THREE on connecting with the playful nature of sport
Train like a kid
THREE’s newsletter turns eight editions old today! It’s an extra-special Friday for your editor because my daughter, Brooke, turns 20 weeks old! Even though it’s another week until 21, all she does is drink bottles (...okay, my dad jokes are still a work in progress!). That said, isn’t it interesting how we count things? Numbers create structure and define progress through otherwise messy periods of growth and development. The early stages of THREE, along with Brooke’s early months, have been full of learning experiences. We can number and label things for the sake of marking moments in time or to better organize files, but labeling ourselves stunts both progress and one’s ability to continue developing.
Kids are incredible learners. From birth until the time they turn two, they’ve learned to walk, talk, eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. Talk about a 24 months! One thing they don’t learn during this time is shame. They haven’t learned to fear messing up or looking funny, so they just do their thing. Brooke doesn’t know a single word, but that doesn’t stop her from mumbling, gurgling, and giggling the day away.
Eventually, her mumbles will form words, and her kicks will become steps. A few stumbles over both words and feet are to be expected! At no point in the process will she look in the mirror and tell herself, “I’m no good at talking, I’m going to stop,” or “I keep falling over, so I’m going to find another way to get around.” Rather than judging failure as an indictment of herself, she learns from feedback and keeps trying. Her identity is not tied to being a “talker” or a “walker.” Instead, she’s living, learning, and laughing through the moments. Her language and mobility will be a byproduct of that process.
We all start like that. Somewhere along the way, though, we tidy up the messy process of growth and define who we are. Does “I’m a bad swimmer” or “I’m not built like a runner,” sound familiar to anyone? Be like a kid! Embrace the mess and keep doing your thing. Every year the Ironman World Champion pees his/her pants on the bike! When you’re tempted to make judgments about yourself as an athlete or as a person, remember that we’re all just works in progress. In the absence of racing, there’s never been a better time to connect to the playful nature of sport and embrace the learning and growth that follow.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• LET’S TALK BIG DATA By now, your Garmin should be finally working again. And, if you didn’t notice anything amiss, you probably haven’t been trying to sync your watch with Garmin Connect for the past two weeks. The popular GPS watchmaker was crippled by a ransomware attack but the good news is, according to the company’s CEO, “we have no indication that any customer data was accessed, lost or stolen.” The Garmin outage may have led you to question how essential your watch is to having a successful workout. THREE co-founder Matt Connelly won’t run without a watch, while THREE’s resident Olympian-editor Joe Maloy customizes his screen to include only essential information. As it turns out, when it comes to running there may be a benefit to training without real-time data. Former D1 track and field athlete Dan Roe spoke with three professional running coaches for the Spartan blog “to find the merits and detriments to training with today’s onslaught of wearable data.”
“The flagship Garmin Forerunner, for instance, measures pace, distance, steps, calories burned, VO2 max, heart rate, vertical oscillation, ground contact time, cadence, lactate threshold, and more. Processing those metrics while you run, or adjusting your training by analyzing them post-run, is a huge task for the average runner.”
What's a good rule for running if and when your watch gives out? Joe Maloy shares his thoughts about duration and distance in this week's YouTube post:
• BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL RACING While you may not always benefit from wearing a watch while training, in the absence of in-person races, you could make strides in your training by signing up for a virtual competition. In the article “The Competition Is Simulated, But the Gains Are as Real as it Gets,” Men’s Journal outlines how virtual races can help with motivation and effort.
“There’s something called the Köhler effect: People tend to work harder when they’re performing a task alongside others versus on their own, explains Eric Bean, a San Diego sports psychology coach. It may be enough just to know that a bunch of other people are competing to give you a bump.”
If you're looking for a virtual race, there's still time to compete in the virtual Chicago Triathlon.
• MENTAL IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC In addition to the Olympics and Ironman World Championships being canceled, it’s highly likely that all of the competitive events you were planning to participate in this season have also been canceled or postponed. Sports Illustrated reports that many elite athletes are dealing with the psychological impact of the pandemic — and finding different ways to cope.
“A global pandemic like the novel coronavirus isn’t good for anyone’s mental well-being, Olympic legend or not, but experts say elite athletes face a unique challenge. They may feel anything from anxiety and uncertainty to fear and anger to sadness and even grief over the postponement and cancellation of their competitions. Coping, often through trying to re-create some semblance of routine, is its own challenge.”
• QUIET THE BRAIN Improving your athletic performance may not simply be a matter of training longer or harder. At the end of last year, The New York Times reported on a study of elite competitors and how they process sound. The study’s conclusion? “Top athletes’ brains are not as noisy as yours and mine.”
“The brains of fit, young athletes dial down extraneous noise and attend to important sounds better than those of other young people.”
• YOU CAN’T STOP SPORT If you need a bit of motivation while waiting to reconnect with teammates and training partners, check out this video produced by Nike. We’re not being paid to share this — just found the overall message and precision of the production and editing worth passing along to our community. Because of distancing restrictions, the video was reportedly produced entirely from archival sports footage. 4,000 clips were whittled down to 72 and then split-screened to create this video with a resonant message: Nothing can stop what we can do together.
• MINI-TOUR DE FRANCE Although the Tour de France has been postponed, one cycling fan was not content to wait for the delayed race to take place later this month. The BBC reports that “A cycling fan who was ‘inconsolable’ about the Tour de France being postponed has recreated scenes from the event in miniature in his back garden.” The superfan transformed his backyard paddling pool into the Mediterranean and the roof of his home into the mountains. Peter Martin has “posted numerous scenes online featuring his 1,400-strong collection of models and has been helped by his eight-year-old son Henri Desgrange, named after the event's founder.”
