We conquered! 

‘Wow, that was harder than I thought’. This was the quote from one of my coached athletes, and I am sure her sentiment was similar to many. The Purple Patch Sprint Challenge is happening this weekend around the world, and it was super to see the different stories and pictures of celebration and suffering. We all realize that this is not ‘even better than the real thing’ and no replacement to a full scale race and event, but it certainly played a role in raising the competitive juices and allowing for a hit of high effort. There was great value in taking part:

• A really hard effort - with many even feeling the butterflies of racing.
• An honest benchmark of fitness and performance level (many were surprised)
• A chance for reflection upon happiness, health, and being able to do these things
• The first block of our performance platform that we are building for the 2021 performance reset

It was great to see the chatter, and I feel it is important for me the acknowledge and thank the great effort from the Purple Patch team for helping put this event together. To have branded race bibs, race packets, pre-race briefings and all the other details made it so much more fun. I also felt the categories, aligning in such a Purple Patch way, added a little spice and flavor to the event.

We now move on to a different challenge - with the IRONMAN Hawaii World Championship celebration. We will continue to synchronize with IRONMAN for this challenge, to open up a chance for us to lean into their celebration videos and platform, but we have decided to maintain our own internal Purple Patch leaderboards and lines of communication for updates etc. IRONMAN decided to only allow swim, bike and run to count toward the 3 and 7 day challenge, so we are opting out of that part as too many of our athletes still don’t have pool access! No drama, and all will work out. There is also nothing stopping any Purple Patch athlete completing both events concurrently (details to come on all this).

I hope your sore legs recover from the short, sharp shock of the Sprint Challenge - as this week we see a continued evolution on the training side. Most 1:1 athletes, and all Squad, will see a brand new evolution of the Strength and Conditioning Program. This is specifically designed for this time of the season, synchronizes with your training and has been designed with your time and gym access limitations in mind.  We have listened - to you - evolving this program to have tiered levels of each exercise and clear options for the time-starved athlete. You now can choose the exercise based on your level, and can be sure to nail success. In addition, you'll also see a Self-Care and bodywork program appearing in the Optional Library. Developed in partnership with Eva Popper of SMI, this will offer you structured opportunities to truly execute on our Recovery Pillar of Performance and maintain tissue health throughout the year.

Keep an eye out for these and let us know what you think.

My ambition and eagerness to charge into 2021 is high - and I hope you are feeling the same.  Let’s lean into a performance reset and begin the build.

Cheers,
Matt