In 2010, a commercial Qantas pilot named Pete asked if I could help him prep for an Ironman triathlon.
I had recently competed in Hawaii and had done OK in a few other races, so had a couple ideas on how to build into these bigger events and organise the programming.
Pete had been doing some swimming, and a little bit of cycling, but other than that, no real activity.
And, the target race he had was only 12 weeks away…
As I listened to Pete describe his situation, I realised he wanted to go basically from “off the couch” to a full Ironman in 12 weeks.
This is borderline on ridiculous, but we continued the conversation.
At the end of our chat, it became clear that although there was a severe time constraint, Pete was willing to bring a special ingredient. He was prepared to go deep…
I told him that the challenge wouldn’t be to “make the distance,” but rather be able to recover from the training load in the lead up alongside work and his family life.
Pete listened, then simply replied: “I’ll take two months off of work.”
I said he’d benefit from being able to rest during the day after his morning session… so within a week he had constructed an internal wall inside their beach front unit, creating a second bedroom where he could have a midday recovery nap.
Pete bought every supplement and organic food item to help him recover.
He pre-booked recovery massage and physiology for the next ten weeks.
Effectively, Pete did everything that he needed to, in order to execute on this race – something he would remember for the rest of his life.
And that’s what he did.
Less than 12 weeks later he finished in around 12 hours, before returning to work to fly jets.
Whatever you want to do, what does it look like to go deep?
What does it look like to have no compromises and simply do what is required to achieve this one goal?
