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A menthol-scented, mojo-filled Friday link collection…powered by Soigneur!

This week has been a wild one, bouncing back from my half marathon (race report) and prepping for my upcoming work / training trip(s) through Minneapolis and Austin (more on those soon). Really looking forward to some plane & hotel time to get some quality work done…now I just have to remember to sleep!

Lifestyle reading has been interesting this week. Picked up a few new blogs to follow, including Smart Passive Income (sounds cheesy, but he really talks about running a small business) and the Indispensable Guide to Time Management. Over on Muselife, the two guys had a great video interview series with Sam Carpenter of Work The System fame (also very follow-worthy).

Two points on the entrepreneurial front, this week. First, I got my first can of embrocation from the good folks at Soigneur. I am super stoked to try it out this weekend when the temps are due to hit Spring-like levels. Thanks!! Second, I just gave my Cycling 2.0 — Training & Racing with Power talk at TriFitLab in RI. The facility has computrainer set up and enough bike get-fast geekery to make your head spin. If you have to check out Todd online, do that here, but if you can get to the lab…you just gotta! And for those of you looking to start your own gig, Chris over at Art of Nonconformity has a great guest post with Tsilli Pines, who has started her own ketubah (wedding contract) business — talk about niche!

On the technology front, I had to upgrade to a new iPhone 3Gs after two years on one of the original ones. I love it, especially the new camera. Amazing difference. I also have a new backup drive from the folks at Lacie, after my original one died. I now have total redundancy between that and my online Mozy.com backup…here’s to not losing another few years of pictures and memories!

Finally, an update on my own projects…

New Endurance Lifestyle Design page is live on Facebook! If you are interested in making the most of your training time and think there’s more to life than just training (gasp!), you’ll find resources and camaraderie over here. Please Fan Us and tell your friends, thanks!

The Triathlon Answers website now has a weekly summary email that you can subscribe to…see all the questions and then reply to the ones you want. Great for coaches and people with specific interests. Visit the site and subscribe here. Social butterflies can simply follow TA via Twitter!

Have a great weekend!

~ Patrick

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In the seventh installment from my new book on Endurance Lifestyle Design, I put my jedi mind trick powers to work in an attempt to convince you that you are already well on your way to building your Endurance Lifestyle.

If you want to get these excerpts and my other regular posts via email just click here to sign up. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed or follow me on Twitter for updates.

What’s the Worst that Could Happen?

By now you should have a pretty good sense of where this book is headed. Depending on where you are right now, in your life, the following chapters will either: (A) fit nicely with your world view or (B) seriously change how you think about everything from racing, to planning, to eating and more. History has shown, however, that what I have written isn’t as important as whether or not you’ll actually do any of it.

Do You Really Have Any Other Choice?
I found myself at a crossroads of my life. My training time was maxed out, work was suffering and we were about to start a family. With my back to the virtual wall, the path out became extremely clear . I took those first few steps and have never looked back. But what if you aren’t in the same place and don’t have that same sense of urgency?

If you are reading this book, chances are you are in the same place…even if you haven’t fully grasped it…yet. Understand that time is your most valuable resource, not money. Odds are that your current training approach is nothing more than a black hole that sucks up all the time you have that you aren’t sleeping, eating, or working. This leaves you with precious little time to do the other things that matter to you. In other words, you are already paying for the decision to place your training above everything else, even though you might not realize it.

Understanding the Resistance You Have to Change…So You Can Change.
The biggest challenge of the new Endurance Lifestyle isn’t the intervals. It isn’t the schedule. The biggest sticking point is change. Inertia is simple, easy, and convenient. Change is hard, even though at the end of the day we are trying to make your life easier by bringing your training in sync with everything else that matters to you.

Your current endurance worldview holds that more hours/time/miles equals a higher probability of success. Take away the hours and it’s easy to see how one might think the odds of success have also shrunk commensurately. Not to mention that we are creatures of habit, and we typically lead very full lives. Shifting things around is understandably a little disconcerting, and not only because it means a bit more work over the short-term.

Defining the Worst Case Scenario
If you have all these nightmare visions of what changing your training might do to your fitness, wellness, results, etc., then you need to step back for a second. Remember that this is all just a game; you play a sport and you do it because it’s fun. Many folks lose that perspective as they become progressively more wrapped up in their sport, unconsciously defining themselves by what they are training for instead of by who they are, what they like, where they work, etc. Sport is important, for sure, but it’s not the be all end all. Make it so at your own risk.

For a second let’s say you take the advice outlined here and you do revamp your training. What’s the worst that could happen? You cut back your hours and now you are sleeping more. You are more focused at work. You have picked up a new hobby or reconnected with some old friends or are content just spending more time with the important people in your life. Race day comes and you have a miserable day despite following the guidance of this book to the letter. After you dissect your race, curse me out in a nasty letter, and sulk for a few weeks, you wake up and realize that you can still go back to the old school way. Maybe you lost six to nine months, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s little more than a drop in the bucket.

Besides, it might just sink in that while you didn’t hit your goals…you actually did relatively well on half as much training and you still managed to lead a pretty full life. Imagine that.

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I’m very pleased to announce that the Endurance Lifestyle Design blog now has its own Facebook fan page.

That’s right, don’t delay, head over there right now, become a fan and get access to all of the Facebook goodness related to Endurance Lifestyle Design. Connect with your peers online, share stories, learn from one another, get tips, connect and start working on your own personal Endurance Lifestyle today.

My new book, Train to Live, Live to Train: An Insider’s Guide to Building the Ultimate Fitness Lifestyle, will be released in March, and I’ll be doing a special promo deal for all of the Facebook people. Super-duper double top-secret insider deal, bordering on the ludicrous, so you need to be a fan on the Facebook page in order to get it. You’ll always be able to hop over to the FB pace from my blog, which will have a link in the right hand navigation column.

While you’re there, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter which includes my five Fit Life tips as well as access to weekly summary e-mails from the blog. Help to keep you up to date on all the things going on.

This is just part of the cool stuff coming up for the 2010 season. I am really excited to have you on board as a partner in this endeavor. We are going to get fit together, get faster together, and have a ton of fun. It’s going to be a great.

Thanks again!

~ Patrick
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