"Better Than A Zero"

Here is a mental trap I see guys fall into in the early stages of Ironman training.

It happens when training feels overwhelming and like it just can’t fit into life.

The mind starts telling you every session needs to go perfectly.

And the negative mental spiral starts from there. Guys starting thinking:

Now they’re procrastinating and delaying starting. And the mind has a new excuse:

And they end up skipping the entire workout.

This is how you fail.

The #1 goal of endurance training is to be consistent.

You need to be showing up and training 5-6 days per week. If you don’t?

Don’t expect to make progress on the things you are not doing often.

(This is a rule for LIFE. Not just Ironman).

Now here’s how to overcome this trap.

Keep it simple. Stop thinking so much. Just show up.

Do better than a zero.

My run on Sunday was my worst of the entire year.

I was on my 2nd consecutive day of Solo Dad Duty and it was…

I was tired and had every excuse to skip the workout. But I didn’t want to throw up a zero.

The run itself was a disaster by every measurable metric.

But I did win some mental battles at the end and was proud to get it done.

Now here’s the real secret:

I said above that not throwing up a zero is about maintaining consistency.

That’s true.

But it’s also about setting up the NEXT SESSION to be better because you had that recent rep.

Michael Phelps said that when he skips a day in the pool, it takes him two days to get back to where he was.

I’m not running every single day in Ironman training. But that theme rings true.

And that’s exactly what happened in this situation.

I had a hill repeat run on Tuesday (2 days after the Sunday run) that I crushed. It felt amazing. And that would not be possible if I bailed on my Sunday session.

Here’s another example from me.

I was supposed to swim on Wednesday morning from 6 to 7.

But I woke up late. I didn’t get up until 6:14!!!

But I didn’t listen to any of those thoughts.

Instead, I thought: let me get to the pool and see what I can get in.

I sprung out of bed, hustled to the pool and was in the water by 6:31.

I swam just under a mile before I was kicked out at 7 am.

Again… better than a zero.

And the key result?

My Thursday ride and run went better because of my consistency.

I’ve done 4x Ironmans and just had this “better than a zero” situation happen twice in 4 days.

That’s proof that this happens more often than you expect!

I’m not perfect. But I’m not trying to be.

My goal is to be consistent. My goal is to keep getting my reps in.

My goal is to not throw up zeros. And do that for a long time.