Extreme Triathlon Swedeman: Life Starts at End of Comfort Zone?

1.30am Saturday 14 August. TODAY: Swedeman 2021 extreme triathlon (formally part of the xtri circuit). You can take “extreme” quite literally… A view on the weather radar showed the forecast made by my MTI2 associate Jorne Valstar was 100% accurate: today was going to be filled with rain, clouds, low visibility and cold temperatures. Like Jorne put it, “an epic edition of an epic race”. Or as the race director Stuart proclaimed very poetically, “the weather is shit”.?Anyway, eat “breakfast” in my room.

3.30am: transfer my race gear with my coach in the support car. Extreme triathlon relies often on “self-”support, which means your support will follow you in a marked support car, to provide you with your fuel (energy and liquid) during the 205 km bike race and then joins you on the run as a co-runner; this is mostly a safety measure in case you exhaustedly would pass out and die from hypothermia in a ditch somewhere (this sounds more dramatic than it is in reality, although almost every year runners die in ultraruns or extreme triathlons because of bad organization or dramatically shifting weather conditions hitting on unprepared participants).

4am: athlete-only buses bring us to the start line for the swim. At 5am it is time to jump in. A drone videos the start and the scene is epic. It is barely getting light and on a frontline of the lake in the middle of nowhere: 60 athletes jump in chilly water of about 12 degrees (wet suits required!). Once you get into your strokes and rhythm the cold disappears (kind of). After 1,5 km or so suddenly I see athletes getting up in the middle of the lake. Sand bank… 100ms run knee deep… Take a corner, swim in the cross over of one lake to the next. Water gets chilly and the cold again hits me. On the right, the largest waterfall of Sweden is coming down on me and sends a cold current my way. The finish line of the swim is now close (<1km). Last straight stretch right to the front of the waterfall to reach the swim finish line. Slowly being picked up by race assistants that fish you out of the water and guide you safely to the shore (the edge of the water is filled with large rocks very slippery, so your race could be over right here and now if you are not careful).

LEARNING #1: IN DIFFICULT JOURNEYS, VISUALIZE SUCCESS:

The swim was my best ever in full distance triathlon: 1 hour 19 mins for 3.8km. I visited the start site, practiced my swim in the last stretch in front of the waterfall a couple of days before and in the week before I got used to the colder water temperatures by swimming every day once or twice. It applies to every difficult thing you undertake. Visualizing and trying to live success will grow your self-confidence and self-confidence as we know makes the very difficult feasible. Innovation professionals of course know this. For instance, in futures thinking we apply it often in what is called backcasting. Think of a favorable future success scenario and then think back on how you will get there step by step.

Anyway, back to triathlon. The transitions are also a bit extreme here in Swedeman. From the swim you run up through the forest for about 600 ms in which you gain 150 ms altitude to swim->bike transition area. Quite different from the red carpet on the floor of transition runs at Iron Man races… Once up, hit the bike and start cycling. In Swedeman this year, the cycling started very cold. You get out of 12 degrees water, unzip your wetsuit and get on the bike in the rain and 13 degrees or so. Guess what, the first 20-30 kms on the bike is also chilly or downright icey. First 40 kms nothing else but chilly rain… The full distance 205 km: water-soaked and cold feet (I should have worn my winter shoes and waterproof socks, but who would have guessed in August…??). Still my catching up on faster swimmers during the bike makes it a playful bike race with about 2000 ms in altitude gain. I gain about 10 places to reach what I guess was like a top 20-25 place. Just the final stretch is a little nasty… I hit km 203 or so and I realize I am almost there… Then the road goes right and I realize they added a climb of 1,5 km at the very end with a slope of about 10%... I feel I had a strong race though and I can take a last climb quite easily. I finish the cycling 205 km in just under 6 hours 45 minutes (> 30kms an hour). At the end of the cycle my family and coach awaits me… My coach and I look at each other and joke (8 and a half hours after race start) “shall we do some running now?”… but first family time and family picture at bike->run transition; family made custom t-shirts appear that are fueled by my daughter’s immense creativity… I am already starting to feel warmer again…??

LEARNING #2: IF YOU GO TO THE END OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE, BRING THE RIGHT SUPPORT:

Beyond a great and supporting family, I have two coaches, Loic Helin and Joris Buyl and they are awesome. Joris joined the team last year specifically for the preparation of Swedeman. Without him, I would not have made it. I selected at the time Loic Helin as a coach for my first Powerman Zofingen (the world championship in duathlon to which Loic was once podium finisher; I will join the Belgium’s national selection team as an athlete under his lead in only 4 weeks from now). Joris Buyl was second in Swedeman in the previous edition. Joris coached me very well during the cycling and I was just going to find out how important he was going to be to bring me safely and injury-free down from the run. If you have ambitious goals as a marketing and innovation team, I can only say: ONBOARD AN OUTSTANDING CREW also!! Maybe contact us at MTI2? We have some great “co-runners” here for your marketing and innovation journey also.

I felt bullish at run start. You get from the bike on a parking lot and run across the parking lot in the forest and up. I feel like this is going to be a great run. However, after 1km it hits me… first 6kms the track goes up for 500 altitude meters approximately. This is quite a bit… After 3 km gradually new reality check. We are reaching rocky terrain. Gradually we are above the tree line and we hit supersmall and wet single tracks on rocky underground. Now and then also you step into a pool of mud or you need to cross a small river. Wet feet are going to stay with me for the rest of the race… After 8kms or so the terrain gets easier and we are able to step up pace through forest trails again. It seems the scenario I feared – not making the cut off time – is not going to materialize. We reach the checkpoint at 27kms relatively in good physical and mental fitness, 1 hour and a half below the cut off time. At this checkpoint, they filter the athletes. If you arrive later than 7pm, the race director assesses you not fit enough or the weather turns bad, you are not allowed to go on the high course and need to finish the last 14kms on the low course. This has quite an impact, as only the high course finishers are regarded real finishers and get the coveted yellow t-shirt, while the low course finishers are seen as half-finishers and get a white t-shirt (I always thought beforehand that low course finishers show the highest mental resilience; I still do).

Anyway, I made it to the checkpoint. The race director thinks I am fit to proceed. Run pack checked (they check safety gear, extra warm clothing, enough fluids all to be carried in a backpack, etc.). Go up the mountain now. Calculating in my mind. 14 more kms of which 4 are downhill and the first 10 are 1500 ms in altitude gain. About 3 more hours and we should be back down. It is 5.30pm. Finish time 8.30, just in time to still get pizza…?? As we gradually progress, the weather worsens a lot and visibility gets below 500ms; at times we cannot see further than 50 meters ahead (later the race officials explain to us that all looked fine at the time we crossed the checkpoint, but then the weather started to worsen a lot very fast). I start to think I may have been a bit overoptimistic. I am not prepared for this type of racing and I have not explored the track enough in this type of wet weather. My shoes (my new Nike Pegasus Trails) may have been great on Belgian dirt roads, but here they are grossly insufficient. I continuously loose my grip on rocks and my feet are completely drained and cold. We continuously alternate between swamped grasslands in which you sink till about 5-10cms below the knee and rocks. This is going to take some time and resilience. In the meantime, I am being overtaken by a few runners. Two female runners run by me like I am standing still. RESPECT!!

LEARNING #3: RESILIENCE IS BORN NOT OUT OF (OVER)CONFIDENCE, BUT OUT OF RESPECT FOR OTHERS.

Female athletes are quite rare on these tracks, but WAW, do I have IMMENSE RESPECT FOR THEM!! First female athlete finishes almost 4 hours before me! It feeds my “I can do this, but I need to follow my own (less skilled) path”-resilience. I realize that it has been a red thread through much of my professional career. In my teaching and consulting I often use the case study method. Learn from the successes and failures of others, try to apply the lessons to your own context and follow your own path, that is how progress is done.

Progress… The top of the mountain is in sight and we reach the very last checkpoint, just a small couple of steps, it seems… But then the race rep at the check point shouts (wind is picking up): “Are you still ok to continue? 450m climbing over 1600 meters remains…” WTX? I need to now pick up a last bit of courage. Up we go further… I am getting exhausted and now every step upward loads on the knees and quads… I repeat in my mind, “common you got this, this is what you trained for…” It gets increasingly difficult as bump after bump is mistakenly taken for the top… Suddenly through the clouds (or is it fog?), we see a cabin emerge, then a second one this must be the top. Yes, we see Swedeman flags on the top. We have reached the top!! Finally! In between the two flags, we take a picture and I shout outload as if it were the finish line. Little did I know…

Last year the race finished on the top and then the ski-lift took runners back down. This year, the organizers decided runners would run downhill 4-5km 1000 altitude descent to the village of Are for a central square finish line. I was not amused by this when I heard this on the briefing (most mountain accidents occur downhill not uphill). But once over the top, with darkness falling, fog intensifying (<50 m visibility) and wet and slippery rock below our feet, I suddenly feel this is going to be the most difficult part of the race. And so it becomes! First 50-100 meters we really climb down, I slip two times and rip my new rain jacket… The descent becomes gruelling, sometimes we cannot even see the course anymore and need to go down on sheer luck we are still on the right track. We also realize it is getting cold fast. The idea I had to put on a ski shirt beneath our waterproof coats may not have been the best. While trying to put them on, the few minutes without protection gives us mild hypothermia, with shivering ?lips and shaking hands we try to get the hell out there and again start running down to warm up… Thanks to my outstanding co-runner who reaches for my hand when I am on my slippery shoes and seems to spot the track better than I do, we ultimately reach the tree line again and all goes more smoothly after. With our Petzl headlights on we utimately reach downtown Are again. WE HAVE MADE IT! I am a SWEDEMAN HIGH COURSE finisher.

I am wondering… was this my toughest race ever? Probably it was. Next days confirm that assessment. For the first time, I have swollen feet and thick lower legs after a race. Walking up a little hill is tiring and I need to catch a breather on a stairway now and then. I even have difficulty concentrating on reading a book and handling some work email. My co-runner whatsapps me “How do you feel? I still feel a bit like chocolate…” Does life really start at the end of your comfort zone? Stepping outside the comfort zone is definitely now and then refreshing and it can’t hurt to have BIG dreams. If you have BIG dreams professionally, call upon us to join you on your journey, we at MTI2 know what it feels like…??