Today I want to make a statement about the endurance lifestyle, because quite frankly, I think a lot of people are in danger.

Maybe what I'm about to say will apply to you, or maybe to someone you care about, or maybe not at all, but I believe endurance sports, triathlon especially, attract the type A, "I will do this or die trying" species of people. Perfectionists, impossibly high-standard club card carriers. Critical and judgemental (especially of themselves) - whether they will admit it or not - and I don't doubt these people are quite well-meaning and good natured, they're just hard to teach or help because they need to do absolutely everything for themselves. I believe endurance sports attract all kinds of other people too, but these are not the people who are necessarily in jeopardy, and they are not the people I'm going to address today.

Now, where do I get off making any statements about a whole genre of people? I get off doing it because I'm one of them and I know what it's like. I recognize the behavior like any other animal in the wild recognizes its own. You ever wonder why birds don't fly off when another one lands an inch away? Why squirrels don't go scurrying when another approaches? It's a law. We know our own kind.

Our species, the type A, workaholic perfectionist, is the hardest on ourselves first and foremost. We get obsessed and addicted and absolutely sold to the finite world of data, where our very self-worth can potentially be found on a graph or compiled from a digital readout. If we let it go this far, we ironically become slaves in our efforts to dominate our destinies, and where we are in the struggle of it all determines if we're perpetuating our own subjugation or rebelling against it. Where we are determines if, upon reading something like this, we flail against and retort emotionally and aggressively, or sit back and wonder, and nod, and begin to change.

Before I say anything else, know I believe there's nothing wrong with gadgets or devices or splits or stats, and encourage you not to misunderstand. I don't believe there's anything wrong with a knife either, a knife can be a handy tool. What's dangerous is the person who makes the judgement call on where and what to cut; the person who holds either a tool or a weapon, and performance data is no different.

It's one thing to want to do well, to use numbers as a healthy indicator of improvement. It's quite another to get so caught up that our lives revolve around them and flesh and blood people and irreplaceable moments in time are sacrificed for the sake of them. Now listen because if you're sitting back wondering why you're fighting so much lately with everyone around you, if you're confused and wall up and tell yourself, "...they just don't understand..." because your type A personality won't let you raise a white flag, and if you're self-image goes to hell when you fall short of your standards, my friend you're lost. It is you. You're self-destructing in your efforts to become perfect, and you have to grab on here before it's too late and you lose everything as a result. Give yourself some room and stop defending. Let yourself be human. And accept yourself anyway.

I'll tell you a big secret. There is no perfection, there is only progress. We never arrive, and if we did the fascination with what we do would die. It's the chase that feeds us, and it's constantly bleeding with want to arrive that will kill us. We've heard it professed a thousand times but it is about the journey, about how far we've come from where we took our first steps. It's about how we change and grow and learn to let go of all those things we've carried on our backs our entire lives. It's about learning to accept who we are the way we are, because then and only then can we make any healthy changes. No one can judge this for another, and those who try are themselves, unfortunately, so very far off-course.

We come as all kinds to this endurance lifestyle. Some have long known everything I've just said because they've either been there and come out the other side - flexible like this - or they're simply a different species to begin with. But those who would cannibalize themselves and even others because it's what they feel they need to do in order to survive, albeit perhaps unintentionally and subconsciously, can evolve as well. And once they've done this, will finally be able to live instead of simply survive.

Take a look. Be honest. And if this applies to you, take a deep breath. Then take your life back.