There has been quite a bit of radio silence on my end since my accident at Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga, the details of which can be found here. Some of that silence has been intentional, as working my way through the set of ridiculously improbable circumstances that resulted in a bird flying through my front wheel has been very difficult to accept mentally. As a result, I have needed time away from everything to decompress and reevaluate. However, some of that silence has also been due to the fact that, when you’re laid up with a badly fractured clavicle and mountains…
“The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” This quote refers to something that ends poorly or differently than expected, despite preparations for success. And right now, I feel it’s a fairly apt description for my current situation. Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga was my season opener for 2018 and an event I was eagerly anticipating. Last season was incredibly frustrating and unfulfilling, ending on a particularly low note that created a strong desire to wash that taste out of my mouth. Additionally, the race itself is fantastic, in a great city merely a couple of hours from my home.…
“Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you.” - The Stranger, The Big Lebowski Backtrack to early February 2017. I had just finished what amounted to the single-best offseason of training in my career. I had not missed a workout - not a single session - in 12 consecutive weeks. And after a few down days of recovery, I was about to begin the transition into a more specific, race-preparation block of training. In a season where the Ironman 70.3 World Championship was set to take place in Chattanooga, Tennessee - merely a 2-hour drive from my…
There has been a tremendous amount of radio silence on my end over the past couple of months, and for that I apologize. Truthfully, the large reason for my lack of update has been the fact that, for lack of a better answer, I was training my tail off. With some of my continued health struggles rearing their ugly heads at the end of last season, my coach and I decided to take an entirely different approach to my training. Specifically, we were going to train easy - as in, very little intensity. Because of that, however, we were going…
Everyone likely has heard the phrase “the cost of doing business.” The basic premise of the phrase is that, in order to participate in a particular marketplace, a business or organization must incur certain costs (both good and bad). Take, for example, a company that makes the decision to go public and list itself on a stock exchange. The benefit of doing so is that the company may now raise funds from the public sector, which offers much more money for investment. However, the cost associated with going public is that the company is now responsible for completing numerous filings…
In speaking with other triathletes, as well as executives that I work with in my consulting practice, I frequently get asked about mental strategy, focus and goal setting. It is not surprising that those questions come up so regularly; nearly everyone has strong ambitions and clear objectives of wanting to better themselves in a variety of ways. The principal component that I always emphasize is the need to focus on process over outcome. Or, for another way of phrasing, focusing only on that which you can control. The idea is very simple in theory: worry only about the aspects of…
Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga marked my first return to real racing—and by "real," I mean back competing against some of the best triathletes in the world—since being hit by a car last September. I had performed a test run, competing at a smaller Olympic distance race about a month before this one, but there were still many, many questions about my fitness level; my performance; and, most importantly, my confidence and psyche. My training leading into 70.3 Chattanooga had been largely low key. I had accumulated a solid amount of volume, but after so many months without focused training while my…
When a car struck me while riding on the morning of September 2, 2015, despite finding myself in an emergency room and requiring my cycling kit to be cut off from my body, I still had the belief that I would be able to compete at my next event in two weeks. Perhaps that conviction was simply the steadfast resolve of a committed athlete. Or more likely, perhaps such an inane belief was precipitated by a head injury sustained during the accident. Once the diagnosis came in with several fractures, a concussion, and mountains of road rash and severe abrasions;…
