Quit all the whining already...
There, I said it. And if you are looking for anything other than tough love right now, you should probably stop reading.
If you need to, blame me or someone else- go for it.
But it won’t get you anywhere.
It won’t make you better today than you were yesterday or better tomorrow than you are today. Improvement comes from self realization, self accountability and self motivation…Period.
Every day, I have been reading articles ‘written by experts’, social media posts, and general commentary from the triathlon community. And while there is a ton of positivity going around, I am also hearing a lot of:
“I have lost my motivation”
“Without races, I don’t know what to do”
“I guess it’s Margarita Time” (That actually sounds like a pretty good idea).
Blah..blah..blah….
And while I fully understand that there is a huge buildup for an event and how it is really something to look forward to and point towards(I made a career out of doing this), I do not understand how not having this arbitrary event can trump your internal motivation to be better, the joy you experience from training, or anything else along the way.
To be completely frank- If you don’t have motivation and drive now, if you Don’T find joy and pleasure from the training, then you never really had it to begin with.
And if that is the case, maybe you should think about what does motivate you and what types of training or ‘adventure’ you can do that is sustainable. That adds value to your life. Because at the end of the day- that’s what we all should be doing here.
My training partner and I, Daniel Brienza, always talk about things that get us excited and how to incorporate it into our training. Last year, we decided that our main goal would be to:
“Do really cool sh*t”.
This got us excited, it allowed us to create performance goals around this, and it allowed us to get better because we were excited every day to do something else that was really cool. It allowed us to dream big and gave us flexibility to stay fresh. I gotta say, he took this a little too far, but it made us both better. We did big and small things, like playing ping pong before bike rides to get our competitive juices firing or deciding who paid for water when we had to refill. So, I ask you- what’s your drive? What’s your “cool stuff?”. If you don’t know, go and Find it!
In terms of performance- Do you want to know when most triathletes get better?
It’s not in the middle of a race season. It is in the winter months, it is during the shoulder seasons, it is when you can have a dedicated block of time to singularly focus a skill, sport or craft. So, if you want to find motivation and find joy- find it now. Are things different? Are things maybe a bit harder if you are now playing ‘teacher, mom, dad, and employee’. Absolutely. I offer one final suggestion and a bit of a cliche regarding this:
Your only limit is your imagination. What you do to be better tomorrow and 6 months and 1 year from now(yes, what you do today will significantly affect how you perform in a year from now- that’s a truth) starts today. It starts with taking a real hard look in the mirror and figuring out what you want, what will make you happy, and what is sustainable as you create order amongst the chaos.
No matter your situation(yes, there are exceptions), this time is actually a gift for you as an athlete and person… use it to grow so you are better next week, the week after, and the months after that.