Finishing what you start

I started my new training program today. Well ouch.

Actually, no not really, it wasn't that bad. As predicted yesterday I am feeling a wee bit of soreness from the gym yesterday which probably hasn't helped but the session wasn't a complete killer. A tough but fair session as I like to think of them.

Chatting to the guy who wrote the program he reiterated to me several times the importance of completing sessions. Once you start them you don't stop early. You aren't done until you are done. While he was talking I couldn't help but thinking, "well duh, how else do you do it". Turns out he may have been preaching to the converted on this one.

However, the fact that he emphasized it so much got me thinking, it was obviously an area he has seen others fall down, and then when I started thinking about it I realised it is an area where I have seen athletes struggle too. In fact it is probably the area where I see athletes create challenges for themselves most often, always looking for a shortcut or an easy way out of the session. However, in my experience taking those short cuts is just another way of shooting yourself in the foot.

One thing I have prided myself on over the years was my dedication to training, getting the sessions done, getting them done right, no matter what (other than injury or illness of course). In my experience there is a direct correlation between program compliance and success (assuming the program is a good one).

On this topic I have two fundamental sporting memories. My sporting origin story if you will, some lessons that went a long way to forming my philosophy on sport.

Memory one was when I was rowing. I had been rowing for a few years by that stage and I was at the upper end of mediocre. Good enough to be okay at a local level, but not beyond. Then one season it all sort of clicked. I had the rather simple realisation that if I didn't skip sessions, if I did them all then I got a lot better. That was by far the best season of rowing I ever had. It seems so painfully obvious now, the realisation that training consistency equaled success was like a lightning bolt from the blue. That experience completely shaped my approach to training after that.

The other very fond memory I have is in of my early triathlon days. We were running on a big 4km circuit for about 90 minutes and we hit the start/finish point at about 87 minutes (or something like that), nearly everybody stopped except for myself and a few others. We ran past the start/finish point and completed the 90 minutes. At the end of the session our coach came to us and said, "that is why you will do well" and pretty much all of us did to one extent or another. It was another lesson that I have held that lesson close ever since.

The two lessons together equal a simple message, do the session and do it right. After that the results take care of themselves.