Macca speaks

Although I'm more of a trail runner these days, I'm still SUPER into triathlon. I'm not quite as obsessed as I once was, but I still follow the sport closely. It's a career and a lifestyle for my wife and best friends, so I can't help but be immersed and influenced by it.

Thanks to slowtwitch.com, I just came across these interviews with Chris McCormack (Macca), this year's Ironman Hawaii winner and one of the biggest champions and personalities in triathlon. It's an interesting candid look into what makes him tick and some of his insights on the sport in general. I think that any sports fan, and particularly endurance sports aficionados will enjoy them:

Part 1:


Part 2


(***Simon just posted another awesome Macca interview with www.firstoffthebike.com; he really is an interesting character and a great champion)

Since I am sharing other peoples' wisdom, as always, coach Gambetta has an interesting post entitled Just Train up on his blog. It's essentially a rant against over-complicating training, focusing too much on the extras at the expense of a good old fashioned, well thought out K.I.S.S. training plan.

Gambetta also posted a Ken Burns Commencement address to the graduates of Georgetown University, to which he added some of his own commentary. Some of the thoughts resonated quite strongly with me (Burns's words in bold):

As you pursue your goals in life, that is to say your future, pursue your past. Let it be your guide. Insist on having a past and then you will have a future.
Be careful that you are not living in the past, learn from the past, use it as a reference point
Do not descend too deeply into specialism in your work. Educate all your parts. You will be healthier. Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism.
Be a generalist, follow your curiosity, go outside your field and see how others think and do.
Don’t confuse success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that “careerism is death.”
The pursuit of excellence has it’s own rewards.
Insist on heroes. And be one.
Be the best you, you can be, regardless of other people’s judgments and expectations.
Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all — not the car, not the TV, not the computer.
Get off the Internet and read real books, get familiar with the library and all it’s resources. Build your own library.
Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.
Writing a journal, a bloging even tweeting gives you a focus. Write for yourself, no one else needs to read it.

I really like the "Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism" line. What I understand him to be saying is that skepticism requires critical analysis and forming an opinion, while still being open to the possibility that other opinions and point of views might be right, or at least have something to offer; while the modern default to cynicism (not to be confused with the Greek philosophical view), simply assumes the worst of other, or contrary views, without a rational consideration for what was actually said and what the speaker meant. Not to get too deeply into it, but I would argue that this default to cynicism is at the heart of political apathy and largely guides political discourse. A shift to skepticism would raise the level of accountability and would require well reasoned and well argued political debate, improving the overall political climate.(***not bad range eh? from Macca on winning triathlon to a cure for political apathy)