“The more you plan suffering the less unplanned suffering will disrupt your life.” 

I was once going on a long training run and I asked one of my run mentors (who has actually won some of these races) what he recommended?

He said “to suffer. You want to be an absolutely sweating mess and barely be able to walk to the car, pull the door open and lie down in the back seat and recover.”

I thought that was a little aggressive. 

But here is the thing. He was all about mimicking race conditions. I can tell you, that mentality and training advice helped me immensely as I suffered twice those conditions on a daily basis, for seven days! 

Muscle memory overcoming obstacles serves extremely well under pressure. 

Now we finished those big runs with a) a couple bottles of cold Gatorade b) a coke (sugar infusion) and c) a large pizza (carbohydrates replenishment) down the street after we recovered. You need a goal on each training run, mine is often the taste of well earned food!

How I translated this into the office?

Once you run/wander through the desert all night, the muscle memory of a strong constitution and resilience allow you to crush a tough month end 7am to midnight. I remember a specific October that we signed our last deal at 11:58pm and I thought I could do this all night. 

Embrace those moments of overcoming tough obstacles as learning opportunities that will stick with you when you hit crunch time. 

Colin