The Impact of the ‘little Things’ and
a Pretty Powerful ‘Little’ Bee!
I am a
great believer in paying attention and been diligent to the little things in
life with the belief that when working towards a bigger goal the consistent
accumulation of the little aspects of this bigger goal is sometimes more
significant in your progress than any one big event.
Matthew
Syed with his book, Bounce - the myth of talent and the power of practice, is
somewhat challenging in its title but once you uncover his wisdom within the
deeper pages of the book his rather brash title starts to make a lot of sense
and works along the philosophy of respecting the power of the
continual/repetitive build up of little things.
So when
deciding to work with my new Coach Michael Lovato one of our key goals was to
improve my ability to train consistently and make a change from the more
periodical 3 week on 1 week off approach that I had been following. Change is
always hard specially when the body perceives the change as stress but without
stress there can be no stimulus to change. So over the last 6 months I have
been working on building consistent training weeks and I am very happy to
report that although its been challenging it’s working.
However
as with all training there are sometimes periods where you are working firmly
and you know your pushing limits but are still hitting the numbers and handling
the load, feeling invincible and then Boom! Suddenly we are hit with a session that
doesn’t
go to plan you don't hit up your numbers or your times and your working hard
but the results are not where they should be and our instant emotion in the
heat of the frustration and fatigue can sometimes be that of failure and that suddenly
after weeks of successful sessions we are very quick to forget that progress
and render ourselves useless and not in shape. (Come on you know we have all
been in that state of irrational thinking at some stage in our triathlon
careers!!)
That's
when the value of having a coach steps in and you have a non emotionally
attached person to remind you of the ‘Little Things’…that its not about
one key session going right or wrong its about the continual build up of the
sessions and progressively gaining strength from those sessions as a whole. No
one session can make you the athlete you want to be. Or to look at it another
way –
although key sessions that go to plan can be a tool for building great confidence
in our ability and a huge boost pre race, I don’t believe that one training session
can define you as an athlete and the form your in.
But in
saying that, one then also has to respect the impact and power of the build of
the little things in the opposite direction. Such as sometimes the body gets
presented with stressors both internally and externally that on there own would
not be a huge deal but with the load of one stressor on top of another and
another on top of an already full training stress the power of this continual
build up of so called “little things” in reverse has to be respected.
The
challenge is however to do exactly that - respect the negative Impact and deal
with it as needed but not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the consistency
of life's ability to just keep slapping you in the face. As assuredly I can
tell you sometimes it can feel like exactly that.
So it
would be that I have had to be reminded of both the positive and negative build
up of the little things. And after experiencing the true positive effect of the
continuous build up of little things through the last 6 months of working
within the new training regime, I now have to recognise and respect the
negative build up.
The last
3 weeks have been one of those challenging times in your life where you have a
plan and a schedule and your excited about getting it done and then you find
out that life has other ideas. Nothing major has gone wrong and for that I am
truly thankful and this is not meant to be a whinging feel sorry for me type of
blog entry. What this is meant to be is a encouragement to anyone else out
there who is or has in the past had periods in there life where they have
experienced this continual light slap in your face from life that after
relentless slapping can stop you from moving forward.
All I can say is random cluster effect. We
live in a broken world therefore we will always have to face challenges at
sometime in our lives. Whether they be of our own making –
unavoidable consequences of our own choices or mistakes or simply been in the
wrong place at the wrong time – fate or bad luck what ever you choose
to recognise life’s ups and downs as. And yes it sucks but as my mum would say
if you can persevere through (and as
long as there is an open door I think you should) it will be very character
building...
However at
some points in my life (say Gal Bladder Boulder 2012) I feel like surely I have
enough character? But the fact is apparently you can never have enough.
So let me
tell you about the last 3 weeks;
Week one
was about dealing with a bike crash and a resulting pelvis lower back issue, an
allergic reaction to a wasp sting and a DNF in the Auckland half, a disappointing
crappy week but not the end of the world. Week two brought about a fresh start
and ideas for building back into training, but as I said life sometimes has
other ideas and Monday arrived and so did a stomach bug, so I plugged through
that week patiently then just as I was coming right from that a delightful
little bee ended that flash of optimism with a beauty of a sting in my left eye
which by the next morning had left me completely swollen up and blind in that
eye. The stunning selfie is below. (Yes I know I am been very brave publishing
this selfie- not my prettiest moment)
The bike
crash, wasp sting and tummy bug are all pretty much mundane trials of life but
since the sting has an element of ridiculous yet impeccable timing of been in
the wrong place at the wrong time I will tell you more detail….
The sting
itself happened as I was cruising down Sand Stone Rd minding my own business on
my way home from my first decent ride back from the stomach bug.
Thinking
pretty much at that exact point how lucky I was to be out on my bike again and
getting back into the plan, when fate would have it a bee (doing apparently the
same thing except on his Saturday morning adventure was heading up hill) and I collided
paths. He into the meniscal little gap between the rim of my sunglasses and the
top of my eye. I refuse to give the little fellow credit that he was feeling
vindictive and had such good aim he did this on purpose and choose to presume
that on that Saturday lunchtime he was just as unlucky as I was and his morning
of exercise and adventure was just as abruptly interrupted as mine…
Or should I say life plans as if he was a bee I was unfortunately it for him.
Putting
my initial “you have to be kidding me” aside I mean seriously another sting?
I pulled up and tried in vain to blindly scrap the sting out. A quick TX to
Marc was sent to let him know what had happened alluding to the fact that I may
need a pick up as I had limited time before it swelled to much and unsure if I
had enough time to get home before the eye closed up. If my calculations were
right I had just enough time.
So the
rest of my ride that was originally all about “lets get home before the rain hits”
became a race against how quickly my body would absorb and react to the bee
venom.
As luck
would finally have it I got home fine.
Some how though
I was still in a bit of denial about the Impact of the little bee and I was
frustrated to have yet another thing to deal with (but to my defence I had
never had a bee sting in the eye before and I have never had a bee sting on top
of a very recent wasp sting on top of a low immune system after been sick) and
found myself the next morning despite the fact that my eye was swelled shut and
I was one eyed and feeling very much less than my normal self, lacing up
determined to get out for a run. With the stubborn mindset we all know too well
as triathletes that I am finally healthy enough to do some real training and
after the 2 weeks I have just had this little bee sting isn't going to interfere....
this coupled with rational that there are lots of people who have to run with
sight in only one eye and they have adapted therefore I will be fine.
However
one should be smart enough to mix their determined optimism with a slant of
wisdom and realism and realise that perhaps those very talented and inspiring
people who do run with sight in only one eye took the time to allow there
bodies to adapt. And that since my body was not exploding with huge amounts of
cortisol flight response, as my body was no longer in danger that it was not
going to miraculously adapt and allow me to run as normal. Yes some of us are
reluctant learners... Struggling to see out of my sunglasses on an over cast
day but resigned to wearing them as was Sunday morning family hour at the park
and I didn't want to scare any one I struggled through the weird phenomenon of
trying to move somewhat quickly over varying terrain with majorly compromised
depth of perception. After 50 mins of trying to kid myself that all was okay
the kink in the neck from the unskilled tipping of the head on all angles to
see with one eye what normally I can with 2 I gave up and headed home.
The run
was not smart or brave ... just putting it out there, it made the swelling
worse so I finally left my cloud of denial and feeling slightly defeated I
headed off to the A & E to get some major anti histamines and antibiotics.
The lovely Marc escorted me and reminded me to keep my glasses on so as to not
scare anyone, him politely alluding to the fact that yes I really did look that
bad.
So here
it is week three was spent recovering from the combo of the sting and the harsh
drugs. Which at the tail end of the last couple weeks took a while. And it is
here that I had to allow myself to not accept defeat but to respect the power
of the little things because in this case, although all events were unrelated
the impact of each event had a compounding effect on my bodies ability to deal
with and recover from each incident, making each progressive incident a lot
more powerful then if it had been an isolated effect.
But
that's the key isn't it really and my point and I guess the lesson learnt for
me that I will take with me to help further build my ‘character’
... Is that if the body can respond so negatively in 3 weeks with continual
little slaps in the face from the world it has to work In the reverse. Just
imagine the positive effect in 3 weeks where the little things do go in your favour...
And then another 3 weeks and compound that with another... So as I said believe
in the power of consistency of the little things. And they will build something
very powerful.
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