Doubt to Do

Part Eight… How do you eat an elephant?
Listen to the podcast here.

Those of you who have been reading our recent Weekly Focus, will now know that this is the story of a personal journey in getting myself fit enough to  ride two hundred miles over the weekend of 7^th/8^th July.

Always remember, the focus of the mind applies in all that we do…Business/Life…Anything…The mind is the most powerful tool known to mankind!

As I train for my double hundred, there are times during my training rides that the thought of 100 miles seems a distance away…So I revert to the question…How do you eat an elephant? Far from easy!! Well the answer is actually in “Bite sized chunks”! A small piece at a time.

A story that I often tell when I speak to audiences is of the former American swimmer “John Naber”.While at College in The States, Naber, a then talented competition swimmer, but no more, was massively engaged in watching Mark Spitz winning seven Gold medals in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
Naber, wanted to be that person, but while a talented swimmer, he was some way off the then American qualifying times.

The answer…To break down his Goals and to the extent that he worked out that all he needed to do over the next four years would be to improve at the rate of 1/5^th of the blink of an eyelid per hour of training that he could commit too! Said like that, it’s easy!!

And the outcome? Fast forward four years! At the age of twenty at Montreal, Naber won four gold medals and each of these in world record time! Some going!!

What does this mean to me and my ride? Well, on each of the two one hundred mile days, there are two brief stops scheduled, for refuelling purposes…In essence that means three rides of 33 miles each. My “chunking” it down is to look at my ride each day as in fact six rides…Each of some sixteen/seventeen miles…I just break each of the three splits into two…Now this is becoming very doable!

Remember…Never try to eat an elephant in one go…Break it down into bite sized chunks!!  This applies to anything that we do.

.