Two athletes discuss how mindset shapes training and racing. They argue for long-term goals that take five or more years, treating training as adventure rather than chasing quick wins. Patience and embracing uncertainty matter more than achieving any single goal.
Chapters
Each person has some level of doubt, and there are different times in our life that the doubt may be louder or the glass ceiling may be thicker, but there is a limit to what we think we're capable of. We all have an idea of what the lid is on our peak performance, and to be honest, we don't know. Science doesn't know. You know, we can project, but If you were to kind of live and train with that as a question mark, instead of knowing what you think you're capable of, just giving, giving up the idea that you have any idea and saying, you know, I'm going to treat this as an adventure and as an exploration and see.
Yeah.
And for me, that question you know, manifested in running Badwater. It manifested in running the original Six Hundos Challenge, doing the six original 100-milers inside of 13 weeks. Like, I didn't know if I could do that. I didn't really believe one way or another. I just went, for this summer, I'm gonna live the question. And that's really— it's not about achieving it. Or not. It's, it's about what quality your life takes on when you're in the space of adventurous inquiry. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you're either living on the edge, you're either living a daring life, or you're kind of wasting it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, there's a few interesting quotes around that as well, along the lines of, when I'm at the end of my life, I want to look back on a life where where it's not that I said like, I surely lived a safe life, but truly lived a life full of adventure and unknown, and I gave it the fullest everything that I could.
Yeah, I think the— there's two major factors that play a part in, um, goal achievement. Some people have the disposition to to go very hyperbolic. They're going for like the top shelf out of nothing. Like, I've never run before, I've been running for 2 months and I want to run Barkley, you know?
Like, yeah.
And, and then there are other people that are like, I've been running marathons for 15 years and I just want to run 5 minutes faster, you know? So, um, one element of, at least in our sport, it— there's a genetic predisposition And you have a baseline VO2 max, how, how well your body produces, uh, processes and utilizes oxygen is a big factor in long distance running. Um, another factor is just your physical durability. Some people can handle very stressful workouts and recover from them quickly. And, um, we're younger, we can bounce back quicker, but each individual person body body type, their biomechanics leads to less injury or more injury. You know, some people's bones and tendons hold up better than others. It's just, it's just the nature of the game. And then there's the mental side, you know. I think that in our day and age, present day is very swipe left, swipe right, um, you know. Yeah, move from this career to a totally new career. Relationships are disposable. Instagram, Facebook, social media. People are really impatient. I see more people that sign up for a running program that haven't done a marathon that are already talking 100 miler this year. And I think that there's a long game that we need to play And I think the thing that I got hooked into, both by a really great high school running coach and by some of my early influences in the sport, was you wanna pick a goal that is gonna take 5 or more years to achieve. Like something that you can't even imagine yourself doing right now, because the process of exploration and discovery and perseverance you're gonna have to go through to get there will put your life into a very distinct space in the day-to-day of chasing after that. And this idea that, you know, I'm gonna set this goal and I better achieve it this year or I'm done, you know, and people that get injured and quit right away, this just isn't meant for me. So I think that that's the main thing is that a, pandemic condition in our society is impatience. You can work towards something, but it may or may not come to you quickly. And you know, that can be in the realm of education, that can be in the realm of profession, that can be in the realm of relationship. Like, you want something, you have to be willing to work for it, and you have to be willing to overcome adversity to get to it.
Yeah, I see it all the time too, that people overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term, and they underestimate how much— like, when you think 12 months ahead, 18 months, 24 months, 5 years, and that— yeah, that's definitely thinking further out and gradually being patient to work, chip away, yep, and improving.
Turn those feet over, everything you got left. You're not saving anything else. Now's the time to battle, Mike. That a boy! And it's incredible to watch him fight over here. That a boy!
