friendship, Travel, Training, Health…Sometimes a Tough Balance

Notice the bottle of water empty and the absence of wine

There are things in life that are very much worth blowing off training for, close friends are one of them.  My best friend is turning 40 this year and as most people, it’s a pretty easy decision to go and attend your best friend’s birthday party.  There is however a peculiarity with me in that my friend lives in France.  Between work, kids, training and the fact that he lives 8 hours away just counting a flight and really 12 hours away door-to-door, it’d be pretty easy not to prioritize attending his party.  If you add to that the fact that I’ve had a less-than-stellar week regarding training and been away from my sons the thought of staying home was indeed very enticing.

But this is what it’s all about, life is about balancing your passions and cherishing the few truly close friendships that we have.  A so after a short run (more like a jog really) Friday afternoon, I hopped on a plane to France.  I had booked my plane back in June and managed to get a window seat.  Though most chuckled when they saw me bring my pillow, I slept quite well and arrived in my native country generally rested Saturday mid-day.  I attended a great party that night and flew back Sunday being away from home a mere 51 hours.

For these two days I completely skipped training and gladly so. My friend was thrilled to have me there and so was I.  To try to minimize damage I did try to eat healthy purchasing large bottles of water at the airport to remain hydrated, eating fruit and limiting wine.  In fact I only had a couple of glasses of wine at dinner keeping my body as healthy as possible.  To add to that, I alway use Airborne when I fly or travel.  It allows me to boost my immune system which admittedly tends to take a hit when I’m on the road as we all operate on fewer hours of sleep and usually much less comfortable rest.  Call it superstition or believe it in, it’s worked for me very well in the past.  Even at home if I’m feeling a hint that I might be coming down with something, I pop in an Airborne and get that extra boots of vitamins.

I’m back now feeling a bit tired but thrilled about my weekend.  My concern isn’t so much about lack of sleep as it is about the fact that I haven’t swam in a week and half.  With a swimming session with my Masters group tomorrow morning, I might have a different answer than “I’m thrilled” after a few laps…

An Extra Rest Day Made All The Difference

It’s already been a week since my last post and much has happened since my jog in Denver.  Friday afternoon we headed to Las Vegas with my wife and stayed at the Encore for a few days of rest.  The plan was pretty simple in that I was going to rest as much as possible, eat healthy, not drink -too- much, and continue a good physical routine.

On Saturday I opted for a rest day to recover from body squats on Friday and it had been a week and a half without rest.  I signed up for a great massage to help sort out the toxins and work out the kinks in my back from some good swimming sessions the days before.  To my surprise, I was having a hard time finding a suitable pool to swim laps in so I opted for a brick training on Sunday with 30 minutes on a stationary bike followed by a quick mile right after on the treadmill.  Now, for those unfamiliar with my running prowess (or lack thereof), a “quick” mile is defined as below a 10-minute mile…regardless of your own speed, do let me briefly indulge in the temporary comfort that a ten-minute mile isn’t too bad…  but I digress.  I finished the day off with some core work and a hot tub session.  So far so good but it would quickly go downhill after that.

The rest of Sunday afternoon my right knee flared up.  This is undoubtedly  due to the fact that albeit short distances, I ran 3 times in a week and I hadn’t run in 3 months as I recovered from my bike injury.  This was too much too fast and my knee told me so.  We had a great dinner where I indulged in a delicious tuna tartar and veal, and I went to bed fairly early.   Monday morning came unfortunately and I’m afraid that part of the tuna wasn’t all that good and I was not feeling well at all.  I scratched any possible workout that morning as I reluctantly watched my wife head back to DC as I packed to head to San Francisco to work on a proposal.

The trip was miserable.  It’s one thing to be sick, but it’s another to be sick away from home in random hotels trying to put a good face at work.  In typical fashion, my plane to SFO was severely delayed, my ride at the airport didn’t wait for me, my room was noisy but somehow I slept like a baby.  Tuesday morning came and I was far from 100% but did start to feel a bit better.  Typically food digestion issues last 24-48 hours so I knew that if I didn’t get better that day it was likely a bug.  As I put in a good face at work in the morning, I started feeling better and better until Tuesday night when I actually felt pretty good and dared to go to dinner with the team.

Though I felt fine I did opt to continue a very conservative diet consisting of pasta with limited sauces, diet-coke, bread and water and avoid any creative foods, alcohol or other more exotic ideas.  As I was going to bed Tuesday night I had to start thinking about my training.  The Marriott in San Francisco has a great gym and although the pool is small one could still get a brief workout in it so no excuses there.  But I did learn a lesson in my previous year of training in terms of recovering from illness.  Pushing too hard too fast can easily result in much longer term delays in terms of performance and recovery so I opted consciously to not workout Wednesday morning but to sleep in instead.  I slept in until 7AM, had a croissant and made it through the day fine.

I flew back last night and despite little sleep I feel much better today.  My sons woke me up this morning and after a week away that might be one of the best feelings in the world.  What’s also important to note is that my right knee feels fine and though I couldn’t apply pressure to it on Sunday it is much better now.  The added rest day on Wednesday seems to have worked and was probably a wise choice.  As soon as I’m done with this post I’ll figure out what my workout plan for today and tomorrow will be before a quick in-and-out trip to France for the weekend.

1 Mile at Mile High

Maintaining a good training schedule and balancing life while at home is generally achievable with some sacrifices, but training while traveling can be a daunting task.  In fact, I’ve never been particularly good at training while on the road for so many reasons.  Frankly, the last thing I want to do when arriving in a new location is to find the gym and get the blood flowing.  I tend to be more attracted by what the local brews might be and how stocked up my mini-bar is.

Here we are in Denver on our way to Vegas with my wife.  We take a trip every couple of years to sin city without the kids and relish our ability to do what want, when we want for a few days.  This year, we stopped by Denver on our way to check out some properties and see some friends.  While I was excited about this trip, I have to admit that the idea of keeping a training schedule – particularly in Sin City – is a bit daunting.  For starters, I made sure that Thursday before we left for Denver I got a swim in.  I got up early to attend practice with my Master’s swimming group and got 2500 yards or so in and didn’t have to worry about Thursday’s workout anymore.  When we arrived in Denver last night, one of the first things we did was to check out the gym.

Despite a few drinks last night, we both decided to hit the gym first thing in the morning.  I made it downstairs first and worked on my core with light weights and a mat.  As my lovely wife came in, she pointed to a sign indicating that there was a track outside.  Curiosity got the best of me and I climbed up a few steps which led me to the rooftop of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Denver with a tennis court in the middle and a track on the outside.  Though small (11 laps added up to 1 mile), I couldn’t help but to give it a shot and jog slowly for my 11 laps.

Though I’m still not sure how and what I’ll be doing while in Vegas, we both agreed that the first thing we will do when we check into the hotel is to find out the schedule, locate the gym and the pool and sign up for necessary classes (Yoga, Spin, etc…).  By making training my priority every day, I’m certainly enhancing my chances of maintaining a good workout routine.

Fortuna Fortes

I’m not sure what was the specific trigger for me. It could have that my first triathlon nearly killed me being overweight and unprepared combined with my natural competitiveness. It could be my long-time admiration for those few that bore the title of Ironman, or it could have been this deep search for the endorphin-induced zen-like feeling on a long bike ride.  It could be my desire to overcome my struggling with running or becoming a well rounded athlete.  Whatever it was, I fell in love with it…I fell in love with the triathlon.

Of all the candidates that the sport would put a grasp on, I might be an unlikely one. I certainly do not have the body for it with my weak knees, my bum ankle, poor shoulders and injured back. I most definitely don’t have the time for it with 2 children, one more on the way, a wonderful wife and a demanding job requiring significant travel. Finally, I certainly don’t have the background having never run more than 6 miles which was back during basic training nor taken any coaching in either of the 3 sports required to succeed. But all those things would be excuses.

There have been many before me that have competed despite countless excuses. The likes of Jon Blaise the ALS warrior poet, Sara Reinersten an above the knee amputee, or the famous Team Hoyt all would have the best excuses in the world not to get on the starting line. But they didn’t focus on what they couldn’t do, instead, they set their mind to it and did whatever it took to not only get to the starting line but to finish proudly, often despite repeated failures.  As you study the sport, one would be hard-pressed not to find inspiration at every corner, finding the stories of those who said “I Can” and lifted their spirits and ours.

Yet despite all the external inspiration one may find, only your personal commitment will push you through the training and lead you to the finish line.  John Collins, founder of the Ironman said speaking of the race that it “has always been about finishing what you started. About being able to do what you’ve set out to do. Maybe not as fast as the person in front of you, but certainly faster than the person who never started”. Few words have sounded truer to me or resonated as much, but more importantly, it is that which drives me.  It is the idea to complete something you’ve set out to do despite excuses or reasons and teaching my children the importance of setting goals and achieving them.

Fortuna Fortes, or “Fortune favors the brave” has resonated with me over the years in that only those who dare are rewarded.  Daring to complete an Ironman is bold yet the challenge in seeking to reach the goal in my lifetime must be one balanced with my other passions including my family, business and technology.  These passions along with my chosen sport must coexist together despite the certainty of numerous conflicts.  This is my journey to capture my goal and balance my passions.