Making luck

I finally figured out the key to success? Consistent hard work, day after day, week after week, year after year. No magic bullet. No shortcuts. Seems crazy right? Well it really isn't and here is how I know.

I ran my first ever road race on June 14, 2008. That is roughly 1,311 days ago, give or take (actually it is exact, thanks to google). It was a 5 miler and thanks to Athlinks.com I finished in a not too shabby 37:28. I did this on zero training and just went out and ran as hard as I could for as long as I could. And that worked for a while and I then moved on to some duathlons, and other little races that I thought would be fun. To say I trained for anything specific would be a half truth. Basically I knew what I had coming up and just kinda made sure I could complete the race. That all changed in February of 2009. I was offered a race number for the Boston Marathon. To say it changed the way I trained and looked at endurance sports would be a huge understatement. When you get an opportunity in life or anything for that matter I am a firm believer that if you work hard and put in the time, everything will work out fine. I started training for the marathon on Feb 22, 2009 having never run more than 10 miles. The only reason that I had even had a 10 miler in me was that I was gearing up for the Hyannis marathon the following week.

So there it was, late Feb one week out from my first ever half marathon and I get a call to accept a number for the Boston marathon which was 7 weeks away. I took it knowing full well I may never get another chance to run the holy grail of marathons, especially one that was in my back yard. So for all intensive purposes that is when I started the long, hard journey of making my self the best I could be at sport. Truth be told I had asked for a log book for Christmas because I had planned on getting into sprint triathlons later in the following year. So my journey essentially started on Monday January 5, 2009.

I recently closed out yet another log book for which I admittedly was not very good at utilizing when I first started out. I have however come to see the value of keeping a solid log book and took some time recently to sift through the data and lay it out in front of me. What I found was the key to my success. And even though you hear it all the time that hard work and consistency is the key, I guess I never really stopped believing that I was doing something wrong. It couldn't be that simple right? Maybe I just was not meant to be a top guy, the type of guy who could really go out and have a legitimate shot of getting on a podium. Well what I found was very black and white. The numbers don't lie. I thought it would be cool to really go back and read through each log book and dissect what each had meant. Here is what I found:

2009- 275 hours trained
36 hours of swimming (82,375 yds)
50 hours of biking (939 miles)
145 hours of running (960 miles)
44 hours of strength training

2010- 381 hours trained
77 hours of swimming (197,125 yds)
115 hours of biking (2262 miles)
154 hours of running (1009 miles)
36 hours of strength training

2011- 530 hours trained
102 hours of swimming (281,600 yds)
236 hours of biking (4222 miles)
159 hours of running (1141 miles)
27 hours of strength training

There it is, the key to success, hard work and consistency. Day after day, week after week. The alarm goes off everyday and everyday I put in the work. Sure you need to train smart and learn to do things properly (i.e. swimming). But at the end of the day the harder you work and more consistent you become in your training the better you will become. I have said here many times that I don't know if I will ever be a "Kona" guy, but I do know that to get there I need to train in the 600 to 700 hour range per year. Realistically that may not even be enough. At the end of the day though whether I make it or not, I will know that I did everything the right way. I worked hard and I never took a shortcut to get where I end up.

I choose to do this sport and I choose to give it everything I have. I am a all or nothing type of guy. I get a kick out of people who act like I am miserable having to do long bikes, or runs or get up before the sun to go to a pool. I live for this stuff and hope to be able to do it as long as my body allows. And now that I have the blueprint for success I am even more intrigued at what I can accomplish in the next three years.