As I listened to the announcers calling the Ironman World Championship today I was struck with the frequency and ease at which they would give their opinion as to what the athlete should do. I heard, “Just keep the pace high so others can’t pass you. Make your move now it looks like the right time to do it. Push hard to the finish line.” And for some reason I was struck by the advice and what a viewer would think when listening to the announcers. If you were listening and had never competed in an Ironman you might think it was indeed that easy to “just go for it”. For those of us who are part of THPL community we know that endurance events like the Ironman are über-demanding, and while race strategies like the announcers recommended are great to shoot for, they are often not as easy to implement. And so rather than find ourselves in a time and place when the advice does not connect with the reality of what is possible, we need to consider how to prepare differently so that we can implement the advice when given (or heard). The way to connect the “easy to say” with the “easy to do” is with preparation, anticipation, sound training and race conditioning. There are no shortcuts to high performance.

That stated, I am certain that the boys and girls racing today in Kona were well trained and ready for anything. And they desperately wanted to do one of those moves when the announcers made them. And there were times it most likely worked and sometimes when it did not. After all of our time in the THPL community we know that peak performance is always the goal but never the guarantee. And so if indeed the moment is right then we go for it. The rest of the time we leave all that we have on the course and we smile when we hear someone say, “you should have just run harder at the end”.

Loving Life with realism and dreams

Ciao

joe