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

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

Adjust Training to Reach New Goals (8-7-19)

Last week was about knowing where the finish line is. This week is about knowing your destination and training accordingly.

Last year I had a goal to complete a half-marathon in under 2 hours. This was quite a stretch for me. In order to run a half-marathon under 2 hours, I would need to run approximately 9 minute miles, and my normal pace for a mile is around 11 minutes. As I trained for this, I had to force myself to train faster than what I was accustomed to running, so I could build up the speed and stamina to carry me through. In November of 2018, I reached my goal and finished a half-marathon in about 1 hour 59 minutes. (#skinofmyteeth #itstillcounts). A few months after that I decided to run a full marathon. My goal was to just finish the marathon. I knew that if I ran the marathon at my half-marathon pace, I wouldn’t be able to safely complete the race. As I trained, I ran slow and steady (around a 12 min 30 sec) pace, and I built up my endurance over time. I also spent more time stretching and doing yoga to keep my body relatively fresh and healthy. I finished my first marathon in April in about 5 hours and 30 minutes. (#turtlepower)

What does this have to do with anything? The thing that led to me having a successful half-marathon would not be the same thing that would make me have a successful marathon. In the story above I had to change my training and the way I operated based on the goal I had. Think about work for a moment. Think about the times that you’ve started a new role or a new project. What did it take for you to be successful in that new role vs. your old role? What did it take as your responsibilities changed? How did you have to adapt to deliver on these new responsibilities? What I’ve found throughout my career is that there are always things that transfer from one role to the next. At the same time if I leveraged ONLY what I did in my old role in my new role, I’d never reach my new goals, because new challenges require new skills.

Embry example, before my current role I worked in market research, where I spent a lot of my time thinking about big picture strategy, defining problems, and figuring out how to answer questions. In my new role, half my job is strategy, which leverages previous skills, and the other half of my job is more operational focused. This operational component has caused me to think more about timelines, processes, and how things work at a more detailed level than I’m accustomed to. This has caused me to stretch and use muscles I haven’t used as often in the past. If I attacked this job the same way I did my market research job I would fail. I’ve had to adapt based on my new goals. My main goal right now is to not get fired for being incompetent 😉 #sofarsogoodbutit’sstillearly. Actually, one of my goals is to figure out how to operationalize things in a way that causes the least amount of swirl and wasted effort possible. I haven’t mastered this yet, but am learning things and adapting in ways that might help me reach this goal in the future.

The challenge: Are you adapting your “training” to new goals or are you stuck doing “old things” that will only help you meet old goals?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry