Dan Frost - Associate Coach with MP Multisport
We’ve had an exciting last couple of weeks here in Northern Colorado that culminated in the inaugural running of Ironman Boulder last Sunday. By the way, next year’s Ironman Boulder, scheduled for August 2, 2015, still has open registration as of this writing (August 7th, 2014), and that led an athlete from this year’s race to ask me “OK, should I sign up for Boulder 2015 also?”
We hosted a pre-Ironman celebration and seminar (with the help of our good friends of Altitude Running which we started with a revealing icebreaker. I gave everyone a blank card and asked “How many years ago did Ironman first become an ambition of yours?” and they wrote that number down on their cards. I later revealed the cards to show that, while a couple people had an Ironman ambition that lasted over a decade, most of the cards had numbers less than three, and many had the number “0”, suggesting that Ironman is still a matter of curiosity for some.
But if there is anything that was revealed by that unscientific survey, It is that many triathletes are looking at Ironman and going, in a very short time span, from the point of curiosity to the point of commitment and the point of completion.
In my opinion, the vast majority of potential Ironman triathletes aren’t blissfully acting on impulse by registering for these races. However, many seem to me to be keeping their future vision inside the horizon of this rapidly changing world. When we think about doing a humongous thing like Ironman, we consider a number of factors like expenses, training time, career stability, race location, family stability, and personal fitness. Those factors can, and have, changed from month-to-month and year-to-year. If those factors are reasonably likely to be favorable for an Ironman next year, many of us think that we’d better click that registration link now because who knows if those factors will be as good beyond the horizon of 12 months.
While prudence demands that we consider all of those factors, I asked just one question of the athlete who asked me about signing up for IM Boulder 2015: “Are you willing to share with me what The One Thing is?”
The One Thing is whatever reason that you have for doing an Ironman. It’s the trump card that, when you are hurting and exhausted during the marathon run, is the reason why you don’t quit and walk away from the finish line. The One Thing is the most significant reason that motivates you to train the way you do, to make sacrifices, and to step into the water with over 140 miles of hope and destiny in front of you. The One Thing is uniquely personal…you are the only person that can decide what it is…but it is also uniquely essential. Before you can commit to an Ironman, you must be confident and faithful to The One Thing.
My hope is that you will dream big dreams, have One Thing (or more) that excites you about those dreams, and then you click that registration link and let us show you the best way to make the dreams come true.
We’ve had an exciting last couple of weeks here in Northern Colorado that culminated in the inaugural running of Ironman Boulder last Sunday. By the way, next year’s Ironman Boulder, scheduled for August 2, 2015, still has open registration as of this writing (August 7th, 2014), and that led an athlete from this year’s race to ask me “OK, should I sign up for Boulder 2015 also?”
We hosted a pre-Ironman celebration and seminar (with the help of our good friends of Altitude Running which we started with a revealing icebreaker. I gave everyone a blank card and asked “How many years ago did Ironman first become an ambition of yours?” and they wrote that number down on their cards. I later revealed the cards to show that, while a couple people had an Ironman ambition that lasted over a decade, most of the cards had numbers less than three, and many had the number “0”, suggesting that Ironman is still a matter of curiosity for some.
But if there is anything that was revealed by that unscientific survey, It is that many triathletes are looking at Ironman and going, in a very short time span, from the point of curiosity to the point of commitment and the point of completion.
In my opinion, the vast majority of potential Ironman triathletes aren’t blissfully acting on impulse by registering for these races. However, many seem to me to be keeping their future vision inside the horizon of this rapidly changing world. When we think about doing a humongous thing like Ironman, we consider a number of factors like expenses, training time, career stability, race location, family stability, and personal fitness. Those factors can, and have, changed from month-to-month and year-to-year. If those factors are reasonably likely to be favorable for an Ironman next year, many of us think that we’d better click that registration link now because who knows if those factors will be as good beyond the horizon of 12 months.
While prudence demands that we consider all of those factors, I asked just one question of the athlete who asked me about signing up for IM Boulder 2015: “Are you willing to share with me what The One Thing is?”
The One Thing is whatever reason that you have for doing an Ironman. It’s the trump card that, when you are hurting and exhausted during the marathon run, is the reason why you don’t quit and walk away from the finish line. The One Thing is the most significant reason that motivates you to train the way you do, to make sacrifices, and to step into the water with over 140 miles of hope and destiny in front of you. The One Thing is uniquely personal…you are the only person that can decide what it is…but it is also uniquely essential. Before you can commit to an Ironman, you must be confident and faithful to The One Thing.
My hope is that you will dream big dreams, have One Thing (or more) that excites you about those dreams, and then you click that registration link and let us show you the best way to make the dreams come true.
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