Who's Voice Are You Listening To?

And God said, "Who told you you were naked?"

Erwin McManus highlighted this passage on 3/9/2014 in a sermon about Voices. It made me think about the voices I listen to. Voices in my head, my family, my friends, and voices in society.

In the Garden of Eden, the only voice Adam and Eve heard was God's, a voice of love. Unfortunately after that moment they started hearing other voices, voices of judgment.

What to do, what not to do, what's right, so many opinions. I guess that is the price of freedom, freedom to do, say, or think whatever we want. I find it extremely annoying when I allow myself to get caught up rehashing articles or comments others have made. I end up having trouble sleeping, working, or relaxing.    

Erwin reminded me that I have a choice. A choice on what I expose myself to and a choice on where I focus my attention. I can limit my interaction with certain individuals and I can limit what I read. When I find myself becoming emotionally charged by an issue, I can redirect and change my focus.

Whenever I want to adopt a new behavior, I try to pair it with a current habit such as eating, sleeping, or driving to/from work. It makes it easier to remember and more likely to occur. Meal time is one of my favorites because I usually have a few extra minutes. Recently I've chosen to close my eyes for 5 minutes, breath, and remind myself what's important to me. I've found that it helps quiet distracting thoughts, allowing me to stay on task and results in a much more pleasant day.

Age Group Nationals

USAT Olympic distance age group nationals was a new experience for me. I'm accustomed to racing for 4 to 10 hours were as this was going to be an intense 2 hour race.

Finding my Why
My goals for 2014 were to qualify for the 2015 ITU World Championships in Chicago and go sub 9 hr with a sub 3 hr run at IM Chattanooga. The goals provided me with motivation, but my level of attachment to these goals created a heavy burden. I took several risks and struggled to find my passion as my early season performance was subpar.

“If you know the why, you can live any how.” - Nietzsche 

Mark Allen was recently interviewed about triathlon and mentoring Peter Reid when he lost his passion for the sport in 2001. Allen encouraged Reid to find new sources to fuel his training. After a difficult year, Peter Reid regained his "why" finishing 2nd in 2002 and 1st in 2003 at the Ironman World Championships. I would also say it's important to remember why we started these journeys in the first place. The year I qualified for Kona, I remember being fed up with all the pressure I placed on myself to be "Elite" and beat other athletes. Shortly before IMLP, I shifted my focus to the personal challenge of testing my limits and soon found peace.

It's funny how I found myself back in the same place, learning the same lesson to once again reorient my focus on the personal challenge. This time I was hearing the "why" of local ultra-marathon runners, which led me to reexamine my reasons for doing triathlons. The idea of running through nature competing only against one's self seemed so peaceful. One of the greatest of all time is Yiannis Kouros, he says he runs these extreme distances to experience a sense of "exceeding." I like the idea of not comparing myself to others or trying to live up to someone else's expectations. Instead make the races about the personal challenge. Now that I am reconnected to the "why," I am hopeful it will help me live with any discomfort whether it be triathlon or other areas of life.

Focus and Perseverance
Although my finish time and place was not what I wanted in Milwaukee, I was really pleased with my performance. I was able to stay focused and relaxed throughout the race. I breathed easy, kept my shoulders loose, and just focused on what was in front of me. When I found myself attempting to predict the future, I shifted my focus to the space in front of me. All in all it was a success and much better than my most recent race, Rev 3 Knoxville.

Volume, Intensity, and Consistency
My initial training plans entailed shorter and faster workouts following Rev3 Knoxville. However, after such a poor performance I decided to re-tailor my training in an attempt to regain my speed. I decided to put in more hours on the bike (my rides went from 3 hrs to 4 hrs) and increased the frequency and duration of my speed sessions. I was drinking the Kool-Aid that long miles, tempo sessions, & speed workouts were the primary factors that make people fast. They're alluring because they make us feel good, like we're accomplished something, but too much can create a lot of Nervous System & tissue damage. In reality, it is the frequent short to medium distance zone 1 & 2 workouts that can be performed day-in and day-out that really build speed. Even 100m sprinters perform 70% of their training at z1 and z2. Triathletes need to spend 90% of their training in those zones. Luckily I have a great wife who constantly challenges my behaviors and I learned my lesson. I'm now doing short two a day bike sessions at an easy to moderate pace while limiting weights, tempo sessions, and speed workouts to once a week.

Carb loading
For age group nationals I decided to try some new carb loading foods. As my wife likes to say, "Bryan loves to tinker." This time I focused on fine tuning the foods I consume on the day before a race. I ate oatmeal with the following ingredients:

3 cups oatmeal
12 cups water

2 cans sweetened condensed milk

3 teaspoons salt

A touch of cinnamon

(For those counting their calories this make 4 servings of 875 calories each)

Before bed I also drank a 32 oz bottle of Kefir. The meal was filling, extremely simple to make, easy to transport, and made eating for the day stress free. I liked it so much that it's become my daily post bike/run meal.

Great City
Tiffany and I both really enjoyed the city of Milwaukee. It was clean, easy to navigate, and offered a variety of things to do and see. The city itself is a collection of Art Deco buildings that are truly a marvel to see. The night life is also quite phenomenal with a plethora of bars that offer both indoor and outdoor seating. We lucked out with a rooftop bar at our hotel that offered a view of the city and lake Michigan.

After the race we grabbed a bite to eat at Smoke Shack, enjoying candied bacon, pulled pork, and sweet potato fries. Best of all, they gave us a free cinnamon roll. Being connoisseurs of local breweries we decided to check out Lakefront Brewery. We were able to enjoy their award winning beer, Eastside Dark while watching people boating and canoeing on the Milwaukee river.

Why Not Flourish?

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." – Walt Disney

I've always been a little curious, but with my renewed interest in reading my curiosity has gone into overdrive. A recent gem was a gift from my amazing wife, The Psychology Book. It explores the field of psychology from the founding fathers to modern psychologist in easy to understand language with relevance to everyday life. One of the psychologists featured was Martin Seligman and his book Flourish. His focus is on people's strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Here are a few of his exercises:


Use Your Strengths

• He suggests taking the VIA strengths questionnaire to assess your strengths and then to think of ways to use those strengths more in your daily life. There are several other assessment questionnaires on his website such as the Grit survey to measure perseverance. I took the VIA and my top strength was creativity. It was very enlightening and helped me better understand my current habits. I realized I have been tinkering with my triathlon training to satisfy my drive for discovering new and better ways to do things. Unfortunately it was my only creative outlet and led to too much tinkering. Since taking the questionnaire, I am now exploring other ways to satisfy my desire to be creative such as cooking and encouraging others (exercise #3).

Three Good Things

• Another exercise is to think of three good things, each evening, that happened and why you think they happened. In other words, what went well and why. I've done this exercise before, and I like the twist of exploring why. Research on the traditional Gratitude Exercise has shown improvements in sleep, happiness, illness, and a host of other benefits. The exercise forces me to view each day as a positive and reminds me of the small steps that lead to each accomplishment. I worry less and focus more on the controllable process.

Active Responding

• Exercise #3 is active-constructive responding. It is where you react in a visibly positive and enthusiastic way to good news from someone else. At least once a day, respond actively and constructively to someone you know. Celebrate with them. Ask them to relive the event. This is not an area of strength for me. My focus is typically on myself and making myself feel good. However, Seligman points out that emotions are contagious. When other people are happy and you celebrate with them, you can't help but feel better. It reminds me of Bandura and his research on confidence. Seeing other people achieve success helps you believe you can achieve success. Seligman also points out that being pessimistic is as bad for your health as smoking 2 packs per day of cigarettes. Luckily happiness is more powerful than sadness. So far this exercise is a work in progress, but has given me a distraction from my own worries.

Savoring

• Once a day, take the time to enjoy something that you usually hurry through (eating, showering, walking, etc.). When it's over think about what you did, how you did it differently, and how it felt compared to when you rush through it. This exercise of "living in the moment" has shown me that joy is all around. Sometimes I look for specific "things" to make me happy, but that ends up limiting my happiness to only a few moments in life. Plus those moments don't last forever. I wait and wait for the weekend, only to have it pass so fast. By slowing down I have also improved my patience and self control.

Make a Decision

Poop Or Get Off The Pot.

I have a tendency to over-analyze situations and delay decisions. Tiffany hates this about me and is routinely telling me to just pick something. On the flip side, I don't make the mistake of buying unsalted butter when I needed salted butter :)

In Anthony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within, he describes life as just a series of decisions. Nothing is fixed. "You have the power right now to control how you think, how you feel, and what you do. Everything you could ever want, tangible or not, is all within you." In other words, we are not victims of circumstance. We have the power to change and shape our destiny.

Unfortunately we delay decisions to avoid pain or find the perfect solution, which ultimately makes the situation worse. We look for that perfect choice, but in reality every choice has pros and cons. Mike Rowe, from Dirty Jobs, answered a fan's request for help finding the perfect job with: "Stop looking for the right career..focus on what's available...you can always quit...happiness doesn't come from a job."

Blunt but true. The great entrepreneurs from John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Ford, Mary Kay Ash, Ray Kroc, & Bill Gates all took risks and that is why they succeeded. Some decisions worked out, while others didn't. John Maxwell says, "The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one." John Jacob Astor, America's first multi-millionaire, initially came to America with the intent of selling musical instruments, once in America he sold fur, then opium to the Chinese, then invested in real estate in New York. He was flexible and moved forward.

This fear that we avoid is a concept, a prediction, that only resides in our mind. It keeps us from living in the real world and recognizing that life is not so bad. George Kohlrieser encourages us to "Put the fish on the table. It's smelly and cleaning it is messy work, but you get a good meal in the end." Decisions can be scary and intimidating, but in the end there's always benefits as well as the opportunity to make another decision. Have desires and dreams, but avoid fixations. "Suffering is the frustration of our desires and expectations." - Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Challenge for the week: THINK, DECIDE, DO

What Makes People Great?

What makes people great, is it talent or effort? I've seen athletes who were carefree and seemed to get by with minimal training and I've seen athletes that appeared to need every minute of training. In Talent is Overrated, Geoffrey Colvin argues that it is neither.

• It's not IQ or Memory

Colvin says there are international chess masters who possess below average IQ. It's also not the result of an innately strong memory. Individuals with average IQs, who started out recalling 7-8 digits spoken aloud, have been taught to recall over 100 digits. In the realm of business, IQ is a decent predictor of performance on unfamiliar tasks but once a person has been at a job for a few years, IQ predicts little to nothing about performance.

• It's not Experience

Experienced Physicians were no better than Physicians with only a few years of experience at diagnosing problems. If fact, some of the older Physicians were worse. Just because someone has been working at the same company for decades does not mean they are any more an expert. One could simply find a comfortable routine and never challenge themselves or advance their skills. This is scary because the half life of knowledge is shrinking. Depending on the field, what we know today will be obsolete in 4-7 years.

• It's not Innate Ability

Mozart and Tiger Woods are poster children for innate ability. However, when one looks closer they both had fathers that went to painstaking lengths to teach them their crafts from a very young age.

The Answer is: Deliberate Practice
It's about taking specific steps to achieve a goal. It's not about doing everything well, but doing a few things really well. That's why IQ doesn't really matter. You're only focusing on a few small things. Jerry Rice, the Hall of Fame receiver, wasn't the best athlete, but he focused on a few keys areas to succeed. He didn't just play more football or watch more film, he studied the film using a specific protocol to better understand defenses. He also did specific uphill wind sprints to improve his explosive acceleration.

At the Music Academy of West Berlin. The good, better, and best violinists all practiced the same amount of total hours, but the best violinist committed more time to individual practice. It was the least popular form of practice, but it allowed them to focus on specific areas for improvement.

In a crazy story that could only happen in the 1960s, Laszlo Polgar advertised for a wife to help him prove that geniuses are made not born. He had 3 daughters and he taught them all to become internationally ranked chess champions. His daughter Judith reached the status of top female and top 10 overall.

Develop a Plan

Steve Martin regularly recorded his stand up routines and later listened to specific aspects of the shows to make adjustments. It's not a matter of just wanting something and trying really hard. It starts with having a belief/goal, that is broken down into specific steps, and adjusted through feedback. Panasonic developed a 500 year plan that has helped them over the years prepare for the future. Currently they are working with Tesla on a $5 billion factory to make next generation car batteries. On a personal note, I've added weekly feedback sessions with my wife to assist in writing my weekly plan. It's helping me stay on track, achieve my goals, and reduce stress. My next step is to develop a 90 day and 5 year plan.

Supportive Environment

Interestingly, Colvin noted that the great Einstein, Gardner, & Stravinsky all came from smaller cities. He hypothesized that being a big fish in a small pond helps develop confidence and future success. Malcolm Gladwell touches on this subject in David & Goliath. He found that some students become demoralized and lose passion when they go to a prestigious universities and compete in a bigger pond. I discussing this topic with a friend who attended MIT and he felt that social support plays a huge role in who succeeds and who quits. It makes me think that more people could be great if we just encouraged each other a little more and focused our feedback on specific behaviors rather than personal traits. 

Passion

Colvin concludes that greatest comes from Passion. However, in contrast to popular belief, passion is not fully formed at birth or sudden bestowed, it develops over time. It comes from the fulfillment of being good at something, being told your doing well, making progress, or receiving rewards. The rewards can be extrinsic at first, such as money or a trophy, but to maintain the passion one needs continuous intrinsic motivators.

My Take Aways
Praise someone/yourself today and see what passion is ignited. Even the most minute progress could eventually evolve into greatness. Secondly, ask yourself what do you want and what do you believe? If you don't believe something is possible, passion is not going to develop. In the end, "We may not become Mozart or Jack Welch, but we could become better." - Geoffrey Colvin

Takeru Kobayashi

Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. In his first attempt at the famed contest in 2001 he ate 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. The previous record was 25. Recently he was interviewed on the Freakonomics podcast sharing his tips on deliberate practice and creative ways to tackle obstacles. One of the most interesting comments was about how he handles defeat. He said, "Sometimes you win because the other person is having a bad day and sometimes you lose because you're having a bad day. Winning or losing doesn't mean you're the best. In the long run, you can't look at competing against others. All you can do is compare yourself to yourself and see how far you can go."

How PROFOUND!  You're really only competing against yourself.

All too often we compare ourselves to others and feel inadequate or develop a false sense of superiority. It reminds me of the banter between Richard Sherman & Michael Crabtree & Patrick Peterson. Who is better? Who is the best? Can we answer that? Does it matter? Some athletes talk trash to get in the heads of their opponents and throw them off their game. However, the athlete/person who stays focused on themselves will always succeed.

NFL legend Bill Walsh said the secret to his coaching success was staying focused on what mattered. Bill didn't worry about the other team or things outside his control. He focused on HIS job and what HE could do. He taught his athletes to live in the moment by moment processes that would lead to success. He won several games with this philosophy and even cherished some of the losses because he knew he did everything he could on that day.

If one can develop a similar attitude, there would be no limits. No more shame or doubt. No more distractors. Only Joy. 

IM Chattanooga Preview

This past weekend Tiffany I visited Chattanooga to scope out the city and ride the bike course for the upcoming September Ironman. From Cincinnati the trip is about 5 hours straight down 75.

Bike Course
The bike course is relatively flat with a few rollers and false flats going south. The return trip home has several fast downhill sections. Nowhere on the course are there technical turns. To compare it with other courses, I would rate the bike course as slightly easier than IM Louisville. During our training ride we saw several other riders and they said the course is very popular on Saturdays or Sundays with minimal car traffic. The roads were mostly smooth with a small 5 mile section of old cracked pavement when you first start the two loops. The course is also marked with orange paint to help with navigation, although in some spots it was faded.

The run course travels east along a pedestrian trail before transitioning to the road. From there it travels over a bridge then back over a wooden pedestrian bridge. The course is fairly flat with a small hill between mile 1 and 2 that zig zags up the pedestrian trail.

Adventures
Rock City - It is a beautiful natural trail through rock formations on the top of Lookout Mountain that leads to a waterfall. We would definitely go again. Plan 1.5 to 2 hr for your self guided tour.
Ruby Falls - It is a guided tour through a cave to an indoor waterfall. It takes about 1.5 hr with several unique stalagmite formations along the way. I really enjoyed it, but you have to be patient with the slow journey.

Incline - It is a train ride up the mountain. It's claim to fame is the fact that it is the steepest incline in the USA. A round trip takes about 1 hr. It was interesting, but not worth the money.
Hunter Museum - It is a museum that overlooks the Tennessee River with several historic works of art. It is on the run course and the area has several cute restaurants.
Cloudland Canyon State Park - This was our campsite. We rated it as our favorite campsite so far. It was on top of a mountain with breathtaking views, hikes, and two gorgeous waterfalls. They also have Yurts (wooden floors and walls with a canvas roof) and Cabins.
Hang Gliding - On our bucket list. Tandem trips cost $249 to $299. The instructor said it is the number one ranked hang gliding location in the world.
Train - There are several short train trips around the city. We plan to ride the train on our return trip during IM weekend.
Whitewater Rafting - It is advertised as the best whitewater rafting east of the Mississippi.

Food
Sugar's Ribs - Fabulous ribs at a local hole in the wall diner.
Terminal Brewhouse - This is where we watched the World Cup finale and enjoyed some homemade craft beers. They also have delightful pot roast nachos and a stout ice cream beer float.
Tremont Tavern - Huge beer selection and delicious sandwiches. It is located on the run course for potential spectators or thirsty athletes.
Cloudland Cavern - Near Cloudland Canyon State Park. It is supposedly the best steakhouse in Chattanooga, but only open Wed to Sunday.