You become a product of your environment

I met up with Paul and Tony last night for a couple of drinks.  I've known Paul for a couple of years now and first met him through the Granite State Triathlon Club. Since then we've trained for several races together including the Manchester Marathon, Patriot Half Ironman and currently we are both training for Ironman Lake Placid.

We've had some long training sessions including some mutli-hour bike rides and runs.  I can't even count the number of topics you cover when on a three hour run. So, inevitably when we get together outside of training or exchange e-mails the topic of triathlon will come up, whether it is a tough workout, a cool new bike or upcoming race expectations. 

My training has been way off for the past week due to an injury (rib injury that will take 4 weeks to recover from!) and I've gotten frustrated from the lack of activity I'm relegated to. I've felt my motivation slowly going away.  However I think I've become conditioned to think about triathlon when I interact with Paul. After hanging out with Paul and Tony last night (and yes we talked triathlon) I woke up this morning with a much more optimistic outlook on my injury and upcoming training in the next couple of months.

Paul is part of my triathlon environment which led to the title of this post - you become a product of your environment.  I believe this statement is true no matter how you look at it.  

It may seem that there are exceptions to this.  There are story's like Oprah's, Art Berg's and people you meet everyday. You have probably met people yourself who after hearing their story think, "how does this person have such an optimistic outlook on life?" These people "beat the odds" of a tough environment only to become successful, in whatever way you want to define success.  They are incredible examples of being pro-active in creating positive definitions about events in their life, they find the positive in a situation, use it to their advantage and embody one of my favorite phrases - 'no event has any inherent meaning, only the meaning we give it'. 

However, even those people we consider exceptions to the rule: "you become a product of your environment" changed their environment in one way or another.  It may have been their physical environment; maybe they chose to find a new cirlce of friends, move to a different place or find a different job.  However in all cases it was their mental environment they changed first which likely led to a change in their physical environment.

Looking outside these seemingly extreme examples (I think most people have their own version of a challenging environment) I believe everyone can use this belief to their advantage.

What would you change about your life if you believed that you were at least in some part a product of your environment? If you had the choice, why wouldn't you create the best environment possible to reach whatever goals and dreams you had? If you can't immediately change your physical environment, there is no one stopping you from changing your mental environment.

What are you going to do to or what do you now do to change your environment, mental or physical?

Over the next several weeks and months I'll be getting into more details about my fundraising efforts for the Bretton Woods Adaptive ski program.  In those posts I hope you'll find examples of people who have changed their mental environment, no matter how difficult their situation seemed to be.

Sport specific training

The more years I've spent in triathlon the better I've come to understand the importance of sport specific training.  It's critical that you put the hours and mileage into swimming, biking and running in order to perform your best on race day.

Last night I was brutally reminded of the importance of sport specific training.

I played basketball in high school  and would consider myself an average to above average player.  Every year my alma mater has alumni game in which the "old timers" (those who graduate more than 5 years ago - I just had my 20th HS reunion) play the Junior Varsity team.  I've played off and on over the years depending on which of my friends were also in town.

This year's game was last night and even though none of my high school buddies were in town, I decided to go play.  I just did the Green Mountain marathon the beginning of last month and I've been running, biking and swimming pretty regularly since the race.  What I'm saying is that I'm in pretty good shape and figured I would be able to run circles around those 14 and 15 year old JV players.

The harsh reality of my sport specific training up to this point is that I was not prepared for the short sprints and starting/stopping nature of playing basketball.  To say nothing of the fact that I hadn't picked up a basketball in several months (which also showed dramatically!).

If I go to play at next year's game, I'm going to make sure that I get a little sport specific training in before game day!

Running at warp speed

This morning I went for my first run since the marathon, which was almost three weeks ago.  I was a little nervous about how the tendonitis in my left foot would feel, but it turned out to be back to normal. Thank goodness.

I was up early, about 4:30, so after checking my e-mail, the weather and my twitter account, I headed out for my run by 5, armed with my reflective vest and headlamp.  It's an unusually warm morning in NH for this time of year, 57 degrees, and while it isn't raining there is a fine mist in the air.

Well, the effect that had while I was running was a little like seeing the warp speed effect on the Star Trek (my guilty pleasure in college with my roommates was watching Picard on the Next Generation episodes).

The headlamp shines a pretty focused beam of light straight in front my eyes. With the water droplets seemingly hanging in mid-air as I ran throuh them, the effect it gave was like going at warp speed - even though I was far from it. After all, It was my first run in a while.

Another way to describe, if you've ever driven through a snow storm at night (something we get to do plenty here in NH). It's like the snow flying toward toward your headlights with the snow being so heavy that you can't see much further than a few feet in front of the car because the snowflakes are catching all the light from the headlights in a successful effort to blind your driving efforts.

The case for a coach and speed work

I've had a triathlon coach for the past few years. She's awesome. Great plans, really cares about the athletes she coaches, very responsive and accessible. I've only used her plans for triathlons and I'm wishing I hadn't waited so long.

Ever since my first marathon I've had a goal to break the 4 hour mark. My time that race was 4:17:49. My best time prior to the Green Mountain Marathon was 4:14:53 the first time I did the Disney Marathon - a 9:44/minute mile pace.

Before Green Mountain I always just followed a plan I picked up in one of the Tri magazines. Heavy cross training with the core long runs on the weekend. They got me to the finish line but never prepared me for a PR.

Determined to break four hours this year I asked Suzan to help me out - Thank goodness. The plan had a much heavier run focus with cross training still in the mix. Also more speed work and track work than I've ever done - what a difference. Her help led me to a new PR by about 25 minutes - a full 1 minute per mile faster than my best time!

So, while long slow distance may be at the core of your training plan, don't leave around the speed and track work. And go hire Suzan.

Vermont City Marathon - 4:17:49 - 9:50 min/mi
Disney Marathon - 4:14:53 - 9:44 min/mi
Disney Marathon - 4:19:51 - 9:55 min/mi
Manchester Marathon - 4:30:28 - 26.2 mi - 10:19 min/mi
Green Mountain Marathon - 3:49:31 - 8:46 min/mi (first marathon with Suzan's help)

Green Mountain Marathon

It was a good day. I have been super busy since the race on Saturday but I wanted to give a quick update and post that I had a great race. The official time is 3:49:31 (though I got a strange e-mail from the race director asking me to confirm my bib number and time because there was some kind of confusion?). My watch showed 3:47:45.

In either case, I broke my goal time of four hours and set a new PR by at least 25 minutes! Suzan, if you are ready, you rock!

She gave me a training plan and told me it was designed for a time of 3 hours 45 minutes. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical with my previous best time of 4:15 and my longest run six weeks prior to the race was 13 miles. I know I did the work, but kudos to her for giving me the

plan.

On a bummer note, I got a horrible case of tendonitis in my left foot. It's feeling better today, but man did it hurt.

Thanks to Tom and Tish McGonegal for taking photos of the race. She caught one of me on the way out and one at the finish line with Connor running beside me.

With the sore foot, I haven't done anything except sleep in (which is relative, I'm out of bed by six) but I think I'm going to hit the pool tomorrow.