Positive Thinking post 4 of 5 -- Newton's First Law

This is the fourth in a series of five posts on creating a positive mindset to start 2018. On Christmas Day, I discussed how the week between Christmas and New Year's is a great time to reset our goals for 2018.  Following that, I'm writing a series of five posts this week on how to use positive thinking to set us up for success in 2018.  My first post discussed the principle of doing no harm in our thoughts, words and actions and its relationship and practical application to positive thinking.  My second post discussed how to apply compassion to help maintain a positive mindset in the face of negative influences.  Yesterday's post discussed the importance of a consistent practice of positive thinking to fight against the tide of entropy and decay that will, if left unchecked, allow negative thinking to grow and take root.  Tomorrow, I will conclude this little exercise with some thoughts on positive thinking in response to, and in the face of, obstacles and disappointment when we don't fulfill our goals. 

Today's post is on Newton's First Law and how to apply it to start a practice of positive thinking even from the most unhappy and negative points in our lives.  It is a cruel irony that when we are at our lowest -- at our most desperately unhappy point -- we find it hardest to start the long climb up.  It is also a cruel irony that when we are at a place of contentment and satisfaction, and when it would be easiest to incorporate a practice of positive thinking, we are least motivated and least likely to spend the effort required to start it.  In the first situation, shifting our focus to positive thinking would be a very effective way to give us what we need -- a way out of the darkness, while in the second situation, positive thinking would be an effective way of ensuring that we maintain equanimity and stay away from the darkness that waits below. 

Newton's First Law 

Newton's First Law is the law of inertia: a body at rest will stay at rest and a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force.  The cruelty of inertia is the "unbalanced force" part.  It takes a disproportionately large expenditure of energy to start that initial push into motion.  The benefit of inertia is that once that energy is expended, it takes a relatively smaller (although not necessarily small) amount of energy to stay in motion.  Think of any exercise session -- the hardest part is starting out.  The toughest part of any run for me is always the first mile, or the first 12-15 minutes (I'm a really, really slow runner). After that, it gets a lot easier.  Even sprints and pick-ups, where I'm running a lot harder, feel somehow easier than thise first "easy" 12-15 minutes.

It is the same with changing our patterns of thinking from negative to positive.  That first push -- that first commitment to change -- is always the hardest.  After that, each subsequent step builds on the first until the effort to continue is relatively smaller, even if such effort is not necessarily small.  So if we've fallen far down into our own despair and nothing in our lives seems to be working, how do we climb up?   The trick is that the first small step can be very small indeed. It can even be very, very small.  What matters is not the size of the effort. What matters is not even the result of that effort.  What matters is just that some effort is made to overcome the emotional inertia.  

You versus the Volcano 

Picture that you are heading towards the rim of a volcano. Clearly change must be made or you'll fall into a pit of molten lava.  But the only change urgently required in first instance is to stop.  Turning around, walking in the opposite direction, running if need be -- that can all come later. The first step is just to stop heading towards the center of that volcano. You don't want to stay near the crater too long just waiting for it to explode.  But one small step at a time is a more than fine way to start.

"No matter how many steps you have taken down the wrong path -- turn around." -- Turkish proverb 

Personally, I have found it surprising how quickly momentum can build when we make a consecutive series of small, healthy changes. I saw it when I faced my own serious health crisis two years ago.  Within 18 months of consecutive small changes (along with a lot of help and guidance from some very good people), I accomplished more than I ever thought possible for myself.  As for positive thinking -- after a series of minor but debilitating injuries this year a lot of my plans for the year have been dashed.  That caused me quite a lot of despair at times and it has been a struggle to maintain a healthy and positive attitude in the face of those ongoing setbacks. I tried to build up my spirit the same way I tried last year to build up my body (once again, with generous help from some very good people).  I took little steps, one step at a time.

So if things are going well for you and you are still reading these posts, perhaps you will choose to spend a few minutes thinking about starting a practice of your own. Perhaps just reading about the practice has already started to allow a few seeds of positive thinking to take root.  If, however, things are stressful and dark and difficult, even the smallest amount of effort can seem impossible.  but this is when changing our thoughts is most critically important. So just take little steps, one step at a time.  That is often all we can do.  But the good news is that it turns out to be plenty.

Positive Thinking post 3 of 5 -- the Second Law of Thermodynamics

This is the third post in a series on positive thinking.  On Christmas Day, I wrote about how the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is a great and natural opportunity to reset goals for the coming year.  To create the optimal situation for accomplishing our goals it is important to develop and maintain a healthy and positive mindset, hence this five-part series on techniques for positive thinking.  Part 1 discussed the importance of positive thinking on fitness and performance, and part 2 discusses how to maintain positive thinking in the face of negative influences.  Today's post discusses why positive thinking has to be a consistent practice.  Most people, I think, despite the best intentions, tend to gravitate to the negative over time.  Consistent effort is required to push back against the constant, oncoming tide of negative thoughts.

But why is it that the negative is always more powerful than the positive?  Why are negative thoughts so much "stickier" than positive thoughts and why do unpleasant situations and suffering appear to us as so much stronger and to last so much longer than pleasant experiences and joy?  Someone once said to me that negative thoughts are like velcro and positive thoughts are like Teflon, which sounded to me like a good way to sum it up.

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in a closed system always increases.  Stated in the inverse, order in a closed system always decreases and degrades towards chaos. If we apply this law of physics to ourselves and to our lives, we can see that we are always in a slow state of gradual decay.  Not a very encouraging realization for a weekend!  But even though we are all mortal and have to live with the reality that our bodies experience entropy and decay just like any other closed system, as human beings we do have the power to control the rate of that entropy -- that decay -- with the practice of positivity in our thoughts and our actions.

In a broader context, the healthiness of our thinking seems to work in much the same way as the healthiness of our bodies. When we exercise regularly, our physical fitness continues to improve but the moment we stop, our fitness begins to deteriorate. It is a frustrating truth of physical fitness that we never have "money in the bank" and have to keep moving forward in order to maintain results. It is the same with our thinking. If we exercise a practice of intending towards positive thoughts every day, that practice helps to push back against the tide of negative thoughts and experiences that can swamp our spirit. 

To have healthy and happy lives we need to push back at the rate of decay in the emotional quality of our thinking with moderate amounts of consistent practice of positive thinking. The good news is that it does not always take a lot of time or a lot of effort to foster healthier thinking.  Instead of an hour on the treadmill or a 20 mile bike ride to improve the fitness of our bodies, a 10 minute meditation a few times a week can be effective to improve the health of our mind.  This is one of reasons I have been writing these blog posts this week: committing these thoughts to writing has helped me turn back the tide of my own negative thoughts and has helped me to feel more at peace.  My hope is that, if you are reading this, maybe it can help you a little bit too.

Positive Thinking Post 2 of 5 - Responding to Negative Influences

This is part 2 of a 5 part article on positive thinking, which is a critical component of maintaining an active life and achieving our goals. You can read the prelude on goal setting here, and the first part on positive thinking and fitness here.

In the last post, I described ahimsa -- the practice of doing no harm even in thought.  This is a difficult practice to incorporate even in ideal situations. But how do we maintain a positive attitude in the face of external negative influences?  

This is an absolutely critical concept because fitness is a form of self-care and self-care is always in competition for every other person and thing that wants your time. Whether it's work demands, unsupportive friends, or unsupportive family members, people or obligations that exert some influence on your life will be a negative influence from time to time on your ability to maintain your commitment to a positive mindset.  So how best to deal with negative influences?

There are as many acceptable ways to deal with negative influences as there are circumstances, but I have found that there is only one mental attitude with which to deal with negative influences that does not in itself generate more negativity: compassion. 

Start with compassion  

Compassion is described in Buddhism as the desire for someone to not suffer. In its most intense and difficult form, compassion is the desire for someone who has hurt you to not suffer. Just like triathlon, compassion is a simple concept that can be difficult to execute.  So how do we generate compassion as a response to external negative influences?

Nothing is personal 

The usual and instinctive response to negativity is anger. Unfortunately, anger is a very strong generator of additional negativity so is always counter-productive.  A main reason that we get angry is because we take it personally when people behave negatively towards us. But if instead of reacting to that anger, we can step back and observe it more neutrally, it is possible to see that the negative behavior of others is always a product of the person generating that behavior. Even if the negativity is about us or affects us, and even if it's in response to us, it is all about the way the other person thinks, feels and perceives. We get to choose how we react and how we shape our own perception of the negative conduct of others. 

You don't need to respond  

Often, when confronted with negative behavior, our first instinct is anger, and our second instinct is to respond in anger.  Since anger feeds and fuels negativity, this is not a useful response if our main goal is to maintain or restore positivity. 

While one approach is to wait until you're no longer angry before responding, once the anger subsides, you may find that your need to respond at all has also dissipated.  You may be in a situation where you're best response is to simply let it go. You should feel free to take that path if it feels right to you. 

Give back what isn't yours  

A very wise friend gave me very good advice once: if you find yourself holding on to something that isn't yours, give it back. Some people in your life can have negative reactions to things you do and decisions you make. Following the first rule, don't take anything personally, and  the second rule of not responding right away (if at all), we can have the freedom to choose not to take on and hold on to other peoples' issues. Negative attitudes come from unresolved issues. This is true for other people and is also true for ourselves. It is hard enough to resolve our own issues that create our own negativity. If you find yourself holding on to someone else's issues and attitudes, return it to the sender; those feelings aren't yours to keep.

Back to compassion  

Generating compassion, much like maintaining a positive mindset, is not always easy and requires some practice and deliberateness.  Since positive thinking is a primarily internal process to respond effectively to our own negative self-talk, a good approach is to generate compassion for yourself. Just like maintaining fitness and activity is self-care, compassion for the self can also be an important part of self-care.  Since compassion is the desire for someone to not suffer, try to generate a genuine desire towards yourself to not suffer over whatever issues are causing your unhappiness. 

Sometimes we find it difficult to generate compassion for ourselves. We often find it easier to focus on other people and find that it feels awkward to focus on ourselves. This can feel especially true for generating self compassion.  

One approach to resolve this difficulty is to generate an intention of compassion for yourself for not being able to feel compassion.  Then you can explore the illogical paradox that results.  When I try that approach the ridiculousness of the paradox makes me laugh and reminds me that all the reasons I have created to have difficult thoughts and feelings really aren't all that important. 

That is the main power of compassion: its ability to shine a light on our own inflated sense of self that views our problems, even our legitimate problems, as uniquely important and, by extension, unsolvable.  

So the next time you find yourself trapped in a cycle of negative thinking as a response to someone else's negativity, you can try to see if an intention of compassion -- the desire that someone not suffer -- can help change your thinking.  And if you have trouble with that, generate compassion for yourself for not being able to feel compassion.  And laugh.

Positive Thinking and Fitness (Post 1 of 5)

In Going Long, an encyclopedic guide to training and racing full ironman distance races, Joe Friel and Gordon Byrn devote a whole chapter to the importance of positive thinking and self-talk.  The importance of a positive mindset for any endeavor is summed up as follows: "Mentally strong athletes understand that the body will follow where the mind leads, and they are careful where they lead their minds." 

A friend of mine once argued that the power of positive thinking is a sham  He said that when we ignore the negative, we abandon the power to confront it, and he equated positive thinking as fantasy and illusion.  I think his argument misunderstood what positive thinking really means.  I was at a loss to explain it in a way that made sense until I came across the Buddhist principle of "ahimsa" -- do no harm.  While often expressed as non-violence to all living things, ahimsa goes deeper than non-violence in words and actions, but rather extends to non-violence in one's thoughts as well. 

Ahimsa and healthy choices 

Ahimsa is easier to apply to our fitness goals by expressing it in the affirmative instead of the negative -- instead of "no violence" it can mean "make healthy choices", which starts with healthy thinking, which, in turn, increases the likelihood that we make healthy choices in our words and in our actions.  Looked at through that lens, "positive thinking" is really "healthy thinking" but as a conscious choice.  Said like that, its implications on our commitment to staying active is much clearer. 

Friel and Byrn divide positive thinking into thought, speech and writing, saying that controlling what we write is easiest, since writing is a deliberate act, while controlling our thoughts is hardest. My experience has been entirely consistent with that.  For example, regular exercise became a habit in 2016, which led to finishing a stretchy goal I had set for myself.  But all it took to start derailing me this year was a series of minor injuries, which started tearing down the positive thinking that was instrumental to achieving my goals in 2016. Without consistent awareness of our negative thoughts it takes surprisingly small amounts of adversity that, given some time, threaten to derail our positive thoughts.  Then the eve-present negative thoughts, words and actions have fertile ground in which to grow. 

Thoughts, words and actions are a hierarchy of our inner life that operate as a powerful force that shapes the life we live. Buddha said: “The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings… as we think, so we become.” 

Which brings me back to ahimsa and the power of positive thinking.  In my view, positive thinking does not mean denying or ignoring the negative or looking for silver linings (as my friend alleged).  It means acknowledging and respecting the negative for what it has to teach us, but then choosing to approach the world with an attitude of appreciation for the abundance that we have in our lives and a positive focus on the only thing we can control: our self. 

Scarcity and abundance at the inception of our thinking paradigm  

Negative thinking begins with an emotional attitude of scarcity.  Left unexamined, we tend to focus our attention on what we lack: what we do not have, or have but want more of, or the love and affection that we feel we lack.   Scarcity is a sad and lonely place.  Positive thinking, on the other hand, begins with an emotional attitude of abundance. We can choose to acknowledge the scarcity that is making us unhappy and respect the lessons that brings but, instead of dwelling there, we can choose to shift our focus to all that we have: the people who love us and help us, the beauty that surrounds us and the infinite opportunities that we have, big and small, to help make life better for us and those around us.  Scarcity and abundance exist in the same space and the same time and around the same themes.  Where we place our focus determines which will maintain long-term power over our thoughts and, therefore, our lives.

Focus on abundance leads to healthy choices

The positive thoughts and the emotional attitude of abundance, when chosen deliberately, leads naturally to a practice of ahimsa -- we can consistently make healthier choices and thus generate more happiness for ourselves and, by extension, for others.  Choosing to embrace a practice of healthier thinking can give us the opportunity to choose healthier foods, healthier activities, and healthier relationships that serve our best interest.  It can help affirm our inner wisdom that we alone know what is best for us and gives us clarity in the choices that will favor the good and result in less space for thw bad. As a practice, this creates fertile ground on which to decrease suffering and increase happiness.   

Do no harm, make healthy choices, and embrace abundance wherever it exists 

Personally, I have found it surprising how quickly momentum can build when we make a consecutive series of small, healthy changes. I saw it when I faced my own serious health crisis two years ago.  Within 18 months of consecutive small changes (along with a lot of help and guidance from some very good people), I accomplished more than I ever thought possible for myself.  As for the positive thinking and ahimsa -- after a series of minor but debilitating injuries this year a lot of my plans for the year were dashed.  That caused me quite a lot of despair at times and it was a struggle to maintain a healthy and positive attitude in the face of those ongoing setbacks. I tried to build up my spirit the same way I tried last year to build up my body (once again, with generous help from some very good people).  I took little steps, one step at a time.
So if things are going well for you and you are still reading these posts, perhaps you will choose to spend a few minutes thinking about starting a practice of your own. Perhaps just reading about the practice has already started to allow a few seeds of positive thinking to take root.  If, however, things are stressful and dark and difficult, even the smallest amount of effort can seem impossible. This is, however, when changing our thoughts is most critically important. So just take little steps, one step at a time.  That is often all we can do.  But the good news is that it turns out to be plenty.

Christmas Day Blog Post: The Birth and Rebirth of our Goals

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate.  It seems fitting on a day that celebrates a famous birth to spend a few minutes thinking about when this day falls in our training cycles, at least in the Northern hemisphere, and how we can use the week between Christmas and New Year's to reset our calendar and our attitude for the year to come.  

No matter how 2017 went for you, whether you fulfilled all your training and racing goals, whether you succeeded at getting off the couch and staying off the couch, or whether you encountered obstacles that you could not overcome, we are all coming to the same place at year's end.  Our 2017 journey is coming to an end and our 2018 journey will soon begin. 

If you covered yourself in glory in 2017, you will soon have to start all over again in 2018. If 2017 turned out to be a huge disappointment for you, you will get the opportunity to try again in 2018, incorporating what you have learned this year to achieve a better result. 

In just one week, our training and racing year will be reborn anew with all the hope and promise that a new year brings. So my idea is to use this week to develop a positive mindset for all the challenges and goals that will unfold for that new year.  

For me, 2017 worked out entirely differently than I had planned.  All my big races had to be scrapped as I dealt with a series of minor but debilitating injuries.  That said, I do not consider the year to be a disappointment. I learned as much this year as I did last year when I finished my first half ironman, but I learned completely different things. The most important thing I learned this year is that I succeeded at my main goal from IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina: planting a stake in the ground for my fitness that would sustain my commitment to my fitness for the future. 

Although this was definitely a down year as compared to last year, it was a very active year as compared to any other year in my life. I confronted a lot of obstacles, but I never stopped being active. And I'm proud of that.  

I'm hoping for a big year in 2018 and I have all the excitement, nervousness and uncertainty that big plans bring. So I am choosing for this last week of the year, to refocus my commitment to maintaining the mental and emotional attitude that will serve me best in the journey towards fulfilling my goals. 

My coach is a very, very good coach in many ways but I think that the way in which she is the best coach for me is in her attitude and mindset of relentless positivity.  I have learned that there is an incredible power in positivity.  No matter what your goals are, they will be much easier to work towards and succeed at with a positive mindset than with a negative one. 

Over the week between Christmas and New Year's, I will post a series of articles on my thoughts about what it means to focus on the positive and the techniques that I use to do my best at maintaining that mindset, whether things are going as planned or not. 

The guiding principle of positivity for me is "to do no harm" in my thoughts, words and actions.  Buddhism has a word for this principle, called "ahimsa".  It recognizes that harmful actions, begin with harmful thoughts and harmful words. Often, the person we are hardest on is ourselves, especially when we have challenging goals that demand a lot of us. The premise is that we all will be better served in meeting those challenges if we keep a positive mindset about ourselves and this positive thinking leads to positive words, positive actions and positive habits -- regardless of the specific results. 

I will explore this concept in detail over the coming days.  

I wish everyone a lot of love and happiness on this day and I hope everyone has a great last week of 2017 and wakes up on January 1, 2018 feeling like 2018 will be a wonderful year.  

Peace.  

 -- Aaron 

Priorities, limits and costs. And an incrementalism update

Since Thanksgiving, work has been brutal; late nights every night, weekend work every weekend and a 24 hour trip to New York thrown into the mix. With those work hours, sticking to a daily training schedule has been close to impossible. So I've had to draw on my own lessons from this blog and make up some new ones. Or rather write down some lessons that I have used but not previously articulated.  

Do what you can do 

The old lesson of "just don't do nothing" has been in my mind except I've had to adapt it to a weekly outlook instead of a daily outlook. I've committed to get up at 4:55 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet Josh for the SwimMAC masters swim class. Even that modest goal ran into obstacles when I had to pull some really late nights at the office and an all-nighter of 32 hours straight..  Some Tuesday night conference calls aside, I've been able to get to the track for some (but not all) of Fillnow Coaching's weekly run classes. Otherwise, no other training has gotten done on weekdays.  On weekends, I've kept up my long runs and other weekend workouts until this past weekend, when my wife took my daughter to Atlanta to see a comedy show and I was working from home the whole weekend while watching my 9-year old son.  

Simon gradually realizes that he's over-qualified to diagnose this problem. 

I planned a trainer ride on Saturday but my new electric shifting wasn't working, requiring a house call from Simon at The Bike Depot in Waxhaw, who was super nice to come try diagnose the problem. After some head scratching, he concluded it must be a dead battery, which was weird since the system was practically brand new. So I recharged the derailleur batteries Saturday night and discovered that I had a dead or faulty coin cell battery in the right shifter. After fixing that low tech problem Sunday morning, I got in 45 minutes of riding Watopia on Zwift. One lucky discovery was that in setting up Zwift on AppleTV Saturday night, I never ended the ride because I never started the ride.  So on Sunday afternoon, there I was, all alone in Watopia on a London day. So I had the whole island to myself. 

Solo ride in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic Watopia.  

So far so good for my weekend trainer ride  but I couldn't go on a 1:45:00 long run until my wife got home and she didn't get back until 7:30 pm.  I had to work from home quite a bit on Sunday and the last thing I felt like doing was going for a run in the dark between 7:40 and 9:25 pm. 

So that brought up two unpleasant options: get up at 6 am Monday and run in the cold and dark before work, or skip my long run. This was a problem since I really didn't want to do a 6:30-8:15 am long run to start the busiest work week of the year and I also felt very nervous about the prospect of skipping what I regard as by far my most important workout of every week. Option 2 was really tempting.  It is so nice to stay in bed and so unpleasant to get up in the cold and dark to go for an almost two hour run starting in the cold and dark. But I didn't skip it. I laid out my run clothes on Sunday night, packed my work clothes and went to bed at 9:30 pm so I would feel decent getting up at 6 am Monday. What convinced me to forego my comfort and get that run done?  

Use goals to impose a cost to missing workouts  

This is where my Winter Race Ladder really came in handy. The weekend after New Year's I have a 10k, then a month after that I have a 15k, then the month after that I have a half marathon. That's a lot of running races between now and March and Kelly is building up my distance gradually and incrementally to get me ready for each of these races, as well as a half ironman exactly six months from this Christmas Eve blog post. 

I have had to accept that I cannot fulfill all of my scheduled workouts during December due to extreme work demands, but I have a bull's eye on the calendar for every week's long run. I got really nervous over the thought of letting two whole weeks go by between long runs. In the end, my unwillingness to do an early Monday morning long run lost out to my own plan to run a race a month from December through March. I knew that the winter race ladder would be motivating but I did not foresee that one day it would be the difference between staying in bed and getting it done. I felt the cost of missing that run would be too high.

Establish clear priorities from your goals  

Having set my race goals for the winter, the priority became pretty clear.  I'm an endurance athlete, and a really slow one at that. My most important workout of the week right now is my long run so that I can build the endurance necessary for the half marathon in March and then another half marathon at the end of a half ironman in June.  Knowing that priority and its importance created a lot of clarity and focus.

Respect your limits and your priorities  

The sun came up quickly and the early morning light made for a great run.

the flip side of honoring your priorities is to also respect your limits.  With the hours I've been working this month, I did not feel it would be healthy or even possible to fit in all my workouts.  So rather than pick at random, I committed to do my Tuesday /Thursday masters swim classes, Tuesday night run class, my Saturday workout and my Sunday long run. I wasn't even able to hit all of these every week. But when push came to shove, I drew a line in the sand at my long runs.  

Talk the talk. Then walk the walk  

I have found it to be really important to maintain positive thinking and to take concrete steps to ensure that I stay positive and fight against the constant tide of negative thoughts that confront us, especially when we are tired and busy. Maintaining this blog helps me a lot as it makes me think about my workouts and my bigger plan. Having a coach also helps to keep me accountable. And making an effort to be a positive and supportive force for my friends when they are struggling to get active keeps me exercising to keep me honest: it was a Monday night motivational email to a friend who was struggling with getting started with a fitness plan that got me out of bed at 4:45 Tuesday morning for my first masters swim class!  After sending that long and encouraging email to my friend on Monday night, I couldn't face the hypocrisy of sleeping in on Tuesday morning!!

Update on incrementalism 

As painful as it was to start out that long run last Monday morning, it ended up feeling really good and being a critical building block on the road to all of my running plans for 2018.   

Kelly is sticking with the run /walk plan. This long run was structured as a 8 min run/2 min walk, 9 min run/1 min walk, 10 min run/1 min walk, repeat to 1:45:00. I got in 8.19 miles at about a 12 minute average pace during the run intervals. My next long run is another 1:45:00 run, all at 9 min run /1 min walk intervals, preferably on trails (i.e. with hills).

The week after that is the Joe Davis Memorial 10k in Fort Mill, South Carolina and after that the distances keep ramping up. So missing my weekly long run is the one line in the sand I won't cross!

Pick your priorities and follow your path. 

Suffering is the Currency of Growth

I think at this point that it should seem really obvious to me but I am constantly amazed at how closely connected my experiences in  endurance training and racing are to my experiences in the rest of my life.  More specifically, I am amazed at how the lessons I learn in training and racing triathlon translate so directly to the lessons I need to learn in confronting the challenges of my day to day life. 

Suffering has a cost, but also has rewards 

I talk a lot about how triathlon saved my life by yanking it out of the clutches of diabetes. But almost more importantly, triathlon saved my life by teaching me that suffering is not inherently bad; it is simply the currency of growth. I say this not to minimize anyone's particular experiences with suffering: there is a lot of suffering in the world and there is also a lot of pointless suffering.  I believe the only appropriate response to someone else's suffering is compassion.  But in many cases, if we can learn to pay attention to ourselves without judgment, our suffering can teach us exactly what we need to learn and can become our most effective incentive for growth.  And this is a lesson I learned exclusively from endurance sports. 

Lessons from deep in the pain cave 

I will always remember my first experience with real triathlon-related suffering.  I was on the really, really hilly 10k run course at my first Olympic/international distance triathlon in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I still remember the run course description on the SetUp Events website: "the run course is tough." Given the universal propensity for race organizers to downplay course difficulty in the course descriptions, I should have been much more scared going in to that race. But ignorance is bliss and this was my first real race of any kind of longer distance so after 1500m swimming, and a moderately hilly 30 mile bike, I was still pretty surprised at how much climbing I was doing in the first mile or so of the run. 

Olympic distance tri at that point was a super long distance for me.  I had been training with Kelly for less than 5 months.  As the hills kept accumulating on the run course, I started to hurt very badly; well before the halfway point on the 6.2-mile run. With only five months of training, the hills simply felt like too much for me, I had to walk up almost all the hills.  I forget what my pace was, but it was slow.  Every mile marker took forever to hit. I honestly did not know if I would be able to make it to the finish; by mile 3, I was all alone and the last one on the course but I kept saying to myself that “all you have to do is not stop.  If you don’t stop, eventually you will get to the finish line." So whether I was running or walking up a hill, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other over the remaining miles to the finish.  I was pretty deep inside the pain cave of my mind. The physical and mental suffering was intense. 

But eventually, I turned a corner onto the street that led back to the park and I could hear the crowds at the finish line but I couldn’t see the finishing arch behind the trees.  I checked my watch and saw that I was only 2/10ths of a mile from the finish, but I still couldn’t see the finish arch or any of the crowds.  For a split second I had this terror that maybe there was no finish line and maybe I would just have to keep running forever because I couldn’t stop until the finish and there was so finish so......  It was such a silly thought but after 1500m swimming and 30 miles biking and 6 miles running it seemed to make sense at the time.  But I said to myself often and repeatedly, "all you have to do is not stop and you will get to the finish".  And of course I did.  It was right behind the trees just a few steps away at that point.  And God bless the triathlon community who waited around to give me huge cheers for a very proud DFL (dead ____ last) finish in 4 hours and change. 

I did another Olympic distance tri after that and a half ironman, but I think I learned more in that first Olympic distance race on that single run course than in anything else I have done (including the half-iron).  

All you have to do is not stop  

I instantly learned two incredibly important lessons on that run course:  the first lesson I learned is that all you have to do is not stop.  It is so simple, even though it is not always so easy. And I use that lesson in every single race and on every single long ride and long run in training.  And I have also started using it in my day to day life. I apply that lesson when I have had too busy a week of work to make it to the gym, or have a whole week of bad workouts, or am really hurting at the end of a long ride or long run, or have been injured.  It is okay to go slow. It is okay to slow down.  It is okay to walk the hills.  All you have to do is not stop.

The best "why" is because you matter  

The second lesson I learned is even more important and has helped me in every problem that I confront in my life: that I matter.   After a lifetime on the couch, and ignoring my own needs and getting diabetes and then reversing diabetes, it was on the run course at Pinehurst that I learned the secret to motivation -- the secret to how to keep going when your muscles and your mind are begging you to stop.  I learned that I was worth it.  I was worth putting up with the pain to get to the finish line. I was worthy of finishing the race. I was worthy of saving my own life by conquering the diabetes. The feeling “worth it” part started somewhere on that run course at Pinehurst in May 2016 and then took a long time to keep developing all the way throughout that year.  I had a lot of times during the year when I wanted to quit.  But there is something funny about being alone and in pain on a run course at a race and needing to run another 3 or 4 miles in that pain so that you can finish dead last.  You really have to decide whether or not you think you’re worth it.

My first trainer Jim Guimond always says you need a really big "why" to keep a life of fitness going throughout the years. My "why" changed a lot over the first 2-plus years after my diagnosis. But I wish now that I had used "because I am worth it" as my “why” years ago, before I got sick. I now believe that the best “why” is “because I am worth it.” And I had to suffer a lot to learn that. And I used both of those lessons many times since, especially on the run course at IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina that October. 

Kelly's note to me before IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina  

I am profoundly grateful for every hill on that Pinehurst run course and every ache and pain I had in that hour and twenty 10k. And I still never cease to be amazed at all the ways that realization of being "worth it" changed other things in my life. 

Now, more than a year and a half out from that experience at Pinehurst, I have started to realize that whenever I'm suffering in some other area of my life, there is a lesson hidden not too far below the surface. And when I can remove myself a little and observe it with some objectivity and with less judgment, the lesson appears, and I am more often able to intuit what I should do. The necessary beneficial change then quickly follows. It's not pretty and it's not fun, but suffering is the currency we pay for change and growth. Think about it. Suffering is so inevitable in life. We may as well get the rewards since we are already paying the price. 

Masters Swim Class

After much cajoling by my podcast partner Josh, much whining and procrastination by me and coach Kelly deciding to put it up on Training Peaks this week, I finally went to my first masters swim class. At 5:30 a.m.  In the morning.  

Josh is way too smily for 5:10 a.m.  

So the short answer is that everyone who told me this would be a really good idea was right.  I got 2,100 yards in before 7 a.m. and it went a lot faster than my solo swim workouts go.  The masters group at Swim MAC at Charlotte Latin was very nice and the coach was also nice and helpful. She didn't try to overload me with tips, offering just one helpful piece of advice: try to keep my body centered on an axis when I rotate, "like a chicken on a spit."   So for the rest of class, I tried to focus on being a good rotisserie chicken and not swaying my upper or lower body from side to side on rotation. 

I did some swimming this year, but not a lot so I was relieved to discover that I'm pretty much in the same place as last year. I was 1:03 for 50 yards all out and main sets were around 2:07-2:18/100 yds depending on effort. I'm still not primed to win the Roka first out of the water award at Kona but I still have my base from 2016 and, with masters swim class twice a week, I can build on that for Tremblant 70.3 in June. 

I have a bit more to say in a later post about the specific motivation for getting myself out of bed at 4:25 a.m.  For now, suffice it to say that when you try to help someone, and your motivation to help them is from a good and genuine place, you end up really helping yourself.  More on that, probably much more, a little bit later. 

Plodders, slow athletes and the beauty of DFL

 

It seems every year, there is some article somewhere about whether plodders — really slow runners — ought to be running marathons.  Interestingly, this debate, which seems prevalent in endurance running circles, is entirely absent in triathlon circles.  If you can finish a half iron distance race in eight and a half hours or a full iron distance race in 17 hours, no one questions whether you ought to be there.  In fact, the most raucous and exciting time to be at an IRONMAN finish line is not in mid-afternoon when the pros cross, but rather at midnight when the final 17 hour finishers cross the line.  Never will you find more love and support in the athletic community than for the last finishers at a triathlon.  Triathletes, no matter what their speed, seem to have respect for the distance and how everyone who finishes, no matter what their time, puts in their own hard effort to just to get through the course and make it to the finish line.  It is a pity that so many in the endurance running community do not have that outlook. Recently, however, I have noticed some articles in running publications that seem to recognize the intensity of efforts put in by slow athletes, just to finish the race.  This is a welcome change from the complaints that seem to circulate around the Fall marathon season.

Slow Athletes Put In Hard Efforts

All of my races have represented the best effort that I was capable of on that day.  At my first two international/Olympic distance triathlons, I finished DFL (“Dead F*#%ing Last“) and they were two of the proudest race moments I have had. Both of those races took place around the one-year mark after I was diagnosed with diabetes and got up off the couch and both were Herculean, four-plus hour efforts for me.  While I respect and admire the athletes that can complete that distance in under two and a half hours, I also felt respected by the fast athletes, who seemed to recognize that my 4:15 finish was just as hard for me, as their 2:15 finish was for them — if not harder because I did not have a lifetime of training and racing experience to carry me through when times got tough out there on the second loop of the bike course when the sweeper tailed me for the last eight miles, or on the run course when everything hurt and my only adversary was the voice in my head telling me to stop.  My proudest moment as a triathlete was my 8:14:37 finish at IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina.  Rather than being ashamed of being so slow, I felt a special kind of pride that I was able to manage the race and stick it out on the course for so long in challenging conditions without ever considering stopping.  

Slow Running Can Be Hard Running

Similarly, some of the races I am most proud of, are running races where I hit personal landmarks that represented huge improvement for me, even if my times were relatively slow.  One of my proudest moments of the last two years was a sub-30 minute 5k.  Another one of my proudest moments was a 1:05:31 time at a 10k, for a 10:45 min/mile pace.  I was registered for the half-marathon that day but I felt running 13.1 miles would take too long to recover from in time to train and race my first international distance tri a few weeks later so at the last minute, I changed my registration to the 10k.  It was almost a magical race: I remember feeling great the whole race and holding paces that were far lower than the 12:30 (and slower!) paces at which I had been training.  I remember approaching the last water stop and pointing to the volunteer from whom I planned to grab the cup and then talking it from him in full stride like I was in the last few miles at the Olympics!  I have no idea what possessed me,  but when I finished within shouting distance of the magical one-hour mark for a 10k (one of my secret goals that I have yet to hit), I was thrilled.

The Longer You’re Out There, the Harder Your Race

In some ways, the presumption of effort — that the faster you are, the harder your effort — is just the opposite at the back of the pack.  After my half-Ironman finish, my coach Kelly Fillnow put me on the cover of her website.  I was a little embarrassed about that.  I was quite sure that my time at that race was the slowest half-iron time posted by any of her clients at any half-iron race that year.  Not only that, she had clients who had finished 5k races is in under 19 minutes and had run marathons fast enough to qualify for Boston.  But my trainer from that first year off the couch, Jim Guimond, explained it to me.  He said that landmarks like a 19-minute 5k or a Boston Marathon qualifying time were great achievements that should be celebrated, but they are a progressive milestone in the life of an athlete.  He said that those athletes recognize how hard it is for someone to start out and make the changes necessary to be able to finish an endurance event like an IRONMAN 70.3. 

The Beauty of DFL

To be sure, there is something about being out there on the course for so long that brings with it its own challenges.  It is kind of a lonely experience to know that you are last, when you are biking and running alone, with only the sound of the sweeper behind you to chaperone your last miles of the course.  But being able to stick it out to finish last is kind of a beautiful thing.  The person out there at the end is someone who has nothing to fight for and nothing to race for except for the glory of finishing and defeating his one true competitor: the voice in our head that tells us to stop.  While all athletes have that negative voice in the back of their minds that tells them “you can‘t“, the slow, recently-minted athlete had given that voice power for a really long time.  That voice kept me on the couch, slowly developing the train wreck of diabetes for decades before I finally found the right people to help me overcome it.  Fighting with that voice on the hills at my early races was a real existential exercise.  Six triathlons later, by the time I got to the half Ironman, that voice was silent for that day.   There was a lot of pain and difficulty to overcome through the eight and a half hour ordeal of my first 70.3 mile race, but I was proud to realize later that there was no point at which I thought I wasn‘t going to make it in under the course cutoff or that I wasn‘t going to finish.  My DFL finishes built that confidence.  And the number of people remaining in the stands at the finish line at Pinehust International to cheer me on loudly as I finally got to that finish line, was something I will never forget.

All This Applies Equally to Running

The people who complain about the “plodders“ at marathons could learn a lot from the attitude of triathletes, and my trainer and my coach.  Respect for the distance means respect for all of the people that do their best to finish it. While the “best“ for a lifelong runner might be a 3:40 marathon, the “best“ for a new athlete, recently up off the couch, might be a 5:40.  Or a 6:30.  Or even a seven or more hour finish for 26.2 miles.  You gain nothing by judging others.  Their slow finish on the same course as your fast finish does nothing to diminish your achievements.  Kelly putting me on the cover of her website after my half IRONMAN, does nothing to diminish the amazing achievements of my friends who have finished that same distance fast enough to get into the world championships, or my friends who have finished full distance IRONMANs or the achievements of my coach, Kelly, who can finish a full IRONMAN in just a little bit longer than I can finish a half IRONMAN.

Appreciate the slow runners and the slow athletes.  You could never know how hard it is to get up off the couch and finish an endurance race unless you once got up off the couch yourself. 

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to browse the rest of my website, my earlier writings, my podcast and my upcoming races and my race reports. 

Choose Happy

My friend Cathy Bergman of Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, wrote a very wonderful thought on her Facebook page about how, when we work out and honor our health and wellness, we “choose happy”: 

“A terrific reward of my journey to health and fitness is the opportunity to share the journey with others on the same path.  Uncertain about the emotional roller-coaster that often accompanies significant lifestyle changes, someone recently asked me after a particularly hard-hitting training session at RobFit “Is it normal to be this happy?” I was delighted to reply, yes – it’s a fabulous side-effect to a good workout. We make choices every day, and a choice to include fitness in our daily routine is an opportunity to #choosehappy Will you #choosehappy today?”

I am feeling a bit under the weather today so there will be no hard-hitting workout for me, but I promise Cathy that I will do something good for myself today to “choose happy.”