I missed a week in my blog, so I’m making up for it with a double entry today. A week ago, I raced one of my favorite all-time events, The Rookie in New Braunfels, Texas. The race is located about an hour south of Austin at a water-skiing park and has become one of the favorite venues for triathlon race directors because it’s ideal to host a sprint distance triathlon.

I drove down the night before with friends from Jack and Adams Bicycles. The guys and girls on the race production staff worked their tails off that night and the next morning to create one of the best races anyone will ever attend. We spent the night on the Ski Ranch’s property in mobile homes set up to host kids for water skiing camps. I’ve always stayed at home the night before The Rookie and driven down in the morning, but this was fun way to hang out with friends the night before and the morning of the race.

The Rookie is a short distance race, or what I would refer to as a super-sprint triathlon. The distances of each leg are: swim 300 meters, bike 11 miles, run 2 miles. Jack, from Jack and Adams Bicycles, originally launched this race years ago as an event to cater to the first-timer triathlete, hence the title. The distances are shorter than other races and the atmosphere is very welcoming. Our friend, Dan is now the race director and he has continued that spirit, where one would not feel intimidated as a rookie triathlete. This race drew over 900 athletes and sold out several months in advance. It could have easily drawn many more. I’m not the only one who loves this race and what it does for the sport around Central Texas.

While the intent has always been to accommodate the first-timer, over the last five years, non-rookies have shown up on race day as well. In fact, this race has become probably the most competitive sprint race in Texas over the last few years. Because Jack, Dan, and the bike shop put on such a great event and they have strong relationships with the best triathletes in Texas, the race start list is stacked. Amongst us, we jokingly call it the Texas Sprint Championships. It’s always a reminder of what talented people we have in the Austin area. There are only a couple other places in the country that can boast as talented a field of triathletes from its metropolitan area as Austin can.

So not only is the field always challenging at the Rookie, but I’ve had people ask “well, it’s such a short distance compared to the Ironman and 70.3 races. This must be a piece of cake for you guys.” Okay here’s the deal, if we were to race the Rookie at the same paces we raced those longer triathlons, then yes that is a true statement. However, this race takes anywhere from 40-45 minutes, so everyone in the front group is going ALL OUT from the gun. You are red-lining in extreme pain the entire time. You rarely hit that zone in the longer distance races so this super sprint race, designed for first timers ends up hurting worse, albeit for a shorter time than one of the longer races.

The other thing I love about The Rookie is that everyone near the front knows each other. These are the people you train with and joke with on a daily basis. So it’s an opportunity to throw down and try to bury each other. It’s like a reunion before the race. At the starting line when the gun goes off, we try to annihilate one another. After, we get to catch up and chat like the old friends we are. I just love the atmosphere there. Then, the best part of the entire day is seeing each person who entered The Rookie as a first timer accomplish his or her goal of completing a triathlon. You can see the joy in their faces when they cross the finish line. After I finished, a friend and I went back and jogged the run course as a cool-down but also to cheer on the runners as they worked through the last leg of the event. That alone is a great reminder why we do the sport. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own performance and competition, but watching a first timer on the run course and finish line reminds me why this is such a great sport.

That said, I had a really fun time at the Rookie. I ended up happily in second place overall. The guys and gals from team Jack and Adams swept nearly all the top spots and the athletes and coaches from Source Endurance took the top two positions on the podium for the men and the women. Brandon Marsh took me and the overall win in the race. Brandon is a good friend and is very talented, fit, and raced very well. James Cotter was also up front with us starting the run, but slipped running out of transition with me and skinned himself up pretty badly. He was okay at the end, but was forced to jog the run. It’s never fun to see a fellow competitor taken out of the race because of a misfortune like that. It was really fun to be out racing with my Source Endurance and Jack and Adams teammates as well as those athletes who are now no longer “rookies!”

So where does “Napoleon” fit as was indicated in the title of this blog entry?

In my graduate studies and my personal life, I am a student of history. I’ve always been drawn particularly to military history. Who else would read a history of the Crimean War just because he was curious and wanted to know what really took place which inspired Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”……..I just did. So one of the tools I have at my disposal is the ability to look at the happenings in my life through the lens and lessons of history (on a side note, just you wait until I publish my next article ‘What can Clausewitz Teach us About Triathlon.’ I’ve been shaping it in my head during my long runs over the last several months).

The other point I want to bring up is that racing as a profession continues to teach me valuable life lessons. I feel that I am learning more about myself and life in general now trying to race as a means to support myself than if I had stayed in my former existence and career. It never ceases to amaze me how much I’m continuing to learn about business, relationships, and perspective. I always tell myself, as one of my old coworkers used to say in presentations “we reserve the right to get smarter as we go along” (although he used it as a cop-out in case we screwed up something on a project).

In the last week, several issues came up in my personal and business life that resulted in emotional stress. I’ve work through these issues now and that stress has been GREATLY reduced. Again, I’ve learned a great deal this week and chalk it all up to life lessons. I have amazing friends and family who support and believe in me, and that is what’s important. Without my friends and family, I think my sanity would have slipped away because of this sport long ago. During this week as the different stressors weighed on me, I found, as always, it was easy to get distracted from my job, training. I went through my workouts, but when my energy and emotions were elsewhere, it was difficult to dig deep in those workouts the way one must.

So where does Napoleon and military history fit into this? During the week, as I worked my way through things, spoke with friends, and struggled with my focus on workouts, I found a little something that seemed to help. People in general love quotes. You just have to look at a Facebook page, an email signature, or a poster in an office to know that we seem to thrive on the words of wisdom presumably spoken by an accomplished figure from whom we may draw a lesson. While some gravitate towards historical intellectuals or politicians, I look to Napoleon.

Napoleon possessed a military genius comparable with any commander in history. He had a very pragmatic and effective approach to problems, but also had a way of stating his thoughts with an elegant simplicity which I’ve always found remarkable. On Thursday morning, as I drank my coffee looking at the approaching day, I went back and read through some of my notes from a graduate military history class. In them, I found a quote that rung true to me this week as I wrestled with these other issues. Napoleon said:

“There are many good generals in Europe, but they see too many things at once. I see only one thing in front of me and that is the enemy.” (this may be a paraphrase because it came from my class notes)

His statement resounded with me. The enemy in my case is not anything concrete, rather Napoleon was emphasizing the importance of maintaining a simple focus on what it most important. He was saying that to be successful, one must shut out the other distractions in order to keep aim on the goal. I’m not saying that I haven’t worked to resolve the other happenings; I have. But as the weekend approached, I worked on shutting out those distractions when it was time for my workouts. It was time to focus on executing on what I needed at that moment. Napoleon’s ‘enemy in front of him’ was each of my workouts that were created as part of a larger progression for my season. I was able to focus this weekend thanks to my friends and family and thanks to the words of a Corsican a hundred years ago.

Pat