Everything I Do Affects Everything I Do

Each week, Chris, my tri coach, sends out an e-mail to address any questions or issues, to motivate and to remind us, his clients, of our goals. This week, the title of his e-mail was "Everything I do affects everything I do." He went on to discuss the important elements of maintaining balance during training and to remind us to keep the big picture in mind.

He talked about the importance of sleep and that now is the time to get in the habit of sleeping more than 6 hours a night. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm not a good sleeper. I have a hard time staying asleep and I always wake up early. In my world, sleeping in means sleeping until 7am....lately 6am...

I've talked to Chris about my sleeping and am working on some strategies to sleep more and sleep better. Sometimes I feel like I'm actually sleeping better and sometimes I wake up feeling exhausted. However, I'm working on it and I feel like I might be making progress. Training for a 1/2 ironman definitely brings fatigue, but hopefully I can manage that fatigue to some degree and use my sleep as good recovery time because my sleeping and nutrition and training and stress all affect each other.

While I was reading Chris' e-mail, was thinking specifically about my triathlon training, but I was also thinking about the topic of his e-mail as a real-life principle. It's true. Everything I do does affect everything I do. I don't think my life is circular at all. In fact, I'm a very linear and analytical person. However, all of the decisions and actions I take in my life, directly impacts all areas of my life.

For example, my job, my family, my racing, and my personal life are all affected by the choices that I make. When I wake up in the morning at 5am to train, I've started my day by working towards a kind of big goal. I'm starting my day with some quiet personal and spiritual reflection because I truly feel closest to God when I am training. When I go into work and teach my classes, I share my training experiences with my students which in turn may promote and encourage some sort of physical activity in their lives. This blog allows me to share my racing and training experiences with my family and friends and give them some sort of insight into what inspires me to participate in the madness of endurance training. My family and I race and train together. My training helps me to feel like me.

So, it's true. Chris is right. Everything I do does affect everything I do and will continue to because that's the way life goes.