What i’m listening to…
Kate Courtney is inspiring. Stanford. World Champion. World Cup Champion. Red Bull. Scott Bikes. Fearless.
“No one likes to fail; however, it’s where you learn the most, its where you grow and get better. It’s entirely possible to fail without being a failure. If you can allow yourself to fail, then you’re at the point where you can take risks and take chances. If you have a partnership were both athlete and coach are allowed to fail, that’s when you’re most dangerous. When you take risks is when the good stuff happens. If you won’t allow yourself to fail then you’ll never reach your full potential.”
This is awesome.
You know Kate is fearless by how she races her bike, off the front. You saw it in her response when not selected for the 2016 Olympics. You saw it when she won the rainbow stripes in 2018. You saw it when she won the UCI World Cup in 2019. You saw it when she spoke about Nutrition, Body Image, and Life Balance.
No one is born fearless. It’s a quality you have to work on continually. You need to leave perfection at the door if you want to achieve high performance. When people chase perfection, they end up building more hurdles than useable pathways. We all know that perfection isn’t sustainable and only instills constant hesitation and self-doubt that is rooted by insecurity. Also, attempting to become fearless isn’t desirable to most people. Most people live somewhere in the middle and the moment they dangle their foot into the uncertainty, their conscious quickly reels them back in. Whoa, way too far buddy. You become fearless by the decisions you respond to. If a situation makes you uncomfortable and you instantly fold, you just moved further away from achieving high performance. However, If your reaction was to go after it and step out of your comfort zone, regardless of the result you succeeded.
“My motto on the start line was, an underdog is just an underdog,” Courtney said, “until they show their teeth and you realize it’s a wolf.”
Link to Podcast with Courtney HERE
Personal Musing….
I’m week one in a new training phase. After reaching new numbers on the bike, I was confident that I exhausted the property I was training and needed to move on. With the weather starting to warm up and coming off of a high-intensity phase, it’s time to swoop underneath my threshold and start pushing it up. Rise then push, Rise then push. I plan to repeat these steps until I win the Tour de France. Kidding. Maybe.
My current training consists of cycling, lifting, and push-ups. I’ve recently taken a second break from running and I’m okay with it. I’m amazed with how well I’m handling my never-ending IT Band injury. There are certainly times when I get frustrated but I’m a believer that every situation we encounter is laced with opportunity. I’ve wanted to become a better cyclist. I’ve wanted to work on my mobility. I’ve wanted to spend more time lifting. These are all the things I’m focusing on and it’s helped fill the void of running and swimming.
~Coach Steve