I finished reading the Bucket book. It was a really short read but a few things have really stuck with me. It's reinforced something that I have believed for a long time about endurance sports as well. I'm gonna be kinda controversial here...you may not agree and you can go ahead and give it to me in the comments if you like! You know when they say:

"Take the positive, learn from the negative, and move on"

Well, being that I'm basically in the business of getting people to do just that in an endurance sports setting, I can say:

GOOD LUCK!

Most people can not do this. It's more like:

"Take the negative, push away the positive, hang on"

I often think that if I could just get my athletes to absorb the positive, forget the negative, don't even learn from it, just forget it, and then move on, i.e. keep having fun and chasing the fun, if I could get them to do that, the results would skyrocket. It's this hanging onto your smallness, your negative internal thoughts, that keep you down. They keep that one foot attached to the floor.

But we are humans, and we want to dwell on what needs fixing, what went wrong. We like to explain away our progress, we don't want to internalize how awesome we are, after all, we need to be humble, we can't be arrogant. If we think we are awesome, then people might not want to be around us. Who wants to be around awesome?

Secret....everyone! If you deeply accept your progress and forgive yourself for the other stuff, you will like hanging out with yourself (and so will others, but that will matter less if you dig yourself).

Rant over...okay, the Bucket book. It's quick and simple, but the basis is that when you contribute positively to someones life, you fill their bucket. And when you fill their bucket, you fill your own. If you contribute negatively to someones life, you scoop out of their bucket, and you scoop out of your own. So the book simply advocates that you aim to fill peoples buckets. That's it! Focus on the good stuff in others, not because the bad stuff doesn't exist, but because it's not helpful to harp on it, even for the sake of "learning" and "progress" and "fixing mistakes." Just aim to authentically see the good stuff in people, tell them about what you see, feel good about doing it, that's all.

"The lesson here is clear: If you want people to understand that you value their contributions and that they are important, the recognition and praise you provide must have meaning that is specific to each individual."

--How Full is Your Bucket, Tom Rath and Donald O Clifton

The biggest connection I had with this book was in regards to my daughter. There are some areas of school that she is struggling and some stuff that she really shines at. She's always been that way, she crawled and walked REALLY early, but talked REALLY late. She's always been way up in one area and way down in another area at the same time. It's left us scratching our heads, and worrying a lot. And what did we do when she started to really struggle in school in one area? We got tutors (Love Mrs.Pam), we spent lots of extra time, we grilled, and flash carded, and played games. You know what we didn't do? Expand upon her strengths. We were spending so much time trying to get the deficient areas up to par that we weren't throwing time, money, energy into what she already rocks the house at. That will be changing pronto. Because when we become adults, we do more of what we rock at, and we find ways to not do what we suck at. That's the truth. And our strengths and positives need MORE effort and engagement than our deficiencies. So, anyone know of any Math camps in the Denver area?! Or camps where you take my recycle bin and make elaborate cities out of it's contents??

This week has been a great week of training. I really started to see the benefits of the Coast Ride and Cali camp start to shine through in some nice run paces at low heart rate. That was a surprise and made me happy. I'm really enjoying the increased running that Muddy is giving me. It's nothing major as everything with him is just this beautiful gradual thoughtful build. It's all very non obvious and just comes at you bit by bit. The key for me is really establishing and maintaining consistency. That's been my focus this week and things have gone great. I also had my athletes over 3 of the days this week for training sessions and I just love how enriching having them around is. They really inspire me daily and help me keep consistent along the way.

I got my new TriBella kit for next year. I must say, it's definitely the most girl power kit I've ever worn and I feel pretty in it. That's not something I ever expected to say, but I'm pretty gleeful about it. I'm also motivated to NOT drink Coke on the course this year, because the front of it is white and Coke is going to make it brown I think!! Thanks Liz and Nikki for posing with me! Lastly, Liz did the "soaking wet" test with the kit, and despite all your wishes this bad boy is not see-through! Hahaha!

Part of developing consistency in training this week, I also got back into the consistent routine of fueling like a PRO. OSMO Active during my sessions, and recovery drinks after the appropriate ones. The other thing I added this week was the GOODNIGHT that Osmo advocates. Stacey tried to develop a powder that you would mix with Almond milk as a goodnight but she could never get a consistent taste and texture. So she just published how you could make your own.

My thoughts so far:

-- I tried it with unsweetened almond milk. I wasn't a big fan. It was more like "get it down"

-- I tried it with sweetened almond milk. It was much more tasty, but the cocoa powder was clumpy

-- I put all ingredients in the vitamix, this was better

-- I upped the sweeted almond milk to 8oz instead of 6, and put it in the Vitamix, and added a few ice cubes, this is my favorite so far.

I want to try adding a frozen banana, or maybe some frozen organic cherries, I'll do that tomorrow. The taste is like bad cherry chocolate milk. It's strange, but with my tweaks I can't exactly call it "Bleh" anymore, it's more like "Okay, cool."

Also, I bought the really pricy Valerian, it's in capsule form, and I started with 1/2 the dose she suggests.

Outcome: deeper sleep, fresher wake up in the morning, and feeling just a little more recovered than I expected, although I have added back in the Normatec pants as well. Also, drinking this is like a pavlov's dog situation. You drink the drink, you go to bed. Sometimes drinking a drink is an easier decision than dragging yourself to bed. But you drink it, and then you just head to bed easily. That's been a nice perk for me.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Lastly, I just want to give a short and public I love you to Troy and Annie. I felt very loved last friday and am constantly reminded how lucky I am that we are such a strong supportive team. Love you Troy, thanks for accepting all of me even more than I accept myself.