What Are You Training For?

The question is a common one, especially from those that know your drive and motivation when it comes to sports and fitness. It usually is asked right after "How are the kids?" "How was your last event?" Then you know it's coming, you know they are going to ask. This is where the emotions come in. You are either giddy with excitement to tell them "what you are training for" or you are dreading the question "what are you training for." Giddy, because you are ready to embark on the training journey that you will travel preparing to peak at the precise time of the event that you want to share with them you have committed to do. Or, dreading, because you have chosen not to put anything on the calendar and will miss that day to day grind of focus, accountability and fortitude it takes to be "training" for something. I am currently in the later shoes. There is nothing on my calendar that I have committed to for the first time in 24 months. Each day of those 24 months was precisely scribed out, planned for, and dictated by one or more events that I had committed to or qualified for. So every night I knew I needed to head to bed by a certain time to recover from the current day and rest for the next day of training. My life was planned out every day for at least the next six months in advance for over 2 years. Don't get me wrong, God was good. His hand was on the situation and the experiences I was living. However, I have begun to question the benefit of the continual pursuit of striving for the same experiences over and over. I don't receive a paycheck for triathlon. I receive an emotion. I had to ask myself, do I want to pursue the same experience and emotion over and over again? If I was "training for something," for the same events or type of events over and over again, what new opportunities and experiences would I be passing up? I recently had a client ask me what I thought about them taking their $1000 personal training budget and taking up a new sport by buying a SUP board. Can you guess my response? Go for it! Change it up! If "what you are training for" (which can also be rephrased to "how are you training") has yielded the same answer for the past year or two, hop off the spinning hamster wheel and embrace a new experience. We are what we experience. Who are you and who do you want to be?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wow! What A Ride!

Image
Today - 25 years Ago. Kona Oct. 2013 May 13, 1989. Yup. The day we were married. River Place Country Club. Only a club and golf course back then. No houses. One road. I think that was one of the last big rainstorms we had, too - aside from last night! Well, actually, one of the last most memorable storms. My dad forgot his bow tie-thingy (not really a bow tie, but a western version of that). He left the country club about an hour prior to the start of the wedding and 30 minutes after the wedding was supposed to start hadn't shown back up. The creeks were rising, the canyons flooding, and large softball size hail was falling from the sky. Dad was late - but not too late to have put one of the super-sized hail balls in the freezer for proof as to why a room full of people were anxiously awaiting his arrival. It was a "turd floater" as we call that kind of storm here in Texas. But right when we decided to go ahead and start the wedding (because everyone was running la
Read more

A Year of Living Present

Image
 Be Present With Me God does have a sense of humor I'm convinced. There have been many times in my life I lift my chin to the sky and give Him a little wink. "HaHa. You knew what you were doing." He's wise like that, and me, sometimes not so sharp. Like my last name. Present. For years I joked, "...and accounted for." But then mindfulness became a thing and I almost had to say, "uh oh". What excuse do I have? Present. I'm going to stay away from the "being mindful" aspect. Let's keep this simple. A 12-month focus with a personal practice of being in the moment, engaged, committed, connected, immersed. There are many words that describe "it", but doing "it" can be another story.  I find it's purely a habit. We all know there are a gazillion distractions in our day and age: technology, multi-tasking, a fast-paced life, not enough hours in the day - another list that goes on and on. But the habits we navigate
Read more

Living Out Our Choices

Image
My parents are now in their mid-80's. It is so odd for me to think of my parents nearing the last chapters of their lives. To me, my timeless memories of my dad will always be racing me on horseback up canyon walls that had my stirrups dragging the ground and my face buried in my horses main we were at such a steep angle; him pushing me down so I'd have to get back up to win a sprint across the yard with him; building a backstop so he could teach us how to connect with a baseball; and always telling me "If you're not falling, you're not learning." My lifelong mom memories are of her nurturing us and our friends - weekend after weekend, feeding us almost every other hour when we'd come in off the lake "starving"; always making sure the fridge was stocked to host the revolving door of lake friends that would come over; and then when my kids were born, having never-ending energy to be the first one up and over at the house checking in on what th
Read more