Too many of us mess around and let another year slip by. I’m guilty of it myself. Letting things get in the way of what we really want to do.
Among the athletes we all know, there are some who are prepared to do all the little things right. They do the core strength work, they do the stretching, they train when it looks like rain. They do the runs off the bike when it’s 36 degrees.
A year is made up of a lot of nice days when we’d rather be …

Last Saturday Sandy and I attended the wedding of a young mate. He was like, the last tree in the forest to fall. In fact I thought his life was the inspiration for the character Charlie in “Two and a Half Men”
It was a beautiful wedding held on the beach of the lagoon at Novatell Twin Waters Resort on the Sunshine Coast. The weather held out for the outdoor ceremony, it had rained all day the day before and it started raining within half an hour of the ceremony finishing.
It …

Every second counts. This is the second weekend in a row that I’ve been timekeeper, and watched the guys time trialling at Walloon. Even though in last weeks newsletter, I wrote about the differences between the faster riders and the slower ones, I see the same little differences occurring.
Whether it’s a race or a time trial in training, every second counts. A few seconds of rolling “too big a gear”, just not shifting back to a gear where the rider is most efficient, costs seconds. Sitting up and coasting without the …

This morning I woke up before 5am. It’s just a habit, I didn’t have to get up that early but with sunrise coming early, I guess my body clock is locked into the seasons. It was time to get up. I still had a little bit of office work to catch up on after a late start to the week. We spent the week at Noosa watching a lot of friends competing in the Noosa triathlon.
To be honest the Noosa triathlon was a reason to go away for a weekend …

I recently had a conversation with a triathlete who will most likely be embarrassed to read this. I won’t mention any names or places. In the course of a ten minute conversation he used “negative self talk” so smoothly, so habitually, he’d given himself all the reasons why he couldn’t perform in a race.
He was totally unaware of consequences of the words coming out of his mouth. He was a nice, normal guy with no physical handicaps. He had the time to train, he had the equipment. Yet every conversation …

This morning was the first day I felt the touch of winter. I’m sure our friends in southern states and in the northern hemisphere are laughing. But it’s all relevant. Our Brisbane bodies are used to Brisbane temperatures. When the morning temperature drops into the low teens our body struggles to cope. A percentage of our energy goes into handling the colder air going into our lungs. Just keeping warm, without the load of exercising, uses energy which we don’t need to find in warmer weather.
Another thing which plants (trees and shrubs) know, …

Every athlete has setbacks. Everyone has setbacks in their lives, you don’t have to be an athlete for this to happen. It is just part of life.
Champion boxers who have never been defeated are rare. But rare as they may be, there are some who go through their whole careers without losing a fight. Now a boxer who has never lost a fight, has at some time lost rounds on points. He may have been the eventual winner, but if you were to look at the judges score cards, some of …

Many of us don’t start triathlon until we’re in our mid thirties or even into our forties. We’re all late starters. I heard a great story this week of another late starter.
I did a little job for a friend who is a car dealer and greyhound owner/trainer. We’ve recently bought a car from Darryl Kavanah. He asked if I could help him secure a large picture board to his office wall.
The picture board had the photos of “Smokey Deister” a champion greyhound. Darryl told me Smokey’s story.
Smokey Deister was a …

Feedback 
After a race, I would like each athlete to write me a race analysis. Just a page, going through “what went right” and “what went wrong”, “what was learnt”, “what we’ll do better next time”.
Once this is written and sent through to me, we can follow up with a phone interview or face to face interview. This is how we learn and continue to improve.
Most of my athletes do this. Because I deal with lots of people, and you only have one coach. It’s obviousley easier for you to contact …

Over the years I’ve met lots of talented athletes. Many have achieved their goals, but sadly many have not. The difference between the successful ones and the unsucessful ones is not ability.
I have known one athlete, who I have privately identified as the most talented athlete I’d ever known, who didn’t make it. He’s still around the sport on the fringes, but not competing. This guy was so technically superior and physiologically gifted, he could have done anything he’d wished, in our sport.
The missing ingredient was self belief. I felt at the …