Yes, that’s right….in the snow.
Kona is exactly 308 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes from right now. It also still heats up to the mid 80s these days. All while we’ve got our base snow layer on the ground here in Bozeman and it’s not going anywhere.
The definition of discomfort is something that makes a person feel physically uncomfortable. If you haven’t raced Kona personally, I’m sure you’ve heard all of the horror stories of swells on the swim, wind on the bike and heat on the run. All variations of major discomfort when we’re trying to make it from a start line to the finish line.
What I learned in the preparation and race to qualify for Kona is this: hard is hard. Yes, it may look a different in different race settings, but the way we mentally line up to the challenge of hard is the same.
I live in a place where it’s winter for 8 months of the year. And I generally don’t ride outside until June. Our hottest days are likely considered cool days in Kona. If I drove straight west, the closest ocean is over 800 miles away. We have lots of wind, but I have no idea how it compares to the Queen K gusts.
I say all of this with the intention of sharing that none of it really matters.
I live in a place where it’s winter 8 months of the year. I ride inside all year long, but get outside for some long rides beginning in June. In the winter, I run and ski in temperatures as low as single digits and in the summer, I swim in a mountain reservoir that doesn’t get much warmer than 60 degrees. On a lot of training days, I ride and run in wind that makes me feel like I’m going backwards.
Both versions share the same story, just slightly adjusted to show that I have my own version of hard. I train hard to race hard, no matter the circumstances. It may look a little (ok, a lot!) different than Hawaii hard, but I get to challenge myself everyday to overcome the natural tendency to find the path of least resistance. No matter if its 95 degrees or barely 5 degrees, there is discomfort. The more we step into it, the more we learn about it. The more we learn about it, the more we learn about ourselves and our potential.
So for the next 6 months, you can find me training for Kona in the snow. Visualizing myself in the Energy Lab: tired, hot and grateful for the months I spent practicing being in discomfort and doing the damn thing anyway. Because come October 10th 2020, the most successful athletes will be the ones who can handle any version of hard thrown their way. And I will be one of them!
INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES TO HAVE A PERFORMANCE MINDSET?
