Success

I recently read (actually, I listened to the audiobook) Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. He suggests that success in any endeavor typically results from two things – luck and hard work.

He points out that luck is the result of being born at the right time and living in the right place. One of the many examples he gave for this was Bill Gates. In the late 1960s Gates was in junior high school at the time computers were just beginning to appear. He was very interested in computer technology but in order to become proficient he would have to spend a lot of time playing around with one. That wasn’t easy to do since there were very few available. But he happened to live in a place where an organization had a computer he could use any time he wanted. The time and place were perfect for him. How lucky.

He capitalized on this opportunity by spending nearly all of his spare time messing around with it. Within a matter of a few years it is estimated he logged over 10,000 hours of computer time. During his junior year at Harvard he dropped out and started Microsoft. The hard work paid off.

Luck and hard work. That’s it, Gladwell says. You have limited control over the first. It’s too late to change when you were born. If you’re a triathlete now you can thank your lucky stars to have been at an opportune time since the sport didn’t really exist until the early 1980s. Mountain biking came along in the mid-1980s. The running boom started in the early 1970s. And road cycling has only been popular in the US since the early 1970s. So, depending on your age right now, your timing may have been pretty good.

You do have some control over where you live, however. There are places that seem to produce excellent endurance athletes such as Boulder and San Diego. Why? Because they have the resources associated with endurance sport success such as decent weather, variable terrain, top coaches, adequate facilities, talented training partners, good roads, sports medicine practices, and more.

Gladwell suggests that 10,000 hours at any endeavor is what is needed to master it. Again, he offers many examples such as the Beatles. He estimates that they had played together for 10,000 hours by 1964 when they became an “overnight” success in the US as a rock band.

In athletic terms, 10,000 hours is 10 years of 20 hour weeks. Elite endurance athletes in cycling and triathlon typically put in more than 20 hours a week so they get their 10-grand a little sooner. If they started training seriously in their early 20s by their late 20s they are approaching their peaks. Many can keep this peak going into their 30s because they continue to become smarter as athletes. For example, they learn more about race strategies and tactics, and what works best for their own training.

Most age-group athletes who train far less than 20 hours weekly have many years of improvement ahead of them depending on the effects of their aging curves. The older you get the fewer mistakes you can make in training if you want to keep the growth curve rising steadily. They must avoid injury, illness and other breakdowns that interrupt training. This is the biggest challenge for self-coached athletes there is. It’s a rare athlete who will limit himself. Most are intent on doing all that is possible. Hard workouts abound.

I believe that the key to success in sport is not simply hard workouts but, more importantly, training consistency — practicing your sport day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Uninterrupted. Athletes who focus on excessively hard workouts on the premise that this will quickly produce exceptional performance eventually find themselves overtrained, burned out, injured or sick. There is nothing that produces race results like years of consistent training. This is not to say there is no place for hard workouts. There is. It’s just a matter of how hard and how often.

Says a lot about being consistent in our lives doesnt it?? The key is always to be able to back up whatever you are doing on a day to day, month to month basis.

Backing it up,
Yuen

In Memory Of

Steve Larsen, one of the friendliest and nicest triathlete ever in the history of the sport died of a heart attack during a track wokout yesterday, and he was only 39. I feel that there was line in the article about this great man that I should share with you all.

"A man may train like Steve Larsen, and, rarely, he may become a professional athlete. Steve Larsen was a professional athlete who trained himself to become a man. And that is rarer still. "

Well written,

Yuen

Choices

How do you make your choices? It seems we have more and more choices in daily living that effect our path in life. The choices we make determine the results we obtain. Those results happen by choice, not by chance.

Each of us has great power to direct and shape our lives. The secret is outlining and establishing a few main goals, and then making choices that support those goals. Clarifying our goals is an ongoing process that requires constant reflection, monitoring, and adjustment.

The number of choices with which we are confronted requires us to have a structure for decision making. Choices and decision making come at us very quickly and at varying degrees of pressure. Having structures in place to naturally guide our decision making helps ensure consistency toward our goals.

Simply the process of making choices can be paralyzing. Getting in a habit of filtering choices through the anchors in our lives can make the process simpler and many times directs those choices as a natural process.

The choices we make reveal and test our discipline. The choices we know are right are not always easy. We are all presented with conflicting choices. Continuing to make choices that support our goals takes great discipline. Discipline becomes easier with practice and as we weave ongoing choices into our lifestyle.

Along with that structure we need accountability. In many ways we can be accountable to ourselves. We all have areas of weakness, and in these areas we need the help of a support structure. Friends, family, colleagues, and organizations can all be used as structures to support and keep us accountable for the various categories of choices we make in life.

Choices are not always easy. However, simplifying the choices, having a structure, and creating accountability for ourselves will direct us toward our goals.

Choose wisely,

Yuen

Setting The Foundations

As I approach my final day of classes here at UT Austin, Im beginning to look back and reflect on certain things and events in my life. One of the things Ive thought a lot about is how throughout the years, I've set the foundations to get to where I am today, and always through the foundation setting process, how many obstacles Ive faced and how eventually (now) most of the obstacles doesnt seem to frankly matter thah much anymore.

One of the key things Ive reflected upon is my sports career (as usual). It truly amazing how many lessons and things you can take away from sports that apply in life. Its like theyre the same thing!

My first year doing trithlon back in 06/07, I always wanted to put in the huge weeks and mileages that the pros were doing. Back then 15 hours of training a week seemed like eternity to me as even when I was running at a high level 10 hours of running was enough to kill me (especially when I did 100 mile weeks as a 17 year old). My only goal that year was to finish and do a 1/2 ironman. I came in 3rd in my age group for my 1st ever triathlon and finished within the top 10% of the field! As of last year, I decided to take it up a notch and was trying to turn elite amateur, trying to win my age group at the prestigious UK 70.3 1/2 iron race. I failed, I bonked out with tight muscles and dead legs on a typical cold UK day. Bummer. I was depressed, all those months of 20hours of training for no good reason at all! (Or so it seems). However that loss and that day was only the start of something even better!

I went back home for summer, trained with Stingray Swim club back home and worked hard in the pool. I was rewarded with a stronger swim coming to TX in Aug 08 and boy did everything seem to pick up from there! I suppose its sufice to say that, if I never had done those 20 hour weeks, I wouldnt be where I am today. Those hard weeks training alone back in the UK has set me up well for the 25hr per week of training Im holding nowadays. I suppose in a lot of ways its like paying your dues before you are able to get to a certain point in life.

Its amazing how this law holds true for everything, such as relationships, career, and even studying. All those years rote learning and doing all those homework back then set the foundation for university today! The problems with relationships where one works hard but never succeeds/ breakup also has set the foundation for one to learn and the opportunity to be a better person and do much better the next time round.

So in short I guess, sometimes in life we have to pay certain dues, put in the time and work (along with scrweing up again and again) before certain things come to us. That way we are able to appreciate things more when they do finally come to us!

Still building,
Yuen

Night Runs

It always amazes me how people are afraid of the dark. But when you look at it from the right point of view, there is also beauty in the darkness. Ive learned alot about this through the night runs and workouts I do when time doesnt afford me a daytime one.

Going through town lake at night, there's a nice sense of quietness and peacefulness not found during the day when its filled up with people. If youre attentive enough, youll hear and see so many things not found during the day. As I run along at my steady 7min/mile pace, there's a lot to savor and think about, and my night runs gives me the oppotunity to reflect and learn.

This week's thoughts during my night workouts focused around four simple steps that successful people always have: Run when others walk; sleep when others party; take your weakness and make it your strength; and keep your body under control at all times. I found that this 4 points have served me well in my athletic career and life.

The message is very clear in my head as I run - “Your destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice, eventually you will choose where you are going.” Obvious advice but so many people never seem to take any form of responsility for their actions and usually blame other factors.

I guess my message for this week is, " Everything we are and we will be, are results of our own actions." However due to the fact that we are all given different types of conditions to grow under, not everyone will turn out the same. So we take the best with whatever we have been given and try to maximize that, plus at the same time we try to turn our weaknesses into a source strength for ourselves.

And the other thing is, night doesnt last forerver too..so enjoy it while you can before the day comes!

Time to get back to work now,

Yuen