Readiness Without Appointment

I'm trying to watch as much World Cup Soccer as I can - taking advantage of the convenient time zones that they're being played. Certainly I was upset at USA's performance yesterday, but will forever remember some great moments from them in this year's tournament. Malik Tillman is one of those moments.

He split his cleat open at the World Cup game with blood filling his sock, and all he had time to do was to change the cleat and keep playing. Later he scored on a free kick he'd never had reason to expect he'd take.

Outside editor Kevin Sintumuang wrote about the moment and coined a phrase I love: "Readiness without appointment." Three words. That's the whole training philosophy for anyone racing an endurance event.

The plan ends at the start line.

We build the training block, we rehearse the nutrition, we know our pace splits. Then the gun goes off and none of that guarantees anything. Weather, equipment malfunction, a competitor break out performance - all of these are out of our control, and none of them are negotiable, they just happen. But we still need to be prepared.

Most of our training goes as planned. It's the race and event that seemingly never does. So how do we prepare for the unknown? By sticky to the process with consistency and frequency. Hitting the track in the rain, the open water practice with high winds or the bike on crappy roads in the heat all build our resilience and tenaciousness and prepare us for scenarios that may not ever happen. We do things that are hard, at times while tired and often when nobody knows (except our coach).

Tillman spent a tournament doing unglamorous midfield miles. He wasn't dreaming about the free kick because it was likely - it wasn't. He was dreaming about it because that's what we do when we've decided to be ready anyway.

Most of our intervals, our long runs, our strength sessions - they don't get "used" in the sense of a single dramatic payoff. They exist so that when the moment shows up uninvited, we're not the athlete yelling at the sky.

If we train consistently and challenge ourselves regularly, we create a state of mental and physical readiness - and that's the goal. Readiness isn't a response to probability, but rather a posture we hold regardless of it.

We don't get to schedule the moment that tests us. We only get to decide, in advance, who shows up when it arrives.

Gratefully,

Mark

Team MPI