April 23, 2008 -- Recently, I was listening to an old Triathlete Mag interview (find the interview here) with one my triathlon heroes and inspirations, Scott Molina. My very first year in triathlon was 1988, the same year that the "Terminator", as Scott is known, won Ironman Hawaii. For a man who was best known for winning shorter distance races, and having trouble in the heat, this was the cherry on top of an incredible racing career. I got to meet the Terminator in the summer of 2003, when he was leading a crew of his Epic Camp participants across Colorado. Scott has been racing since the early 1980’s and even now is still racing at the front of the pack, as witnessed by his 1st overall Age Group win at Ironman AZ in 2005.

When talking with Scott about those training adventures back in the 80’s, one thing became apparent: He and the crew he trained with loved to go out there each day and create new adventures and to push each other to the limit. On race day, with money on the line, it was a given that someone from his training group would win the race as it was just another day of pushing each other’s limits. 

In Scott’s interview he mentioned something that "turned the light on" for me, so to speak. I have always tried to steer my athletes away from drop-dead goals and more toward enjoying the training process and let the results take care of themselves. For the most part, the athletes that can let go of their time goals are the ones who usually achieve them. This has always been an intuitive sense as a coach, but I hadn’t thought about it until I heard Scott’s interview. Scott summed up this approach when he mentioned process-focused athletes, vs. results-focused athletes. Basically, enjoy your training and the results will take care of themselves. In other words, if you are so focused on the end result, you won’t have as much fun in training and the chances of you reaching your time goals diminish greatly. This past week I sent the Terminator an email asking him his thoughts on the whole subject of being process-focused vs. results-focused and here’s what he had to say: More>