Mrs. Keenan does the Wisconsin Ironman Triathlon every September. It is a grueling 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run, all done consecutively. I was excited to work with Mrs. Keenan because I do triathlons too, but up until this August all of mine were of the "Sprint" or "Olympic" variety. AKA way shorter than an Ironman. I was planning to eventually do a Half Ironman, (1.2/56/13.1) by 2021 after building up through more Olympic Races and something called the Loop Pursuit that included a 40 mile bike and 10 mile run. I think a combination of working with Mrs. Keenan for a year, feeling pretty healthy from my early season training, and the reverberating words of a Michael Matera keynote presentation with the theme of "Why not here? Why not now? Why not you?" all swirled together to change my plans. I decided to skip the Loop Pursuit and just do a Half Ironman THIS YEAR. Why not? There was a race an hour away and it was only HALF of what Mrs. Keenan has done EVERY YEAR for the past DECADE! I just needed to train more, no big deal! Narrator: But it WAS a big deal, and Mr. Honish found out quickly that he lacked knowledge about proper nutrition, had a bike saddle that was only comfortable for 30-35 miles, and could not run 13.1 miles if he did any activity beforehand. So yeah, enter the Growth Mindset... I know, if you were a seventh grader last year you probably heard about this way more often than you wanted, but I am telling you, it was a game changer. In my early training sessions after I decided to do the Half Ironman, I failed and I failed hard! But I found out there were two categories of failure I was encountering. Category 1: I Couldn't Do It (Yet) Category 1 was frustrating because I knew I was literally unable to accomplish something I needed to be able to accomplish in the near future. It feels like it is out of your control in the short term, and you need to implement a long term plan to accomplish your goal and trust you will eventually succeed. 4 weeks before the race, I intended to ride 40 miles on my bike and run 13.1 miles. I gave up after running 7 of them. I couldn't do it. I needed to approach that failure with a growth mindset to acknowledge that I had failed, analyze the reasons for it, plan a different approach for the next time and resolve to try again. I felt very hungry early on that run, and after looking at my breakfast (or lack thereof) and the fluids I had taken in over the bike, I knew I didn't give myself enough energy to replace what I had been burning. I consulted Mrs. Keenan for guidance on what to eat and drink, increased the size of my breakfasts and changed the timing of when I took on nutrition on the bike and run. I had also run a very fast pace on the first two miles of that failed run, so I set a time for a slower pace and attempted to stick with it from the very first mile. I analyzed stride data to figure out how many steps I took each minute running at that pace, then created a playlist of songs with beats per minute that matched my steps. RACE DAY APPLICATION: One of my favorite parts of triathlons is the general vibe from all the athletes around you. People are being really modest about their own skills while encouraging everyone around them. It is supportive. You cheer for each other and celebrate the success of others. 30 minutes into my bike ride, I met a stupid-head-jerk-face. I mean, I don't think he was really trying to be a stupid-head-jerk-face, but he was. I was sucking down my first gel to get some calories in me because I had adjusted my plan to do it every 30 minutes so I wouldn't crash on the run. This guy comes by on a bike that's worth more than my car and called over his shoulder as he passed "It's not that time ALREADY, is it?" Translation: "Hey wussbag, real athletes like me don't need nutrition yet, we just started this thing!" Having been through the trials and tribulations of failed training and poor nutrition management throughout the summer, I knew what I needed to do to be successful. I was following MY plan. He didn't know my plan. My plan was different than his plan. And you know what? My plan worked for me. I felt great off the bike. I had a strong first half of the run. Ironically, I struggled on the last quarter of the run largely because I accidentally skipped getting Gatorade and a gel at the last aid station for a 3.5 mile stretch because I thought there was another one just a mile ahead. Otherwise, my adjustments worked because I had gone through the trial and error process to make sure it would work. I just needed to block out the hater and suck gels when I knew I needed them. This was also a lesson in the multiple definitions of success. I was in this thing to finish. I had no ambitions of pushing my bike pace to stick with stupid-head-jerk-face. My success didn't depend on going as fast as him or racing on his plan. I was OK with following MY plan to MY success. Category 2: Way Too Comfortable Category 2 doesn't even seem like a kind of failure. It happens when you purposely set yourself up to avoid failure. The problem is, when you never fail you never have opportunites for growth. You have no mistakes to learn from. You have nothing driving you to improve. It creates failure in the long term due to the lack of failure in the short term. I set up many training sessions to go distances I knew I could accomplish. I avoided long runs right off the bike because I was worried I couldn't finish long runs right off the bike. I did short distances without amping up my pace or doing any intervals to build fitness. I was doing what I knew I could easily accomplish. In a way, the failed run I mentioned earlier was a blessing. Ironically, me giving up after 7 miles was also an example of Category 2 and being way too comfortable. Was I LITERALLY unable to continue? Would I collapse if I attempted to go another tenth of a mile? No. But I gave up because I was really hungry and tired and that was uncomfortable. RACE DAY APPLICATION Remember how I said I was struggling on the last quarter of the run? Yeah, I had to walk... ...or did I? Could I have continued slogging through the last 4 miles, shuffling my feet in something that resembled a running-ish movement, covering a mile every 11 or 12 minutes instead of slowing to a walk? Probably. Did I NEED to lower my heart rate to ensure a strong finish like I was rationalizing? Probably not. I hit the 12 mile mark of the 13.1 mile run and convinced myself that if I walked at least 0.1 miles, I could finish so much stronger. I was trying to be comfortable again. As I walked, I came across a middle-aged woman running in the opposite direction on the out-and-back run course. She knew I only had about a mile to go, because she had just come from the finish area, and unlike the stupid-head-jerk-face from the bike course, she gave me an encouraging "keep going buddy, you can do it!" accompanied with a high five. I started running the most uncomfortable mile I've ever run, but comfort is overrated. It's darn near impossible to achieve lofty goals without pushing past your limits. That finish line had been a lofty goal throughout the summer, and I needed to be uncomfortable to cross it. CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS Those two kinds of failure are everywhere in our schools. The whole process of learning and teaching depends on it! Theoretically, every student should be thinking "I can't do it yet" any time a new concept or skill is introduced. Moving from "I can't do it yet" to "I did it!" is what true learning is all about! More importantly, that process cannot happen at all if we never put ourselves out of our comfort zone and open ourselves up to the possibility of failure to begin with. Middle school is the age of self consciousness, a time when you don't want to draw negative attention to yourself and many would rather avoid something completely than risk feeling embarrassed by falling short in any way. Well, it SHOULDN'T BE and it CAN'T BE! PLEASE... this school year, remind yourself that it's perfectly OK to not be able to do something as long as you're willing to work hard to figure it out in the long run. If you fear being unable to achieve a goal and choose not to pursue it, you have sealed your own fate. There is no way to achieve a goal you never actually pursue. It is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In short, Failure is OK if you learn from it, and I am going to be reminding my students (and myself) of this fact all year long. As Ms. Frizzle said many times on The Magic School Bus, "Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!"
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AuthorJohn Honish: Archives
June 2021
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