Motivation

I remember reading a story about Jim Telfer and his attitude to training. He'd convinced himself if he couldn't be the best number 8 in Scotland, he could certainly be the fittest, so he devised a running plan which involved steep hills, running up burns and humping rocks about when in the burns. What really got me about the story though was that he used to pray for bad weather, because he knew that while he had no compunction about going out to train in the sleet or snow or on Christmas day, he didn't think that his rivals would be out there training and so he felt that was when he benefited most. Quite frightening really! Anyway, I'm not going to pray for bad weather, but I might send some of my mum's shortbread up to Fife!

The other guy who has something of a pedigree in success is Sir Steve Redgrave. He was explaining to a journalist about the monotony of training to reach the levels that he did, but his motivation was that if you didn't train today, then you'd lost that opportunity forever. You can't make it up by training harder tomorrow. Tomorrow you should be doing tomorrow's training.

That reminds me that in my current state I really have to take it easy and build up gently through a period of acclimatisation. The last thing I want is to start getting inflamed tendons or skeletal problems from going to hard too early. This is about a lifestyle change more than anything, but remembering what Steve Redgrave said I'll try to do a little every day and Jim Telfer's words will hopefully keep me from straying from the path, wouldn't want to make life too easy for my rivals ;-)