Okay blog readers.  Prepare yourself because I’m about to get a little philosophical on you with this posting…….     

Last week I had a talk with one of my coaches, Neal Henderson, as I was warming up on a treadmill at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine and he said something to me that really hung on.  I haven’t been able to get it out of mind and it has really helped me since then in my training………  I had just finished a really hard bike interval set with one of my buddies in the centers fables “Pain Cave”, and I was warming up for another tough set on the treadmill.  To be honest I was really anxious about the set.  I was worked from the ride and struggling to keep my thoughts positive for the suffering ahead.  

Neal came over and I congratulated him on his recent success with Taylor Phinney.  Taylor, one of Neal’s athletes just earned a spot to Bejing in track cycling!  Awesome!!!!!  And he did it at the incredibly young age of 17!  What a high for both of them.  Then our conversation turned

to another one of Neal’s athletes, Jamie Whitmore.  I don’t want to betray the confidence of our discussion about Jamie so I won’t go into too much detail.  The bottom line is that Jamie, the amazing Xterra World Champion, is really struggling right now because of a recent surgery to remove a large tumor from her hip.  Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!     Neal is arguably one of the best endurance coaches this world has ever seen, and in my opinion the number one thing that makes him great is how much he cares for his athletes personally.  I tried to imagine myself dealing with the two completely opposite emotions of extreme elation and deep sadness at the same time with two of my athletes.  “How do you do it?”  I asked him.  He said, ”you put up a huge sail and you put down a very deep rudder.”     It didn’t sink in at first, but I had a long treadmill run in solitude to think it over.  My take on it…….you keep moving forward no matter what.  You keep striving for greatness.  You keep clawing for improvement.  When success comes, put up that big sail and ride it.  When setbacks come you depend on that deep rudder to stay right on course.  Thanks Neal.   If anyone reading wants to help Jamie out, you can find all the info at jamiewhitmore.com.  Huge congrats to Taylor! Until next time, shop at trisports.com using my discount code chowie-s, eat more powerbar, and tell your endurance family you love them.