On the red line
On the red line
Falling wheels, climbing out of wells, and flirting with red lines
Falling wheels, climbing out of wells, and flirting with red lines
Jul 18, 2024
I have this anxiety about my next business. I’m worried that I will reach a day when my energy gets drained, the life gets sucked out of me, resent myself and regret committing to this.
I’m afraid of that day when the wheels fall off because I had it happen before. It’s the worst. It happens when you’re in your toughest time and you find yourself at the bottom of the well with no energy to climb up, no will and a whole lot of negativity. Nobody comes to pull you out.
Ironman training is teaching me how to get over this. It’s not an insight. It’s not something you should know. It’s just practice.
During my training (writing this precisely 3 months out), I frequently had that feeling of the wheels starting to fall off and me going into panic. Didn’t happen much the first 3 months when I was still full of enthusiasm and excitement and pretty much running on a toxic doze of novelty and adrenalin. But during the months after that, it become a common occurrence.
A key advantage of Ironman training, especially for addressing this issue, is its structured and highly controlled nature. It deliberately takes you up to the threshold of breaking, keeps you there for as long as you can handle, and then brings you down enough to breath and up again.
It does that on the macro with periodization (3 weeks on one week off). It also does it with the breaks that life inevitably steals from you and forces me to delaod.
It does it also on the micro level in each intense session. Every threshold session and every sprint work the same. They take you to the brink of collapse, bring you down, and have you do it again. Every long session works similarly. You go for as long as you can and then you stop.
Now when I think about that day when the wheels fall off, I have a different programming. I don’t think I’ll get there all of a sudden. I’m learning to pay attention to signs along the way and, more importantly, Heed them.
Even if I do break, I’m learning what to do then.
I used to have a broken pattern of thinking. When I reached my limit, I don’t slow down and take a break. I say to myself: “Couple more weeks and then we’ll take a break having finished this”. I don’t slow down. I speed up. I say: “this isn’t cutting it. I’m not getting there like this. I need to double down because if I continue on this rate, I’ll break before I’m there”. Needless to say, doubling down just breaks me sooner.
I guess the lesson is very clear. Things worth doing are not done through sheer intensity. At no point should one be red lining system. A red line is there to tell you to stay away.
I have this anxiety about my next business. I’m worried that I will reach a day when my energy gets drained, the life gets sucked out of me, resent myself and regret committing to this.
I’m afraid of that day when the wheels fall off because I had it happen before. It’s the worst. It happens when you’re in your toughest time and you find yourself at the bottom of the well with no energy to climb up, no will and a whole lot of negativity. Nobody comes to pull you out.
Ironman training is teaching me how to get over this. It’s not an insight. It’s not something you should know. It’s just practice.
During my training (writing this precisely 3 months out), I frequently had that feeling of the wheels starting to fall off and me going into panic. Didn’t happen much the first 3 months when I was still full of enthusiasm and excitement and pretty much running on a toxic doze of novelty and adrenalin. But during the months after that, it become a common occurrence.
A key advantage of Ironman training, especially for addressing this issue, is its structured and highly controlled nature. It deliberately takes you up to the threshold of breaking, keeps you there for as long as you can handle, and then brings you down enough to breath and up again.
It does that on the macro with periodization (3 weeks on one week off). It also does it with the breaks that life inevitably steals from you and forces me to delaod.
It does it also on the micro level in each intense session. Every threshold session and every sprint work the same. They take you to the brink of collapse, bring you down, and have you do it again. Every long session works similarly. You go for as long as you can and then you stop.
Now when I think about that day when the wheels fall off, I have a different programming. I don’t think I’ll get there all of a sudden. I’m learning to pay attention to signs along the way and, more importantly, Heed them.
Even if I do break, I’m learning what to do then.
I used to have a broken pattern of thinking. When I reached my limit, I don’t slow down and take a break. I say to myself: “Couple more weeks and then we’ll take a break having finished this”. I don’t slow down. I speed up. I say: “this isn’t cutting it. I’m not getting there like this. I need to double down because if I continue on this rate, I’ll break before I’m there”. Needless to say, doubling down just breaks me sooner.
I guess the lesson is very clear. Things worth doing are not done through sheer intensity. At no point should one be red lining system. A red line is there to tell you to stay away.
