New Years resolutions need to be anchored in absurdity and made achievable through our dreams. They need to be hard so we have the opportunity to fail. It is actually in the failing that makes the goal inspiring. JFK didn’t encourage the American people to go to the corner store to get sausage roll. He challenged them to lift their eyes to the impossible. And our mothers kindly said the same thing to lovingly nurse us towards a better version of ourselves.
If you are reading this, you already know that endurance training goes well beyond the physical realm. To train and finish the crazy goals that you set yourself you need, mental fortitude, resilience, and a strong sense of self. On the surface it would seem that an Austrian psychotherapist born in 1870 would know very little about endurance sport considering the first marathon was not run until he was 26 years old. It is only when you delve into Adlerian psychology, that you can see that there is a direct link between the mind and endurance.
In fact if you did sleep you were hindering your progress, hamstringing your earnings and harpooning your career trajectory. One movie from the 1980s that popularized the idea of lack of sleep being a tool for a successful life was "Wall Street" (1987), in which the character Gordon Gekko famously says, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
The ultra 355 endurance triathlon is a three day event that consists of a 5km swim followed by a 100km ride on day 1. Day 2 is a 200km bike and day 3 is a 50km run. Each day has a 8 hour cut off and athletes are required to be self supported. According to Ultra355, the ultra355 event attracts and unites competing athletes under its core values of respect (for self, the distance and for others), mateship and community.
Nestled in the rolling green hills adjacent to the Maleny golf course lies the hidden gem of the sunshine coast park run scene. Maleny Park Run.
As with all park runs, Maleny reflects the spirit of the community in which it is situated. And the Maleny spirit can best be described as confidently quirky. For those of you who are familiar with the eclectic street wares of the Maleny township you will know that Maleny has a none-to-subtle mix of old and new as well as a combination of shabby shek mixed with avant-garde. This inherent complexity can best be summed up with the perplexing juxtaposition of knitted telegraph poles adornments outside of multi million dollar high end properties. All things considered you can’t help but be impressed at how confident it is at being unashamedly unconventional.
Just as we are born naked we also start running naked. Running naked is all about instinct and desire. Running naked is running with no technology and no data. Running naked is primeval as it encapsulates the reason many of us start running. Many of us run because it made us ‘feel’ at some level, like it did for Billy and his Mum. Whether we hated the way we looked in the mirror or hated the…
I have often thought that training is akin to cooking. You have the ingredients, you have the method and you have an element, usually an oven, which cooks and brings everything together into a final product. I have titled this blog “The Perfect Training Soufflé” because, as a child of the 70’s, the soufflé was a mythical dish that everyone spoke about. It was the dish that was impossible to get right but…
In February of 2018 I signed up for the Sunshine Coast Ironman 70.3. After I clicked on the ‘register’ button and loudly cursed Active.com for their 8% slush fund fee, I was fired up and ready to train the house down and crack out a PB effort. I had 6 months and a reasonable level of fitness so my first order of business was to take a month off!
Before you stop reading allow me to explain.
This review will read more like a reflective blog article, so feel free to scroll to the end for my verdict on the Salming Speed6. Otherwise, read on for a more scenic route discussing speed in the endurance athlete.
Firstly, let me put myself and this article in context by stating I am an endurance athlete and as such I have always loved the long run, all day rides and the allure of...
For those of us who were lucky enough to live in the no nonsense times of the '70s and '80s, we experienced bread at 20 cents per loaf, petrol was cheap enough to run a V8, newspapers were the chief source of up-to-date news and running shoes were simply called 'sneakers'. These multipurpose athletic shoes were used to play basketball on Friday night, go for a jog on Saturday and mow the grass on Sunday. The mere thought of having...
Nothing can prepare you for how your body feels after swimming 10km in the open ocean, then switching to sitting on a bike for up to 6 hours. When swimming for three hours your body is totally supported by the water. Your head is facing down, your heart gets used to not having to pump against gravity, your internal organs shift position and your muscles have begun the atrophy process as they get used to the weightlessness of the water...
In my previous blog about Ultraman Australia, I spoke about the history of the race which has stretched back to 1983 and seen just over 1,000 athletes cross the line. My relatively short personal history with Ultraman started in 2015, when I came across the race for the first time. It wasn’t until the following year that I was selected to compete in the event. Having spent over two years...
For those unfamiliar with Ultraman, it is a three day triathlon in which participants undertake a gruelling 10km ocean swim, 421.1km cycle and 84.3km double marathon. Commencing in Hawaii in 1983, over the years it has slowly branched out to several locations, including Noosa Australia in 2015. The Ultraman ethos of "aloha" (love), "ohana" (family) and "kokua" (help) have been the guiding principles of the organising committee at each of...
In a saturated shoe market, offering a slew of features, it is a brave shoe company that decides to step into this competitive playing field. Swedish company Salming is one such shoe manufacturer, who has stepped into the arena with a full battle cry in the form of its flagship training shoe, EnRoute.
While Salming boasts an impressive resume of shoes and...
New Zealand claims the title of birthplace of the running revolution from back in early 1960, when Arthur Lydiard formed the Auckland Joggers Club. After running with Lydiard in 1962, Bill Bowerman, former track coach at the University of Oregon, brought jogging back to America. The rest, as they say, is history. Bowerman went on to be co-founder of Nike and from this early beginning, led by Bowerman, running grew into one of the largest...
