BREAKFAST ALONE; Get your ass out of bed before your partner/kids/parakeet. This gives you 'you' time. Now you can chew your porridge and chew over whatever sport-porn magazine you have on the kitchen table. It may just be a moment of morning glory as you dribble the spit of jealousy onto the page containing the latest, impossibly sexy,carbon trickery, or perhaps the pair of runners that weigh less than your 30g serving of oats. But it puts you into that Runner/ Cyclist/ Triathlete frame of mind for the whole day.
ESCAPE; I've never minded hitting the road in the dark of pre-dawn. If it means getting my training done before my family notice I've gone, then its win-win. You come back with a baggy of endorphins that will energise more than any chalky-white line off a pub's toilet cistern and its fairly free in comparison. Back by 10am you can juggle the lot, give your partner free time or attention by the ladleful and keep everyone guessing as to why you are permanently smiling. Heading out, in fact, often heading home before some clubs have left on their group rides often gives you an amazing feeling of having got one over on everyone too! Try it!
PREP; In the 3.5 minutes it takes to heat my three-bears worth of porridge and watch the thermostat on the coffee machine ratchet up I will have filled my two bottles, one with electrolytes and one with protein, laid out my apparel [sounds better than tired 'aul gear] in order of putting on, starting with chamois cream and HRM strap. And everything is right side out so as not to resemble an octopus in the grey light of dawn. Bike is in the hall, tyres pumped the previous evening, oil bottle outside the front door in a flower pot so as not to stain the hall mat. Oh, and there's a scoop of protein powder waiting in the shaker for my return.
CHARGING UP; Not like the good old days, a lick of speed in your bottle like for a Grand Prix chaudiere race in Northern France. Charging today is a double shot of oily espresso. It releases chlorogenic acid that sets your endurance day up to be more easily endured. And of course there's the other charging, plugging in your Garmin or whatever GPS you use. Ever spent an eternity watching one bar of battery life wondering when it will shut down? Most likely in the middle of your super energetic and in-need-of-accuracy interval. And charge the phone. It might just be for Strava but the one time you forget to charge it will be the crash/ hospital/ carnage of a lifetime ride. A charged phone at just the right moment doesn't have a price.
DOWNTIME; Set a weekend or holiday where you do nothing. Be human again. Don't mention sport. Shower everyone around you with love and proof that you can be more than one-dimensional.
TARGET; You have to have at least one. Its so easy to fall off the wagon when you don't have a D-day or two pencilled in on your calendar. You might occasionally kill the cookie jar, empty the dessert trolley or guzzle a province worth of Tempranillo but you will stumble back to your default setting of 'in training' if you know there is a day of reckoning. Excuses have a hollow sound when you have targeted something and told everyone about it. Without the D-day marked off there's no reason not to go full diabetic with the diet or full orbit with the alcohol.
BELIEVE; Hard to believe it but your local pub is often frequented by chubby gobshites talking behind your back, in between bouts of listening to their arteries hardening. Alcohol and low-level lighting help to bring fool's thoughts even lower than you can imagine. But you are NOT in that pub. You believe in yourself and what you are doing...training, racing, resting, planning...and aren't you the lucky one? Sometimes you may not feel it, maybe you are tired or injured, but you are always lucky. Fit, awake, alive because you believe in what you are doing. And you don't have the banger headaches, broadening gut and slowing bowel movements of the gossiping beer-swiller either!
SLEEP; Ah Morpheus. Get your rest. Compression socks, no coffee after 5pm, Read a good book but get resting. Human Growth Hormone is great stuff! Ask Sylvester Stallone! But seriously, HGH is a naturally occurring hormone that supports recovery and repair and its released when you nap/ sleep. Free drugs? Get them into you! The other free drug available to you is serotonin. Mood elevators can be bought on any street corner or from the pale dude in the pub jax or gained naturally by getting your R.E.M. sleep. It's a short segment of your night's sleep but its the one that keeps you sane, alert, smiling and motivated. Oh, and you need your beauty sleep for God's sake!
PERSEVERENCE; Ghosts coming out of the mist, or the "neon haze with Confederate dead" to quote James Lee Burke. Yep, you see them; the crappiest weather...Baltic temps, Biblical rain, Floridian wind, yet they are out...exercising, gaunt, doubled and smiling. Living here on a Craggy Island you'd often feel as if you were in the Hobbit. Except our little spot feels like its weather being thrown at us, by the bucket load.
Of course, you also have to persevere against the ignorance of those that don't understand your dedication in the face of so many obstacles. As an island with such a widespread diaspora, its incredible how some people can be so insular and parochial in their mindset. But ignorance is just another obstacle for you to overcome, because you CAN.
CELEBRATE; Achieved your goal? Reward yourself! Super happy just getting there? Reward yourself! Beaten the odds on your generation/ family/ background/ age/ weight of expectation? Celebrate! It might be a bar of chocolate or even falling asleep at the bar...but do it. Your soul will thank you for it!
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