Obstacle Course Racing and Avoiding Injury

Happy Monday,

I have a bonus blog for you about obstacle course racing and avoiding injury.

Whenever I do a race, I have 3 goals: don’t get injured, enjoy myself, and finish. My safety and health always come first because not only do I want to be able to do more races, but I have a life outside of racing where I want to be a great husband, dad, and friend. When I began my race on Saturday, I started off running. Very quickly, I felt the pain in my leg, giving me a signal that something wasn’t quite right. I have a history of stress fractures and knew this could lead to an injury. At this point, I had a choice. I could keep running and risk injury or I could slow down and walk. The young and less wise Andrew would have kept running and likely hurt himself. I decided to slow down and walk. While I might have been slower than I had hoped, I enjoyed the trails, had fun tackling the obstacles, and overall had a great time. Best of all, my leg (and the rest of me) feels pretty good today!

What does this have to do with work? I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen and heard of a lot of people running themselves into the ground at work. It’s like they are running with leg pain and keep running until the bone eventually snaps. Have you seen this? Have you experienced this? I know I have.

In the story this week, I mention how there is more to my life than just races, which is why my health and safety is so important. In a similar way, while work is important, it’s not the only thing in our lives. We are more than just employees. When we push past exhaustion at work, not only are we less effective at work, but we’re not the spouse, partner, parent, friend, etc. that we’d like to be. At least that’s what I’ve found from first-hand experience.

The Challenge: How can we pay attention to the pain signals and adjust accordingly before we get injured?

The Leader Challenge: How are you creating an environment that protects people from being ran into the ground?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Ensuring Our Goals Resonate (1-8-25)

This week we are going to kick off a series focused on goals, and we will start by reflecting on whether or not our goals resonate.

For the past few years, I’ve set a generic goal to get healthier. Getting healthier might be a goal that resonated with other people, but if I’m honest, it was never really motivating and never really connected with me. It was too abstract of an idea. Over the past few months, I’ve lifted weights on a more consistent basis and I’m discovering how much I enjoy that. This year, instead of having a generic goal of getting healthier, I have a goal of building more strength. More specifically, I want to increase the amount of weight I lift on a weekly basis by 15-20% by the end of the year.

I understand that ultimately the idea of building strength is connected to the idea of getting healthier. However, the goal of building strength is so much more motivating to me. I enjoy lifting weights. I love the simplicity of knowing if I’m making progress or not on any given day. I get excited about making improvements whether it’s adding in a few extra reps or increasing how much I’m lifting at any given time. Building strength is a goal that resonates with me. It’s a goal I can rally behind and execute against. I don’t have that same passion for the generic goal of get healthier.

Let’s make some connections. Have you ever had a goal that didn’t resonate with you? Did you pursue that goal with the same zest as you did for something that truly connected with you? Think about common work goals. They include things like, drive sales, hit quota, decrease costs, improve market share, increase customer satisfaction, and deliver more value. These goals aren’t necessarily wrong. At the same time, they may not resonate with us. Maybe the goals are too abstract or maybe they are something that don’t exactly connect to what we value. We have to find a way to translate and create goals that connect with us. I’ve said for years my main goal at work is to deliver magic, which means doing the impossible. That idea may not make sense to anybody, but it gets me out of bed in the morning. It gives me something that I am excited about pursuing and delivering. It gives me fuel that sustains me throughout the year.

The challenge: What are your goals? Do they truly resonate with you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Finishing Strong, Resting, and Being Mindful of our Pace (11-20-24)

This week we are going to have a one-off entry about finishing the year strong and reflecting on running races, our pace, and finish lines.

Let’s say that I’m running a race. I just passed mile marker 12 and the next marker will be 13.1. Should I go all out and sprint until I hit 13.1 miles? It depends on how far the race is. If it’s a half marathon, then 13.1 miles is the finish line. I can go all out, because after that I’ll have days and weeks of recovery before I push myself that hard again. If it’s a marathon, then 13.1 miles is only halfway, and going all out will only exhaust me and decrease my chances of finishing strong without injuries.

What does this have to do with anything? How many times have you heard, “We need to finish the year strong!” during a staff meeting, a town hall, etc.? Per our race analogy, when we think about finishing strong, we need to understand where the finish line truly is. We need to adjust our pace and effort based on where the finish line is and our ability to rest and recover.

Earlier in my career, I felt like Q4 was a true a finish line. Finishing the year strong meant sprinting hard AND knowing that I’d have time to recover and would be able to ease into the next year before sprinting right away again. Over the past few years, I’ve come to feel like there really isn’t a clear finish line anymore. Just the other day someone was talking about how Q4 isn’t the end of the year but is really just the kick-off to having a strong Q1. It’s like everything blurs together into a frantic frenzy. I end up going all out in Q4 only to find myself spending the holidays sick, burned out, and exhausted both physically and mentally. By the time the new year rolls around, I’m still not recovered, and I’m being asked to start sprinting right away. Does that sound familiar? Somewhere there must be a happy medium, where we work hard without running ourselves into the ground and starting the next year burned out from the moment it starts. Somewhere, there has to be a happy medium where we take care of ourselves and each other.

Challenge 1: How can we all be more mindful of our pace and its sustainability as we close out the year?

Challenge 2: How can you lead and set a pace that is sustainable? (Ex: When is the last time you clearly told your team that you don’t want them to run themselves into the ground, and made trade-off decisions where you would be okay with some things not getting done?)

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry