Make Hard Things Easy and Easy Things Hard

The end of another training week. After my dismal showing during the Erowal Bay affair, I did more paddling this week, not just more long aerobic distance but more intensity and more stuff, like surf landings, that I find challenging. With my goal of making hard things easy and easy things hard, I tried to build in some sytems that supported my goals.

There are lots of ways to make hard things easy and easy things hard. The oft-quoted standards are having work-out buddies or pre-determined events – even better if you have to pay money! Different things work for different people. I find even simple strategies such as doing the hard thing first thing in the morning useful. Or, not letting myself rethink the days plan. Make the plan and stick to it without umming and aahing and revisiting your plan. The latter strategy is the best strategy for making dietary change. If you decide not to eat cake don’t rethink eating cake every time someone offers you cake. Just say “No thanks.” Save your mental energy for things that really matter like arguing with strangers on the internet (joke, obviously) or implementing some other strategy that makes hard things easy.

This week I used all of the above, except for saying “No thanks” to cake because no-one offered me cake and we don’t keep junk food in our house. Not keeping junk food in the house is a very simple and effective way to make eating junk food, which is easy, hard.

This week, I upped both distance and intensity. My long day was 45 kilometres, and I did two zone 4/5 workouts. One was a 12 kilometre fast paddle and the second was my local Park Run. Going to my local Park Run involves multiple strategies for making hard things easy. The Park Run starts at 8 am, other people are running, and someone takes care of timing, course and distance. It’s a win, win, win, win! The Park Run people even send me my results! I also spent an afternoon at one of the local beaches practising surf landings and Doug and I paddled over to the bar and caught some waves one morning in between storm events.

Overall, it was a solid week: 80 kilometres paddling, 32 kilometres and 630 metres of elevation gain on foot, 10 kilometres cycling, two sessions on my climbing wall and three strength sessions.