Ironman Training Mistake, Advice for First Time Home Owners, Quote on Settling Down
Thursday Three: Episode 15
read time 4 minutes
Here are three interesting ideas you won’t find doom scrolling.
TL;DR
Mistake I made training for my first Ironman
Advice for first time home owners
Quote on settling down
Mistake I made training for my first Ironman
I've been doing quite a bit of traveling recently: seven days in Florida and most recently ten days in California (Napa, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz).
Before my traveling spree, I modified my training plan to accomodate what equipment and facilities I'd have access to.
In Florida, I had a pool and the weather was nice, so I moved my workouts around to prioritize swimming and running.
In California, I didn't have access to a pool or bike, so I just ran the whole time.
Everything was good, until I came back earlier last week and I had like 12 training sessions on the calendar. Monday through Wednesday I completed 6 workouts. Thursday came around and I was staring down 6 more going into the weekend.
My body was crushed, but my brain was telling me "Don't be a little bitch. Get the work done."
Now I could've just pushed through, but I was curious what my training plan recommended for when to skip workouts and whether or not it's recommended to move workouts around.
This is what I found:
As a rule of thumb, it's best not to try to “make up” missed workouts. If you miss just one or two and you’re healthy, just pick up the schedule where you are. If you miss a bunch of workouts—especially for reasons of injury or illness—you should take at least a few days to ease gently back into training before you return to the schedule. And there may come a point where you’ve missed too much training to ever be able to safely return to the training plan. At that point you just need to hit the “reset” button and start a new plan when you’re ready.
Ah. The answer I was looking for.
Now, this is just the advice for my training plan, but I'd think it's probably standard for all types of plans. If you are (or are planning on) training for a triathlon in the future, just keep this in mind: you don't have to make up missed workouts. And don't beat yourself up if you do. It's all a part of the process.
Advice for first time home owners
Invest in experts sooner than you think. I’ve talked about this in the past, but let me just tell you a quick story…
Last year, I realized we had a terrible lawn. Like really bad.
So I made it my priority to improve our lawn — at least enough that we were in the top 50% of lawns in our neighborhood. I learned about: different types of grass, aeration, fertilization, sprinkler systems…the whole nine.
All in, I think I spent 40+ hours — a whole week of work — trying to figure out our lawn. I did everything that was recommended — installing a sprinkler system, aerating the lawn, laying seed — but fast forward a year, and the lawn still looked like garbage.
So last week, the grass, I mean weeds, were up to my ankles and I knew it was time to start tending to it again. Ugh. As I was out there pushing my electric mower, I realized something.
Just hire a damn expert.
I spent all this time and thousands of dollars trying to figure out this whole lawn thing when I could’ve paid a fraction of that and had the job done well by someone who actually knew what they were doing.
This led me to another realization.
You have to choose the things that you want to be good at — because you can’t be good at everything and you have limited time.
Last year, I tried to figure out our lawn when I had absolutely no experience. How could I expect it to come out well? Or as good as someone who does lawns full time? It was unrealistic thinking.
Here’re the facts. I just want a nice lawn. I don’t care if I am particularly good at making my lawn nice. Because it isn’t my job to make other lawns nice — just my own lawn!
That being said, it doesn’t make sense to invest time in getting good at having a good lawn. It makes sense to hire an expert.
On the flip side of things, if I wanted to be the guy who knows EVERYTHING about having a nice lawn — and we all know that guy — then it makes sense to invest the time and energy to get good at it. But for most of us? We don’t want to be that guy. We just want a nice lawn.
So hire the guy who knows what they are doing because time is more valuable than money. And you don’t need to be good at everything. You need to choose what you want to be good at and invest your time doing those things.
Quote on settling down
One day you find a port, and say, I'm gonna stay here for a few days. A few days becomes a few years. Then you forgot where you were going in the first place. Then you realize you don't really care about where you are going, because you like where you're at.
This quote is hanging in one of Rachael and I's favorite coffee shops — Port Coffee. I snapped a photo of it a while back and it always makes me smile reading it — why?
Because so many of us are constantly looking for the next best thing. Trying to optimize our career, health, relationships, whatever. Sometimes you just have to slow down, soak it all in, and fall in love with where you are at.
Side note…apparently this is a quote from A Star Is Born — a romance movie where a seasoned musician falls in love with a struggling artist. I'm not a big movies guy, but I'm a damn sucker for romance movies. Makes sense why I like the quote.