A Sense of Achievement

Obtaining a sense of achievement keeps a person more driven towards a goal or committed to a plan (workout program or otherwise) than almost anything else. When you're involved in a workout program that allows you to meet your goals, then you get a sense of achievement that gives you self esteem and confidence and it makes you feel fantastic. When you're involved in a workout program in which you get a sense of achievement just from finishing the workout, that's even better. There are two types of gyms out there. The kind where the workouts give you a sense of achievement, like Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. And the other kind, like the shiniest of the chrome and fern palaces (I won't mention their name, but it starts with a "G" and it rhymes with "colds") that run promotions like Cankle Awareness Month in July and have everybody doing extra toe raises. I'm not kidding. They're just finishing up Cankle Awareness Month. Apparently, when your calf and ankle kind of blend together they call this a cankle and the khaki-clad cardboard cutouts at Gold's are telling their members that they can spot reduce fat calves with lots of toe raises. I've also been working on my cankles, but I prefer riding my bike, hiking, jumping rope, doing lots of closed chain exercises driving power through my feet into the floor (like anything we do with a kettlebell), and in general, just doing really active full body movements like 100% of the exercises you do at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning.. You'll notice from the picture below that there is a definite lack of cankles as a result of my functional conditioning workout regimen:

Back to the topic.... When you come to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning you get a sense of achievement. You leave feeling like you achieved something special and pushed yourself to a place that most people on the planet never push themselves to. The people that leave our gym tell all their friends and co-workers what they did. They facebook about it. They email stories. They tell people about the time they were doing stair sprints and burpees for 20 minutes, thought they would die, couldn't believe they completed it, hated me for making them do it, but then loved how it made them feel after because of the sense of achievement it gave them. They talk about the kettlebell omelettes where we keep the kettlebell moving for 30 minutes without putting it down. They talk about the prison workouts and how fast they were able to get through them. If you ever worked out at a traditional gym, how often have you ever went to work and told everybody about the toe raises you did that morning? Why not? First, because nobody gives a shit. Second, because it doesn't give you that sense of achievement. It's unimpressive. Anybody can work one muscle at a time in isolation and stay fat and out of shape. That's easy. It's hard work to come to my gym and work your whole body hard to achieve your goals. That's impressive! Those of you that are coming to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning are working harder than anybody else and you're getting better results than anybody else :)

I get a sense of achievement from my workouts all the time. Yesterday was no different. I've been training really hard this season for my Mt W goal, as you all know. This week was another tough training week. I did some tough interval sessions on the bike and I did a couple tough workouts in the gym. Yesterday I entered one of the hardest races in New England, The Tour of the Hilltowns. This is a 57 mile bike race, over 5000' of elevation gain and two major climbs. To put the climbs in perspective, one of them would be considered a Category 2 and the other a Category 3 in the Tour de France.. Tough climbs. I was in the Master's field again, a field which is ridiculously strong with guys who spent years racing in pro fields. These guys kick my ass every time I race with them, which is why I keep coming back. My goal is to become a strong Masters racer.

In the staging area, the race official was telling us about some of the things to watch out for on the race course, like the potholes and long craters on one of the fast descents that they didn't have time to deal with since they got 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes the night before. Everybody knows tough roads is part of racing and you really just hope you get lucky enough not to hit a hole because in a lot of cases, when you're in a pack, you can't really avoid them. The race starts and the guys immediately start putting in massive accelerations. I think there were a few guys that were trying to blow the field apart well before the first big descent just to spread things out a little bit. I was feeling really strong and staying right to the front of the group, which is an unusual place for me to be in the master's. I was matching every acceleration and staying within the first 10-15 riders in our field of about 60. The field stayed together into the first major descent at about 10 miles. And then the potholes started coming. We're doing about 40 MPH and you start hearing it... POP! Psssshhhh.. "F--K!"... POP! Psssshhhhh.. "F--K".. Three riders flatted in the group.. Every time you hear the POP!, you hope it's not you but you can't really tell for a few seconds until all the air runs out of the tire.. I had a decent line of sight through the riders ahead of me so I was able to avoid a lot of the holes, which was great because we were flying. But then my line of sight closed up for a split second, and I rode right over a pothole. At 40MPH there's really no way to avoid a hole that quickly.. POP! pssshhh.. in my head I'm saying "don't be me, don't be me, don't be me".. the "pssssshhhh" sound faded so I thought it was behind me and I was OK.. But then the "thump, thump, thump, thump..." came and I knew I was out.. Unlucky.. I made my way to the side of the road. Now, if you watch the Tour de France, when a guy punctures there is a team car there within two seconds, they do a NASCAR 5 second pit stop, and then a couple of the guy's teammates who stayed back pace him back up to the peloton. So I'm standing there on the side road waiting for my team car and looking for my teammates. Hmmm.. Could be a long wait. Supposedly there was a neutral support vehicle in each field that had extra wheels, but with three flats behind me, who knows how long it would take for them to get to me. Luckily I had a spare tube and CO cartridge with me so I start changing my tube. I'm almost done with my tube change and the wheel vehicle comes up and stops. "Hey, you need a wheel?" then he sees me changing the tube myself and he says, incredulously "You're changing it yourself???". I told him I didn't know how long he'd be, what choice did I have.. So since it would have been quicker at this point to take a new wheel than to finish what I was doing with my wheel, I took the new wheel. I lost at least 5 minutes and knew there was no way I would see my field again for the rest of the day. It's crushing to get all psyched up for an event, start out strong, and with one quick stroke of misfortune have everything end for you. I was about 10 miles from the start, and about 40 miles and two brutal climbs of solo effort from the finish. The thoughts go through your head, "screw it, your day is over just go back".. But I'm in this for a sense of achievement and hell if I'm not finishing this race. So I set a goal to get to the finish as fast as I could without getting passed by any of the groups that started behind me, which is a bit unrealistic since I had 50 miles to go and probably a 3 minute gap on the group that started behind us at this point and groups will always be faster than solo riders. But it's a goal that would keep me working as hard as I could the rest of the way and make the most out of my race that has now become just another hard training ride.... So off I went at time trial pace, which was dumb because holding a threshold effort for 50 miles over two tough climbs isn't possible, and even if it was, it would probably kill me. I passed by a couple more riders that had also flatted. I kept going at a really hard pace and at about mile 18 I started to see somebody from my group ahead of me. I went into pursuit mode since I really wanted somebody else to ride with so that we could work together the rest of the way. I caught him at mile 20 at the base of the cat2 climb. This is a 3 mile climb at about 8-9% avg grade, it's brutal. Unfortunately, my pursuit of the rider ahead of me left me with little to stay with him on the climb and I was dropped. I was suffering a ton at this point. I got to the top of the climb and kept my effort up as hard as I could go. I still hadn't got caught by the group that started behind us so I was pretty happy about that. They wouldn't catch me until about mile 35, a good effort on my part to stay away from them that long. The group that caught me was a 20 rider Cat 4 break off a field of about 100. I'm not allowed to catch on with this group since it's the lead group from another field so I situp, let them pass, and then continue on. Over the next 10 miles I started passing racers that were dropped off their fields, looks of misery on their faces as they trudge into the finish. I catch a racer from the cat3 group that started ahead of us who had run into some mechanical issue earlier in the race and him and I ride together for a while. A chase group of about 20 racers from the cat4 field comes up behind us and we catch on the back of that for a couple miles.. As long as it's not part of the lead group it's not a big deal at this point. The cat 3 racer and I sit in for a couple miles and enjoy the almost conversation pace of the cat 4 group :) My legs needed a bit of a rest after spending the last 35 miles in solo TT mode and there was one major climb coming into the finish, so this was a nice break. We come into the last climb of the day which is about 5 miles long that's steep enough in 3 sections that they break the roadway up to add a "slow traffic" lane.. I decide I'm giving it everything I have the rest of the way so I stand up and ride away from the group. I turn around and they're putting in a hard effort to chase but I've opened up a decent gap on them. After about 1/3 of the climb, one of the racers from the chase group bridges up to me and we work together the rest of the way putting in a huge effort that left my legs and lungs ready to explode. We must have passed about 10 guys that were dropped from earlier groups like they were standing still as we charged up the remainder of the hill in the big ring as if we were fighting it out for first. Awesome end for a finish that really meant nothing in the standings, but meant everything in my head. I got a huge sense of achievement out of this because it would have been so easy to not finish, or even to just take it a little easier the rest of the way after I flatted. A brutal race course where you spend 3/4 of it solo and still give it everything you have is definitely a big accomplishment and a great show of physical and mental strength. And hey, I got a great workout on my cankles :)

Best,

kevin