Looking for Clues: Hurry Slowly
By Brett Sutton
We get the season underway with our early training. On the tweets, we see people a little sick or injured already thinking season is over. This is a huge misconception among pros and age-groupers alike. The pros too worry about their preparations have been hindered so I can’t get my “base work” in. Oh my, Oh my what a disaster! Well I’m here to tell you its not, not by a long shot.
I just had one of my champs having a melt down over a stress fracture that was not her fault. So, oh my god, my kona is gone. Not so, I had her go home and answer 2 questions and then do a little task .
Question 1: Do you ride well enough to fulfill your goal? Answer no!
Question 2: Do you swim well enough to put yourself in the position to access your bike which is not good enough anyway to get your goal? Answer no!
The little task was send me an email and put on it how many days to the major goal. That was done to put things in their true perspective.
People, we all tend to get so subjective when dealing with a problem that impacts what we want to do. Rather than looking at does it impact on what I need to do?
Yes it takes great personal self-discipline to think like that but isn’t our sport of ironman built on self-discipline? I think very much so.
Our training regimes even for age-groupers build up a bank of aerobic condition. It also builds up a back-log of muscle memory and add to this the reason why our sport is unique. We have others sports that we can train while injured in one the three disciplines. So, for certain injuries, we can lose with smart planning absolutely no earobic function. We just need to take the time to fix the problem, and then let muscle memory will have us back on track in about 2 weeks of restarting when the injury is better.
Now, if you are sick. It is a little different, but one can accomplish much at very low heart rates. I still remember vividly times when my athletes have been down for 2 weeks flat on their back and upon rising to do very little training before a big race. They have come out and done fantastic after this rest while sick.
The morale of this story is you have time. Or the morale could also be “this too shall pass ” if you give it the magic “pill”. What is that pill you say?
The magic is “TIME”. It fixs most things and a whole lot quicker than one anticipates. If left alone to do its magic work and we dont poke our needy greedy head in too early that is.
Hurry slowly to all those with the above problems. At this stage of season, I say to you the season is not over. In fact, the season has yet to begin. Accept your situation. Don’t fight it. HURRY SLOWLY, and you will be back and in no real time at all!
Cheers,
The Doc
Trainer of champions
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