Superstition Shmuperstition

This week at the gym I had the luxury of being paired up to train with a great guy named Angus that has successfully completed two full Hawaiian IRONMAN World Championship races (the hardest out there). As if when he was writing the book of "how to be a badass" he decided doing just the one world championship didn't fit the story quite right..

Anywho, this training session earned me a heck of a lot more than a thorough demolishing physically - I was also fortunate enough to have the breath left after to have a really great conversation with Angus that is already starting to pay dividends in my mindset for Vasaloppet. He told me a key to endurance racing is to have a special "trigger" that you use to reset your mind along the way. He went on to explain, true to form from the advice I've been starting to get from others as well, that your mind will try to shut your body down to protect it long before it needs to quit - and to keep your wandering mind at bay he suggests having a special trigger. He said one of the best IRONMAN athletes out there stops when he hits "the wall", takes his sunglasses off and rubs both lenses on each of his thighs four times, puts them back on and continues on refreshed. 

Angus then said his own trigger was pinching his right eyebrow. 

I laughed thinking it was a bit superstitious. He didn't laugh. I stopped laughing.

Great point though - if our mind is concerned with protecting us and getting us back to the safe harbour of normal activity rather than endurance racing, it stands to reason that we will need to reset it, or "trigger" it to behave differently. Im taking this advice on and tomorrow morning on my longest training session on the roller skis yet, I will put this in to play when I start to tire. Now, to figure out what my trigger could be... hmm

SO - how do you reset? What do you do when you hit the wall and your mind wanders and just wants to do anything but what you're doing, how do you keep going? I think this is entirely applicable in many daily routines... just don't blame me for getting asked into HR for pinching your left eyebrow with your game face on in the office..

HERE is the link to the Hawaiian IRONMAN World Championship if you're interested :)

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Thank you for reading and as always, I appreciate your support.

Josh