Forgive me readers for it has been 4 months since my last post…

As I begin my fourth year of multi-sport endurance training and my 36 weeks of training for Ironman Wisconsin 2010 (yes I’m doing it again), I think I have officially recovered from Ironman Wisconsin 2009. The last sign of recovery (for you squeamish types; you might want to forgo the next couple of sentences) my pinky toenail has finally fallen off this past week and the new one is coming in nicely. During the bike leg of last years event I developed some fairly severe foot pain. I developed a quarter size blister in the center of the ball of my foot which expressed itself during the last 30 miles of the bike and throughout the run. I tried to over compensate on the run which resulted in running on the side of my foot and rubbing my pinky toe. It turned black right away after the race and I figured it would fall off. I never imagined it would take 4 plus months to run its course.

Anyways, its a new year, and many have begun the year with good intentions. You have all made your resolutions. Whether it be to improve your fitness and health, go back to school, or work on your relationships with family or with God, we all have started out with good intentions. I recently received a little snippet and wanted to share it with you. Maybe it may help you turn your good intentions into reality.

Learning To Prepare For The Best John Leonard
As I write this in early January in Fort Lauderdale, the air temperature is a “balmy” 42 degrees….well, balmy if you’re from Green Bay, Wisconsin, maybe. Here in South Florida, that’s a cold wave. We swim outside, and the water temperature is 75 degrees…..the heaters can’t keep up when the air is this cold. The wind chill factor, according to Channel 7, is…well, we don’t want to know the wind chill with a nice brisk 20 mile an hour wind coming off the Everglades. My phone rings at 5 AM and a small voice on the other end asks plaintively, “Do we really have swim practice, Coach John?” Yes, we really do. WHY? Is the next question, which I wrestle with myself on the 15 minute drive to the pool….why put teenagers in the water on this cold and nasty morning when both they and I would prefer to stay snuggled in at home for another hour or hour and a half. Now, I KNOW why, but can I express it to my swimmers? Yes, I’ll try. Everyone, on the day after the high school state meet, vows that “next year” they will A) make a final, B) Make the meet C) win an event or D) write in your own goal here. It’s easy to vow to do something the day after, when you are excited, full of the promise of life and get up and go. It’s a lot harder to REMEMBER what you wanted to do in early January when it’s 5 AM and cold outside. Then it’s a lot harder and a lot easier to rationalize, “it’s just one workout”. The problem is, when teenagers begin to learn to rationalize, they get really good at it really fast, and pretty soon, the ACTION required to fulfill the commitments to those goals/dreams, falls prey to the rationalization. And after you rationalize the decision you want to make the first time, it’s so much easier to do it the next time, and the time after that, and pretty soon, the goal is just a dream, because you’re rationalizing yourself into thinking, “I’d like to do that if everything could be perfect for me, and it would never be cold in the morning, or no social events would ever conflict with practice, and time with my friends always went the way I want it to.“ But things never go perfectly. The ONLY thing you can successfully predict is that obstacles to your goal WILL come up, and little or nothing will go smoothly. And that consistency in preparation is the only way to raise the percentages of the chance you will reach your goal. Read that again….”raise the percentages of the chance…” Not a guarantee. If it’s a good goal, there are no guarantees, EXCEPT that if you don’t prepare correctly, according to the plan, you won’t raise your chance of success, you’ll lower it. So why go to practice at 5 AM in the cold? Because it’s part of the plan, and it raises your chance of success. But most of all, because you have told yourself that you will commit to doing it. And if you let yourself down, who won’t you let down? Prepare for a chance for success. And feel really good about doing that.