Hi all!

More than a few of you let me know I didn't send an email last Wednesday. (Happy you're paying attention)

Thanksgiving and Christmas always throw quite the monkey wrench in our routines. Its amazing what a couple of days off from training will do to you both mentally and physically. Anything more than one day off, and I find it VERY hard to be "motivated" to start back. I'm an absolute wreck if I end up with 3 days off! It takes weeks to recover from the recovery. (If that makes any sense....)

I've got a marathon coming up in January, but my heart isn't in it AT ALL. That makes it tough to force myself out of the door this time of year. It gets dark early, everybody around is obsessed with food, all of the travel, and the cold doesn't help either. I am in love with trail running. I don't get the satisfaction from road marathons I once did and certainly don't have the time for that type of training. So, I've tricked myself that this marathon will be a training run for a sequence of trail races that I "want" to do this spring. I think that's working so far and helps take some of the pressure off of feeling the need to run road miles every spare minute of the day. It also means I don't have to attempt to run 100 plus miles per week to prep for "racing" a road marathon. Some may think this is an easy way out. I have convinced myself its not, and actually a means to realizing more goals in a bigger picture. I have rarely (okay.....never) had any success doing a race that I didn't "want" to compete in, but have had success doing races I wanted to do based on DOing a lot I did NOT "want" to do.

So why in the heck would I choose to do the 26.2 in January if I don't want to? Because it will still get me out of the door with my running shoes TODAY. If I didn't, my fitness would slip to a very regrettable state by the time spring pops up with the races/activities I "want" to do.

The key point is that you don't have to "want" to do something to do something. Sometimes the feat of doing things when you don't "feel" like it equates to a better, stronger, and more prepared you for many amazing opportunities to come that you wouldn't be ready for otherwise. This can be applied on a daily basis and even on a minute to minute basis if you truly want to continue growing every single day. Eventually the day will come. Eventually that one opportunity will come that you will "want" to be ready for. Life is VERY short and the years keep on slipping by. The people that feel they have to have all their ducks in a row in order to do something miss the growth that happens by doing the things while unprepared in order to eventually BE prepared. Years keep slipping by, and before you know it, GONE. "NO REGRETS" begins with what you do TODAY.

Hi all!

A very wise young man at a race not too long ago said: "To be a good runner, you have to suck at everything else." There is a lot of truth in that with every aspect of your life. If you want to be your best in any one area, you're going to have to accept the price of being less than stellar in other areas. With that, what grows in your life is what you feed. The amount and quality of the food determines the quality of what you reap.

The people I have always admired and are drawn to are the ones that have a crystal clear picture of what is important, and everything else doesn't really matter. You know the saying, "Don't sweat the small stuff............and its all small stuff"

Early in my health club career, I was literally consumed by numbers and sales. I poured everything I had into getting to "the top". I led the company in both, but everything else in my life SUCKED. I was the "Golden Boy" of the 7 club chain, but there was no room to be "golden" in any other area of my life. My District manager became a dear friend of mine and was also a member of the same church Tammi and I attended. He pulled me to the side one day and gave me some great advice I never forget. "Trent, your family is the most important thing in this world. After this company is long gone, what will you have if you haven't invested more of your time/energy in your family?" Guess what...... After 30 years in business, the largest privately owned chain of health clubs in N.C. merged with another chain and soon all of the clubs were out of business. The plaques I won, the big monthly bonuses, the employees I invested in were gone............What was there, was my family.

Since then, I've fought to "try" and maintain some sort of balance. I now am sad for people that put stuff, status, or titles ahead of the things that are truly important. I find these people "silly" and rarely take them seriously. I've been there, done that more than a few times. I didn't get it either, but there comes a time when you simply have to get past your own ignorance and pour your time/energy/resources into what you know in your heart to be truly important. Most people don't take the time alone to think about what is truly important and simply stay "busy". Take some time today. Go for a hike today by YOURSELF and don't come back until you have a clearer picture about what is important to you. Maybe we should all do that more and stop spinning our wheels so that we can actually catch traction and move in a direction that actually matters. The rest is small stuff...........

Hi all,

(Congrats to all of you that did the Flight of the Vampire on Saturday. Sorry I wasn't there to cheer you on. I chose to do a trail race out of town that day.)

The weather is getting colder, the holidays are going to pounce on us soon, and the time is about to change. This time of year seems to spark a whole list of excuses for not staying active. I try to set a race in December or January each year in order to not allow the cold to become an excuse. I also force myself to head outside for a run on the first day the temperature drops below freezing so my head can accept that my body is not going to hibernate just because its cold.

In my quest to find a race worthy to motivate me for a long term goal, I found myself gravitating towards what I know and am "comfortable" with. The on-line search started with researching races that were Western States qualifiers. The vast majority of these type of races are in the Midwest and west. A lot are in the cold and at high altitudes. I've never been at high altitude and have no idea how my body would respond. Its also been years since tackling a race distance of 50 miles or more, so then that fear sets in. The search went from Colorado, Utah, and Oregon until I found myself back to the terrain I know here on the East Coast. Fear has a sneaky way of keeping you from expanding your comfort zone and stunting any possibility of personal growth. After catching myself drifting back to what I know, I made a commitment to take on a challenge each year that scares the crap out of me and in a place/on terrain I've never touched. Once I commit to something out of my comfort zone, I become invigorated and flooded with a sense of excitement that leaves me so excited I can't sleep at night. When you are that excited, you train whether its cold, hot, or wet. You keep the ultimate goal fresh in your mind and it makes the realization of the goal all the sweeter when its accomplished. What it also does is force you to embark on a journey, and the journey makes life amazing. Steps with purpose transform you and those around you.

Hi everyone,

More than a few thousand times I've come across people that are unhappy with their health, nutrition, weight, fitness etc... Yet, they don't seem to care too much about DOing anything about it. I am often in the same boat on this one. Many of you have heard my rants in the last few years of how out of shape I am and how I don't have time to train anymore. In reality, thats BULL SHIT! I made the comment of how out of shape I was last week at the front desk after a very brief and dinky 15 minute workout that more than humbled me. Amanda simply said, "Well...Do something about it!"

Thats as simple and as true as it can get. "DO something about it." In other words, "Stop whining. Stop complaining. Stop wishing. Simply DO." The stumbling obstacle for many people is the effort that goes into the doing. They, by definition, are doing, but the effort is a joke. By "doing", they have fooled themselves to believe they are "doing" all that they can. Think again..............

RESULTS take unwavering commitment, dedication, planning, execution, and yes.........much of the time it is NOT comfortable, convenient, or pain free. Hmmmmm......."Pain" free. We've talked about that before. Many of us are afraid to admit or think about the fact that if we've let ourselves go for 2, 10, or 30 years, its going to be a LONGGGG road of redemption. The journey doesn't have to be miserable. But, you may have to embrace discomfort. You may have to embrace a WHOLE heck of a lot of discomfort if you want to speed the process along. Don't misunderstand this email. Many of us haven't remotely tapped into what "pain" and discomfort we can endure or need to endure to accomplish what we "say" we want to accomplish. The point is the self discovery and positive transformations that can occur as a result of pushing past preconceived limits. If you don't embrace the storm, you may never see the calm and amazing beauty of the rainbow.

Life, like an ultramarathon has amazing opportunities to redeem yourself. No matter how awful things get, how searing the pain you're in, salvation awaits.

Its time to up the intensity, to break down walls, raise the bar, and transform ourselves mentally and physically.

"You only ever grow as a human being if you're outside of your comfort zone." ..........Percy Cerutty

"It's only when I get to a place where all my physical and psychological warning lights are flashing red, and then run beyond it, that I hit the sweet spot.".........Scott Jurek

"If you're not on the edge, you are taking up too much room."...........Randy Savage