Creating Deep Meaning Together
I’m BACK from another epic race weekend live coaching athletes on Team Tribal.
There’s something palpable about these team experiences that touches and connects everyone who attends one.
It doesn’t matter if you compete, coach, cheer, crew, pace, or lend a helping hand in anyway, the love and intention
creates for everyone at these weekends is unmatched.No other team in the world of ‘serious’ competition gets it like this.
We share team houses, cook meals together, chop it up about the impending race, get tips and advice from eachother, attend structured mindset workshops and informal dinners to forge strong bonds, connections, and probe deep into the meaning of our individual and shared sacrifices in training and competing.
There’s an overwhelming sense of gratitude, appreciation, and peace that accompanies everyone into the start line, and gives each athlete the courage to become open to the truth that’s awaiting them in the glorious crucible of athletic competition.
his helps us both understand the sharpness of the razor that competition cuts into us with, but also dulls the blade allowing us to feel it without fear and enduring pain (it’s only temporary team).
To prepare our athletes, coach Ryan set up a team swim on Friday morning two days before the race. We then headed over to all check in together at the race site before all gathering at the main team house for a mindset session and catered team dinner.
Saturday the team went out an a group ride to scope out the course and work out final kinks on their bikes before dropping them off. We then went back to the main team house and engaged in a patented Tribal Run.Write.Build reflective writing workshop where we used language and visualization to bring context to each of our training builds and how we wanted to show up on race day.
These group sharing sessions are VITAL in calming anxiety, opening space to learn about our individual journeys, and seeing how we are all in this together despite having different contexts, expectations, and experiences.
Then on Sunday we BALL OUT. Taking over the course with our team gear, hanging banners from bridges, and sprinting all over the course to capture the moments with a pro photographer who brings the struggle to life. The coaches and supporters set up under a bridge where runners entered and finished the race and created a tunnel of love as each athlete who finished came right back to cheer on the next teammate about the cross the line.
ELECTRIC doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The team creates the space for deeper meaning to emerge beyond the race, and that was crystal clear as 19 athletes poured their hearts out onto the course.
Grateful to guide them as a coach and cheer on their righteous struggles to realize a better version of themselves through the competition.
Being ‘inside the lines’
That’s what’s so special about these races and what so many of the other competitors miss.
They focus only on the finish line, how to get there fastest, and what the time at the end means to them. The objective orientation toward a goal blocks them out from the subjective experience in real time because they attempt to manufacture the meaning instead of giving it space to emerge.
I love coaching these races and aiming my coaching clients towards races of their own not because of the finish line but because of the start line and what happens afterward.
Once you cross that threshold you are truly into the unknown. Training is still too structured, too predictable, and not ‘serious’ enough. Sure, there’s adversity and unknown challenges that emerge, and for some they actually have their biggest breakthroughs in the build, not on race day. But without the start line, there is no orientation towards growth and the public risk of putting yourself out there to experience the truth.
I’m addicted to watching people take bets on their potential and risk exposing themselves to the truth through the competition.
Sometimes you don’t finish the race. I didn’t finish a 100 miler last April.
Sometimes you come up short of your performance goals. I didn’t hit 100 miles in my Sept race too! (2025 redemption tour YES!)
Sometimes it ALL COMES TOGETHER and you have the race of your life.
No matter the objective result, it’s the way you approach the start line that matters the most.
When you play with your heart, it’s impossible to lose.
Experiencing Transcendence
I witness it in real time.
People shattering limiting beliefs on their potential through sports.
We hear it in the group shares in our mindset sessions, that our team is shedding the old versions and emerging as more polished, assured, and confident versions of their true selves.
Courageous to face the truth.
That’s the transcendence sports can give you. To overcome yourself in the best way through honest effort and result.
You EARN IT all in sports. And if you don’t get what you hoped for, you can only look in the mirror to see how you can do better next time and grow.
Every one of our athletes felt a moment like this over the weekend.
Some before, some during, and some after the race.
And that’s just the beginning. Heck, head coach Ryan shared that he’s still pulling out lessons from last year’s IronMan race where he qualified for the World Championships (they cancelled the swim!!).
The process of training from the heart to compete with pride and glory in yourself is a never ending quest of improvement and self belief.
The truth is in the training. And when you aim at that truth, you’re able to soar past what you believed possible for yourself.
Your turn to enter the Eternal Arena
What are you waiting for?
It’s time to get into the game yourself.
It doesn’t need to be a monster race (I mean it could!).
But it’s got to mean something and you have to care.
Not for some sense of status or to prove anything to others, but the enter into a process that’s ancient, wise, and timeless.
To use athletic training and competing as the calibrating method of self. To discover the truth about yourself and endeavor to bring your potential as close to possible to matching it.
It doesn’t matter your level or ability. It matters what’s in your heart.
If you’re ready to probe deep inside the truth of yourself, you need to be inside the lines of the eternal arena, creating a legend of our your honest effort, and opening yourself up to the truth.
If you’re interested in what our team experience can do for you, or just want to take a solo adventure in the world of sports as a spiritual practice, send me a message using the button below and let’s craft a better version of yourself through the best self development tool we have; honest athletic endeavour.
Happy Training Friends and I’ll see you at the next starting line!
YES!!!!