Hello and welcome to the Essential Training Podcast.It's me, Brian Kingston, and my dad, Ian Kingston.
At Essential Training, we work with individuals and teams to help them reach more of their potential so that they and their organisation reap the benefits.
In this podcast, we chat with some amazing people who have extraordinary stories and I hope you enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Fodsail Saunas.
Fodsail is the Irish for long life, and they were Ireland's first commercial sauna service set up in 2019.Their mission is to communicate, educate, and inspire people on the benefits of sauna and cold bathing.
And their vision is to enhance the well-being of the people of Ireland and further afield, and to give people more healthy lifestyle choices.They have locations in Greystones, Galway, and Clontarf Rugby Club in Ireland.
And I am a regular user of the sauna.I go down once or twice a week.They're only down the road from us.
And they have set up an amazing community there, where you've got the sauna, you've got Rise of the Cove coffee, right in the midst of Tiglin, which is Ireland's oldest addiction treatment center clinic.
So you've got a real mix of people and mindsets and
I go down there, I spend 15 minutes in the sauna, step outside, cool down, go back for another 15 minutes and then I usually pop down to the sea, spend a couple of minutes in the sea depending on how brave I feel that day.
And afterwards I always feel rejuvenated, energized and sometimes I'll pop in for a coffee at Rise of the Cove and I just love bumping into people down there and there's an amazing community.
And Steve says this, and I felt it as well, it's kind of like the vibe of a pub without the alcohol.You go down with friends, you can go down alone, you can bump into people, you can stay on your own, and it's just this amazing.
vibe and amazing community people.So we're so happy to be sponsored by Fodsale and long may it last and we're excited to see where this partnership goes.
So thanks Steve and your team for Fodsale Saunas for sponsoring the podcast and go check them out on their Instagram or on their website.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Essential Training Podcast with me, Brian Kingston, and my dad, Ian Kingston.Today, it's just me.I'm actually currently in Portobanus in Marbella in Spain, and I flew in yesterday to do my first half Ironman.
So it's an Ironman 70.3, or as my cousin called it, an Ironboy, which I think is hilarious.And an Ironman is effectively a double Olympic triathlon.
So it's two kilometer swim, 1.9 kilometer swim, 90 kilometer bike, and a 21 kilometer run, a half marathon at the end.And I'm pretty nervous, I'm pretty excited. It's definitely going to be the toughest endurance one day event that I've ever done.
And yeah, it's been a long road to get here, pretty much starting with the first, well, a half marathon that I did back in 2021 in Vancouver. I'd initially signed up for the full marathon, and I got runner's knee.
Anybody who's gotten runner's knee before will know what it is, but it's effectively a tight T-band and glute that refers pain to the outside of your knee.And I thought, okay, I'm not a runner.
So I switched to the half marathon pace, got through it, was a little bit sore, but kind of gave up on the idea of being a runner. And during COVID, I got into sea swimming and especially in the winter in Vancouver with my good friend JJ.
Shout out to JJ.Did some longer distances and when I moved home to Ireland, the happy pair lads, Stephen and David Flynn, were doing a swim from Bray to Greystones, which was
A bit of a fundraising effort, well not fundraising effort, but an awareness effort for the closed Bray to Greystones walk, really famous walk in Dublin.
People usually get the dart to Bray and they'll walk along the coastline where the train is, where the dart is, to Greystones and they'd get lunch or coffee in the Happy Pair or one of the lovely coffee shops around Greystones.
And that walk has been closed for a few years because of some rock fall and it's dangerous.And I'm assuming that it affects a lot of businesses like that in Greystones where it was a done thing in Dublin to to go and do that for the day.
And so they decided to swim from Bray to Greystones to kind of raise awareness for it.
And it was, well, depending on who you look at, whose watch you look at, it was between 5K and about 6 or 7K from the beach in front of Bray Head all around that coast to the North Beach in Greystones.And
yeah, it took an hour or so, five or six kilometer swim and it was an amazing experience and we trained a lot for it in the months leading up to it.Twice a week, down in Bray, down in Greystones and I really loved it.
I really loved the process of training.I really loved the metronomic kind of feeling of doing something longer distance.
I hadn't really experienced something like that before but the headspace of being in the water and you're kind of on your own and you're looking back into the land and I just really enjoyed the camaraderie of being with other people training for something like that and also
the head space that doing something like that gave me.So it sparked something inside me and it was such a satisfying thing to do afterwards, swim that distance.And it kind of gave me a bit of a bug to do these things.
So I did a couple of triathlons and after last year doing the Dublin triathlon, I just kind of felt like, okay, I have more in the tank here.So I got really excited and I signed up to a full Ironman.
which for May of this year, which was a bit off a bit more than I could chew, I realised I'm going to have to train all over the winter months and No, I was a bit burnt out from the summer, from all the training.
So I decided, okay, not to do that, but I signed up to this half Ironman at the end of the summer.
And my thought process was, okay, I'll get to train in the nice bright summer months in Ireland, even though we didn't really have too much nice weather this year, but train in the bright summer months.
And at least when there's light early in the morning and in the evening before and after work, And it'll be lovely to go to a little trip to Spain at the end of October as the clocks change and it gets darker.And here we are.
It's six or seven months after signing up for it.I've been working with an amazing coach, Oliver Harkin, from Primed Coaching, and have learned so much.
And yeah, it's two days out from the race and I'm here working remotely for a couple of days doing coaching calls with clients and getting ready for the race and acclimatizing and it's exciting.
I've learned so much from pushing my body a little bit outside the comfort zone of before and I've always been into like health and fitness stuff but over COVID, I definitely fell out of shape a lot.
So it's been a nice focus since then to get back into training and exercising and, and yeah, I got a lot of concussions playing rugby and then playing soccer as well.So I had to kind of stop playing contact sports.So this has been my alternative.
And yeah, this feels almost like a bit of a diary entry, but I got out for a little 20 minute run this morning and felt a little bit stiff after the flight yesterday.Definitely the doubts were setting in a little bit that I had to change.
I feel well prepared in the swim and well prepared in the run, a little bit undercooked in my bike training.Maybe I need to stop telling myself that, I don't know.It's a quite hilly bike, there's 1400 metres of elevation.
in that 90km bike so it's probably going to take me between 3.5 and 4 hours and then hop off and run a half marathon after that which will probably take me around 2 hours.
running at around 6km, 6.5km a minute so nothing too fast and I think that's something that's really stuck with me since signing up and getting more into endurance sport is a friend of mine who did the Braid to Greystone swim with me
ran this 55 kilometer race and he doesn't look like a runner.And I remember saying to him, how did you get through that?And he just said, I went slowly.
And I know that sounds really simple and trite, but actually it was a massive light bulb moment for me because I realized when I was training for the Vancouver marathon, I was running with a friend of mine who's now done five marathons.
And I was just running way faster than I was capable for.I was keeping up with him and my body started breaking down.
And you know, luckily I've had this experience of meeting this friend that said go slow because I had been telling a story to myself that, okay, I'm not a runner or my body's not built for running or all those years of rugby have meant that I'm not a runner.
But actually that's not the case.Um, it takes a long time to build up these endurance distances and I'm just on that journey and I just need to slow down a little bit and go slower to go faster or go slower to go longer.
So I'm trying to remember and retain that insight as I approach Sunday morning because you know, they say it's better to be under-prepared than over-prepared or under-trained than over-trained.Like I do feel relatively fresh, which is nice.
So I'm excited to kind of empty the tank on Sunday.But there is, you know, natural doubt setting in of, you know, have I trained enough and am I fit enough and am I mad doing this?
But I think another thing that's coming up is I've done a good few of these kind of endurance races.Like I did the,
eco-trail in Wicklow, a 20km run through the Wicklow mountains starting in Brayhead only a couple of weeks ago and I'd never run through the mountains like that and it was an amazing experience and it was as I was lining up for the start line I did not feel ready and I felt a little bit tired and it was amazing to do it and to finish it and to
to feel that sense of, oh, I can do hard things if I just go at my own pace.And I suppose that's why I'm getting involved or that's what's drawn me to these endurance sports or these endurance tasks is going at my own pace and
You know, in life, I have definitely gone circuitous routes to certain things and I've had lots of life experience backpacking through Latin America and walking the Camino de Santiago when I was finished college and living in Canada for four years.
And Yeah, like I get very inspired by seeing videos of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s doing these, you know, endurance events.And it's something that there's potentially a longevity in.So it's been a newfound
interest both because it's enjoyable to keep fit and to be doing it with friends, like I'm doing it with one of my best friends, but also to challenge myself and see what I'm capable of.
And in doing that, it's doing it at a pace that is possible, not most of my training sessions, I'm not going above zone two in my heart rate.So zone two is basically where you can still talk, but you can't sing.
That's kind of the level of exertion that you're, uh, you're experiencing.So that's this, this little clip is a reminder to myself to go at my own pace. And that feels like a bit of a metaphor for life.And a reminder of my why.
Since, you know, over the last few years, I've definitely had challenges with my mental health through COVID.Through moving home from Canada was really difficult and I experienced insomnia and lots of anxiety and lots of self-doubt.
And it's been a real journey the last couple of years. learning more about myself and being easier on myself and trying to be more self-compassionate and this
I want this experience and these experiences to be about the enjoyment and to be about the experience rather than another reason to beat myself up.
Because I met somebody outside the Fad Salsaunas, one of the guys who is a graduate of the Tiglin Addiction Program.And he said, oh, I did a few triathlons and I did this Ironman 70.3.And he said, I did it to mask my addiction.And
I said, interesting, tell me more.And he said, well, yeah, I went out on a bender a few days before, and I did it absolutely off my head on drugs and alcohol.
And I ended up in hospital for, I can't remember, did he say three or six months afterwards.But my insides were completely destroyed.And I just thought, wow, you know, it's amazing how
smart addiction is in using things that are seemingly healthy to mask something. And anything can be used to mask something.And I think it made me reflect on why I swam for Braid to Greystones or ran that 20 kilometers in the eco trail in Wicklow.
And bear in mind, there was a 30 and a 40 and an 80 kilometer.Like there's people doing a lot further than me in these things.But this is kind of at my edge where I'm at in my endurance journey.
And I thought, God, am I masking something by doing these events?And maybe there's definitely, maybe there's an element of that.
Maybe there's an element of, okay, if I'm looking fit and healthy and doing these endurance events, some part of me looks like I have my shit together to the world.And I think that's a good thing to notice, a good thing to remember.
But on top of that, what's drawing me to do these things is seeing where my limits are and where I can stretch myself and what I can learn about myself through these experiences.
Like, someone said to me recently, I think, yeah, Lorraine Curham said it to me, who was on our podcast, and she was talking about doing the Marathon de Sable, which is,
a marathon through the desert in Africa, I think it's six back-to-back marathons, and you sleep in the desert and you carry all your own water.She was saying, well, it's a feat, it's a success in itself to get to the start line.
And I really like that because, yeah, there's been so many ups and downs the last six months getting here.Like I got COVID after my sister's wedding for a few weeks.
I experienced some big challenges with my mental health this last six months and have been back in therapy.
And work has been really busy and I feel like, and I've been getting really good feedback from clients of the positive impact that my work and our work is making on them, both individuals and teams.And
You know, I was a celebrant for a wedding a couple of times this year.So there was a lot of ups and downs to get to this point.
And I suppose I'm sitting here just being thankful that I feel relatively healthy and energetic, even though, yeah, there's definitely some doubts and there's definitely, you know, I definitely could have done more at times.
But I think there's part of me that's feeling grateful that I didn't over push myself in moments like there was some weekends where I had a long run or a long bike ride and I decided not to do it and I tried to listen to myself of what it is that I was capable of and when I needed to rest and when I needed to push harder so
In one sense, we'll see on Sunday if that has paid off and if those were the right things to do.In another sense, they were already because it's gotten me to this point and I'm still relatively excited for the event.
It'll be interesting to reflect on it afterwards, but right now I'm sitting here two or three days to go before the event and tomorrow our rental bikes arrive, my buddy Ben arrives,
we'll check in tomorrow to the event and the excitement will start to build.So right now it's kind of like the calm before the storm and I have a busy work day today working remotely.
So this is a short episode today and it kind of feels like a personal diary entry.Reminds me of diary of a CEO, how he started his podcast.But I suppose this is what's
been occupying part of my brain and psyche the last number of months and as I was running this morning I think part of me was searching for that feeling of runner's high.
And there's a joke I've seen going around online, like all those guys that were big partiers when they were in their 20s are now running marathons and Ironmen when they're in their 30s.
And yeah, I heard someone say, well, they're searching for a similar high, but maybe in a healthier way.
So it's definitely part of that in me as well as searching for that for some of those feelings of elation of doing hard things and Yeah, as our good friend and colleague Paul Gleeson said when he brought a group to hike Mount Blanc to summit Mount Blanc when they were coming down from the mountain one of them said God if we can do this What else can we do?
and that's part of the reason of for me doing this as well as seeing where I can push myself and what I can achieve.And it's funny because the Ironman World Championships are on this week in Kona in Hawaii.
And I sometimes find it hard not to compare myself being like, oh, they're real athletes. I'm just a pedestrian in comparison and God is what I'm doing even that good.
So it's just interesting that part of me never thought I'd ever do something like this and there's always a bigger boat.So yeah, there's a lot of themes coming up.
I think one is we can do hard things and that's kind of why I try and do these type of events is to prove to myself that I can do hard things.
Yeah, there's kind of a feeling of gratitude of getting to this point even after the months of training and preparation.
Then there's the understanding and acceptance that maybe part of this is an effort to mask some of the challenges that I've had over the last couple of years.
I was speaking to my therapist about this this year that I did so many endurance events last year but kind of got burnt out and had a really difficult time over Christmas and I've been working with her a lot on
past traumas and my mental state and my internal self-talk.
So this year, that while I still want to reach those heights of doing these endurance events and get the really nice feeling of accomplishment doing them, I also wanted to do a lot of the inner work as well.And that's been through therapy, through
me and my dad doing a lot of coaching together.And I do feel like even though I'm holding space for a lot of people in my work, I often learn through them as well.
And I was speaking with a therapist yesterday and they were saying how, yeah, we're often a mirror and what's going on for our clients is often what's, is often bringing up stuff for us as well.
And now we often don't mention that in the session with the client, but it's something for us to reflect on.
And maybe one last thing to leave you with is, I remember my coaching mentor, Ann Tannum, who's actually my second cousin and is a PCC coach, a professional certified coach.
very reputable coach and she was mentoring me through the accreditation process for the International Coaching Federation and I shared a recording of a coaching call with her which was as part of the assessment and I said yeah I'm noticing a theme in my clients at the moment
that all I'd like them to do is just be a bit easier on themselves.She said something amazing.
She said, yeah, a mentor told me a long time ago, if I'm noticing a theme within my clients, it's often an opportunity for me to reflect on something myself. And that's been a big theme for me this year is how can I be more self-compassionate?
How can I be more accepting of myself, flaws and all?How can I be more encouraging of myself?And I even noticed myself waking up this morning just being like, oh, I haven't trained enough.And God, I'm feeling stiff on this two or 3K run.
How am I going to do it in the marathon or the half marathon?
And yeah, I think I just listening to Tara Brach, the Buddhist meditation teacher this morning, just recognizing that, yeah, there is some internal negative self-talk there and just be okay that that's natural, that's normal.
just forgive myself for having those thoughts and remember that I have put a lot of work in and it's okay to have those.Our brain naturally wants to look for threats and that's kind of where our brain naturally goes and maybe rest, meditate.
and maybe catch those and be aware of those negative internal chatter in order to release from it and move beyond it. Yeah, that's what's coming up for me at the moment, both in work and in life and training for this event.
So I'm excited to reflect on it on next week's episode of the podcast.So thanks a million for listening and we'll see you next week. Well, there you have it.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Essential Training Podcast with me, Brian Kingston, and my dad, Ian Kingston.As dad says, hope it brought something up for you and gave you a chance to reflect on your own work and your own life.
We'll see you again next Thursday.And as always, we're open to any feedback or suggestions you might have, what you liked about it, what you think could be better. maybe some suggestions for guests, suggestions for topics as well.
So thanks for listening and we will see you or you'll hear us next week.
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