My blog is experiencing technical difficulty and I don’t want to take the time to troubleshoot it. So forgive the weird spacing issues…
It was fun to watch this little video and note how this is exactly the process my hubby followed last year in training for the 1/2-Ironman…
But he definitely put a lot more than 20 hours into it. 😉
Here’s what happened, as observed from the sidelines…
I’m putting in a Before-the-First-Step, though, because this part was pivotal and easy to overlook.
First, he noticed a problem. He’s been overweight for a long time and although Purium helped a *lot* with that, he still wasn’t where he wanted to be physically. He knew exercise was important but he just couldn’t get himself motivated to try.
So he hit a little bit of a rock bottom point of frustration with himself and he took it to God. It went something like this:
“I can’t do it…Â I’ve struggled with this my whole life and I’ve tried and it’s just not working. But I know you can. So I’m asking for help – again – and this time I’m acknowledging that I’m completely useless. IÂ know that I can’t do it without your help. This time, I know that if I get there, it was you that did it, because clearly, I can’t.”
He had a tiiiiiiny little bit of hope that things could change and a great big huge desire to see it happen. He felt like this is what God wanted for him, and he knew that God could change him — but that was about it.
The next day he woke up with a desire to run. Like, he woke up at 4:30am and it sounded fun.
FUN, people.
That had never happened.
So, that was the pre-step. Not sure how you’d sum it up in a bullet-point or a catchy slogan or an easy-to-remember tag.
Prayer + Humility + Jesus = Change of heart
And then, to get to work. This is the part the video outlined so well:
1. Decide exactly what you want to do.
(1/2-Ironman race on Big Island, 2018)
2. Break it down into subskills.
(Swimming, biking, running… and the associated subskills for each of those)
3. Research
(Oh, man, did he do research! He read 5-10 books on triathlons, running, fitness, etc. – learning a great deal about how to maximize training time and fuel your body so it can handle that kind of stress, etc.)
4. Remove distractions
(He’s always been great at that when he has a job he wants to do. That one came at a cost, and most of his training was super-early-morning.)
5. Pre-commit to your practice time
(Using the best of what he’d read up on, he planned his training out, Jan-May, and stuck to it, tweaking it every week as needed.)
And that’s how he went from almost-nothing to “You’re doing what???” in 6 months. It was fun to watch his progress, and great to see him keep working on it. I’m excited to see what his 2019 training season brings!
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