Create is often seen as a product that you make, for example, art and craftwork, music, sculpture, photography, bridge building, boat making, weaving, screen printing to name but a few.
However, create can also be a do. I want to unpack this in terms of my training for the Challenge Wanaka Half Iron Man.
Learn
I already knew a fair bit about running and cycling, as I have done many half marathons and 100-kilometre road cycle races, a couple of marathons, some short duathlons, one short triathlon and one 500 metre ocean swim. However, my knowledge of endurance multisport events was limited.
So I was able to access my knowledge. However, there came the point where I needed to obtain intelligence from others through a variety of sources, modes and text types.
So to access my new knowledge I have a coach, I’m using Facebook to access swimming tutorials, and I am connected through communities like Strava, Garmin and my Coached coaching app to keep my motivation up. I also belong to the Ellesmere Road Runners and Christchurch Marathon Clinic running club to stay motivated, get more knowledge, hill work and variety in my training. I also belong to the Leeston Road Cycling Club for the same reasons.
All the components I have mentioned above enable me to access and engage with a variety and multitude of knowledge through face to face discussions, text, video, audio, and self-reflection. They allow me to access recognised effective practice from expert practitioners ensuring my training was best practise and minimised the risk of an injury.
Coaching became very important providing me with access to knowledge in the Learn phase and giving me a focus to analyse the Create phase. Having a coach became a big part of my training. The coach helped build a training programme, examining my outputs and consistency and giving me access to a library of resources to support my plan.
Create
My most significant change to mindset and understanding as up until now I would have possibly put creating a training plan in as a Create, however, now I see a training programme fitting more into the Learn aspect of learning.
The Create is when I got to combine my existing knowledge with other original ideas in new and imaginative ways to create a new outcome. These Creates involved each training swim, cycle and run as this was where deep learning occurs and gives you more opportunities for self-reflection and understanding.
These Creates included many moments of looking very silly completing swimming, cycling and running drills to build up my strength and efficiency to improve my speed and endurance, running in the public parks with high knees or completing squats and lunges on the side of the road.
The most significant learning, however, came when I competed in races, these included sprint triathlons, Olympic triathlons, ocean swims and half marathons. These are the most critical Creates, as events stop you from lying to yourself or making excuses for your performance which is easy to do in training. The pressure of a race is hard to replicate in practice. I remember my first competitive ocean swim being one of the worst events I had ever done, and it was not until I was debriefing with a good friend that I realised I had not been breathing out underwater, meaning I could not take a full breath when swimming.
The competitive events also gave me an opportunity to put into to action my learnings about nutrition, pacing, cadence, transitioning, hydration and endurance. It also surrounds you with a multitude of like-minded people of all ranges that you can glean nuggets of gold from watching, listening or talking too.
Share
The digital technology I utilised during my training really amplified my ability to Share by connecting with others, it empowered me to be able to Share easily and look at my own and others performances, it gave myself, my connections and my coaches ubiquitous access to my data and visibility of all aspects of my training and events.
Without the use of my Garmin GPS watch and Garmin cycle computer, Coached app, Strava app, Garmin Connect App my experience and learning would not have been as turbocharged. This turbocharging enabled me to rewind and review sessions; it allowed for me to collaborate with others quickly and efficiently online in real time, access and share knowledge with other athletes and my coaches and create connections online which then became face to face when at events. The ability to connect online with other athletes was quite comforting especially when I was competing at a new race and did not know anyone, having a connection with someone online and then meeting face to face at the event helped calm the nerves.
A safety aspect that the technology-enabled was the incident reporting on my cycle computer, as much training involves 3-hour rides I was often a long way from home on quiet country roads. My cycle computer can recognise if I have a crash and will text specific contacts with my GPS location, this is a sharing component that was unheard of only a few years ago at such a cheap cost.
I did much sharing with my coaches and colleagues through the Coached app however did not share a lot through social media such as Facebook. I felt my friends on this would find the sharing of nine specific training sessions a week as well as a multitude of events a bit much and possibly defriend me. It is essential when sharing that you connect with the right audience to get the most of the connections.
Overall my experience of Challenge Wanaka was really excellent and looking back and reflecting was amplified by the new learning, connections and access to technology. The only thing is now I want to take this new learning and have another crack in 2020. Bring it on!
