<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=947635702038146&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

The Year Implant Course

course-img_small.jpg
Find Out More

Subscribe to Email Updates

Latest Blog Post

Soft Lad

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 14/12/17 18:00
Full TCA Logo (Purple)

Failure is an interesting thing.

Interesting for me at least.

My failure is often interspersed and overlaid with my motivation (or lack of) in with my pursuit of targets.

Targets are an interesting thing (to me at least).

Interlinked with failure, motivation and targets is perspective.

At one point your target can seem like the most important thing in the world and at another it can seem an utter irrelevance. You question why you ever thought it was a good idea to thrash yourself against the shore time and time trying to achieve a target that nobody else cares about, caring less and less yourself by the minute.

This is what makes it interesting I think, the constant shift in size and change in landscape of targets, success (what ever that might be) achievement, inspiration and motivation.

Around this time of year marks the change in my yearly cycle. From a life full of ‘human beingness’ to one of attempted discipline and targets ‘knocking my pan in’ (thanks David for that phrase). So this morning, in the middle of December at -4 I crept out of bed at 6:30am and walked my dog with a coffee cup of peppermint tea (the most significant coffee cup, I like things with significance).

I got on my bike just a little after 7:00am in the freezing cold shed, or summerhouse as it’s ironically called to start the process of ‘knocking my pan in’ for the next 50-60 minutes in a 100% FTP session.

Early on into that session it became apparent that it was going to be very very very difficult and I had to reassess and just do as much as I could at 170 bpm knowing that I would be missing out on the power targets that I am supposed to hit in this session.

Round about that point when my lizard brain was telling me to get off and go and have my breakfast I spotted the ‘barbed wire’.

The frost on the windows of the summerhouse was an extraordinary picture; in fact I had already been on the bike for 15 minutes before I noticed it. The sun was coming up by the side of my house and the ‘barbed wire’ frost on the window was a sight so dramatic and extensive that I’m not likely to forget it any time soon.

And so to the point…

It’s not enough for me anymore, to hit a time or a position in a race (if that ever was enough or achievable). It has to be linked in with memories and experiences that I don’t forget to make my life richer.

Like pushing through the Alps at what felt like 1000 miles or singing Bloodstream to myself out loud on a bike ride during an Ironman triathlon or noticing the barbed wire start to melt while I’m ‘knocking my pan in’.

For the record, I never made the numbers today, it was 50 minutes a lot at 170 bpm but it doesn’t matter because I got to see the barbed wire.

 

Blog post number: 1492

Leave a comment

Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
Written by Author