Nine out of ten times, I was the smallest guy up there. I’d do the quick assessment of the guys on the blocks before the gun went off. The problem for me was that as soon as somebody would get just a little advantage, I just thought, oh, the race is over. I did a lot of competitions over the years, but when I was younger, I didn’t have the right mind for it. Not in a million years did I think I had the potential to be one of the best at anything to do with sports. I wouldn’t say that I’m a natural racer, however. I loved that process of getting more fit and just doing that work over and over. I certainly didn’t make it to the Olympics. Not in a million years did I think I had the potential to be one of the best at anything to do with sports. I loved sports. I swam all the way from the time I was 10 through college. I was actually able to go about 100 yards without stopping. You loved what you saw on the Olympics.” I went and plopped in the pool. My mom goes, “Why don’t you just go and try out. It was for the local swim team they were having tryouts. I grew up Palo Alto before it was Silicon Valley. Shortly after I saw the Olympics in the summer, there was an advertisement in the local newspaper. I had to stop at the other end and just catch my breath and usually just get out because that was a long way. For me to go one length of a 25-yard pool, it was an absolute maximum effort. I thought, how can they go back and forth and back and forth because at that point in my life I was about 10. I was just memorized by the distance swimmers. It was the first Olympics that I’d ever seen.
Were there any indications of what was to come? I’m curious about your athletic life as a kid.
Anyway, it was mostly liquid because it’s very hard to get solid calories to digest race morning. You don’t want to have that taste profile going in first thing. Out on the race course, it’s all sports drink and it’s usually sweet. Throw some salt because usually the morning is the last time you get anything salty for over eight hours. I’d usually have a piece of toast with a little butter or avocado on it. I usually had something that was similar to Ensure, a meal replacement drink that would give me a few hundred calories. You’re just trying to get some calories in. Mark Allen: Breakfast race morning is very unspectacular. What did you have for breakfast the morning of your last Ironman? I slather some humus on it, throw some avocado on top of that, throw some arugula on top of that, and then throw two fried eggs on top of that, and put a little salsa on top of that, a little salt, and I’m good to go.
#Mark allen dave scott 1989 full#
Listen to the full interview on The Common Threads podcast at: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.ĭavid Swain: What did you have for breakfast this morning? Our conversation with Mark Allen has been edited for brevity. Mark Allen unpacks this and simplifies topics like nutrition, sleep, training, and preparing your mind for competition, work and life. Technology has advanced dramatically over the past decades, but our genetics haven’t. Since retiring from competition at 37 in 1995, Mark Allen has become a coach, father, author and speaker. We sat down at his kitchen table in Santa Cruz near his daily surf break. This sounds obvious now that mindfulness is widely accepted for its benefits in life and sports, but Mark Allen was close to 30 years ahead of the mainstream trend. He credits much of his success to the integration of mind and body, or in his words, Fit Soul, Fit Body. Mark Allen did all this when triathlon coaches, and the gear, nutrition and race strategies that are commonplace today were still in their infancy. Six Ironman World Championships, and all ten attempts at the International Triathlon in France, with multi-year winning streaks that go into the double digits. Mark Allen is often referred to as one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time.
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