Episode 334: Essays on High Performance (Sam Appleton)
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Sam Appleton
Welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. This new mini-series will reflect on over two decades of coaching top endurance athletes and executives. Join IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon as he’ll draw lessons from these individuals to help you achieve high performance in various aspects of life. These high-performance lessons will be integrated into monthly episodes over the next year.
The first episode focuses on Australian triathlete Sam Appleton, who exemplified the trait of controlling the controllable. Despite a challenging two weeks leading up to the 2018 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships, including illness and a nagging Achilles injury, Sam maintained a positive mindset and executed his race strategy. He placed 6th overall, demonstrating the power of focusing on controllable factors for high performance. Dixon emphasizes that this mindset applies beyond sports, improving resilience and reducing anxiety in athletic and professional settings.
Matt Dixon and Sam Appleton
Sam's journey with Matt began through another Purple Patch athlete, Tim Reed, who later became Sam's coach. This episode highlights Sam Appleton's success in half-IRONMAN races, including multiple top-five finishes and victories. The story highlights the importance of controlling the controllable in high-performance settings, whether in sports or business. Matt concludes by emphasizing the broader applicability of this mindset trait to any performance-driven endeavor.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timestamps
Episode Timestamps:
00:00-3:52 Welcome and Episode Introduction
3:52-14:17 Meat and Potatoes: Background on Sam racing
2018 IRONMAN World Championships in South Africa
14:17-End: Sam's performance during 2018 IRONMAN World Championship Race
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you get your human potential. This podcast aims to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:29
And welcome to the purple patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today it is the first edition. Goodness me, that's always exciting, isn't it, folks, the first edition of a new mini series that allow me to take a little time to do a high performance trait, and that is to reflect, I'm actually going to reflect on more than two decades of coaching of some of the world's top endurance athletes in parallel to guiding leading executives to sustained high performance in the workplace and, of course, broader life. And so we're going to go back and think about some of those athletes and some of the lessons that I drew from these athletes, and, of course, executives to help me Foster and improve my coaching. So it's going to be the Jesse Thomases, the Sarah Piampiano, the Zuckerbergs, the Maritzas, the various folks that we've worked with over the course of the year that are going to help us draw some conclusions of what it takes to achieve high performance in anything that we care about. Now we are titling these the high performance lessons, and we plan to integrate one of these special editions at about, oh, probably about one cadence a month, and over the course of the next year, we're going to hit about 12 of them. Of them. So it should be pretty fun, and it's only a lot of storytelling, but also some context behind these stories and lessons to try and help us glean some things that are actionable to help you show up better in whatever you care about. I think it's going to be both a lot of fun, but also hopefully tremendous value to you. Today I'm kicking it off with a discussion about a purple patch pro, and who gets the privilege the bonus of being the very first of the performance essays. It's none other than Australian Sam Appleton. My focus is all around controlling the controllable now, this is a high performance trait, and Sam exuded this multiple times, but I'm going to tell you a particular story today that really cemented and it hit the nail on the head, around controlling the controllables, something despite chaos, despite uncertainty, he was able to really anchor around to yield a great personal performance. And so with that, should we get going? It's time for meat and potatoes. But just before we get going, I do want to add, remember that today we are bringing you, as we always do nowadays, AD and promotion free. But I do want to highlight, if you would like to extend the conversation, if you have any questions about the purple patch program, if you'd like some further discuss. More information from us, feel free to reach out personally info@purplepatchfitness.com, we're here for you, we're happy to set up a consultation free of charge, of course, to answer any of your questions around purple patch or broader performance at large. And you can also review all of the purple patch programming at info@purplepatchfitness.com and just one little tip beat I'll sneak it in. Remember it is off season right now. It is the time where we are delivering all of the foundational, real coaching and Education Human led to help you become a better athlete from the ground up, from the inside out. And so it's a wonderful time to join. I'm just saying. But without further ado, let's get cracking. It is the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 03:52
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 03:53
It is high performance lessons today. We are talking about Sam Appleton, and this is a little bit more of a relaxed format for the show. It's a chance for me to just talk me to you in a conversation the same way as what I might be doing if we were just sitting down and having a coffee, or if I'm very, very lucky, it's the afternoon and would have a cheeky beer with each other. But let's talk about Sam Appleton, really a great athlete. I coach Sam for more than five years, he developed incredibly well over our time together. He became, in my summation, really, one of the most fearsome Half Ironman athletes in the world. He had multiple top five finishes at the Ironman 70.3 which is the half Ironman distance world championships. And he had numerous victories over both Ironman and half Ironman distance. Now, a great little tidbit about Sam is that the way that I got to actually work with Sam was via another purple patch athlete of mine, Tim Reed, many of you guys know Tim and I worked with each other for a similar duration. Tim went on to become half Ironman World Champion in which was absolutely terrific and full cycle. I coached Sam for five years, then we both felt that it was a good time for him to spread his wings, and he actually circled back to Tim Reed now as his coach, who is a great coach, very smart coach, and has helped Sam continue on his journey really evolve into a full Ironman athlete recently becoming Ironman Australia champion. So it's a really nice in the family story of this. But my focus and intention, of course, with the high performance essay, is talk about my coaching with the athlete or the executive. So I'm just going to focus on one of the stories in our many stories that we had together one year with Sam Appleton, by the way, just as a part of his profile. And I think it's highlighting 2015 so this is going back almost a decade now, but he raced seven times over the course of the calendar year, which is pretty normal for a professional athlete, 6, 7, 8, races, half Ironman distance, or Ironman distance. He raced seven half Ironman distance races, and listen to this for a season, six victories and one second place. That's a pretty good haul. Overall, high consistency, not bad gear, not bad going at all. If you want to follow Sam, you can go to SamAppleton.com go and check out his website, and he's also he, I'll leave his Instagram link in the show notes for you as well. He's a great person to follow. Very, very funny, lovely guy, and for all intentsive purposes, he was just a great human being, but also a wonderful athlete. But the truth is, as with any professional athlete that these victories, 2015 six victories, one second place finish. These victories and accomplishments didn't come easy, and the story that I want to tell you about was around the 2018 so this is now three years on from that magical season, the 2018 Ironman 70.3 World Championships, which were held in South Africa. Now, Sam was based in Boulder, so he had a big trip to go all the way across, obviously, to Europe and then down to South Africa to get ready for this race. And it was a huge race. And for you guys that are not triathletes, because you don't need to be a triathlete to glean from this Ironman 70.3 really, all that is is a branded name for a half Ironman distance. So this world championships included a 1.9 kilometer swim, followed by a 90 kilometer bike ride and a 21 kilometer half marathon. In mileage, so in old money, that's just over a mile swim, 56 miles of bike riding and 13.1 miles of running and and just to give you a little bit of an insight into how fast and how strong these guys are racing for per 100 meters in the swim, they're averaging under one minute and 10 seconds per 100, around one minute and five seconds per 100. So that's a swim in open water. Over the course of the bike ride, they're averaging somewhere around 28 to 30 miles an hour, over 300 watts, if you're thinking about power generation. And then the run in this race runs athletes running under 1:10 for a half marathon off the bike in the heat. So you think about that, okay, one minute and 10, one hour and 10 minutes for a half marathon, and that's coming off of a bike ride where they're averaging almost 30 miles an hour. So this is a world class sport for you. Going into the race, Sam was in tremendous form. He'd already secured a handful of wins in major races earlier in the year, and he was actually really chasing an improvement in his fourth place finish that he secured at the World Championships the year prior. So Sam had developed over the course of three to four years, and we really had him right on this edge, fourth in the World Championships the year prior, going into South Africa. But South Africa as a race, undoubtedly, there was a change that was occurring in half Ironman distance racing, where there were more and more, quote, faster athletes coming in from all distances, including the Olympic distance, which there tended to be a segregation, but it was really a paradigm shift that was occurring in the sport. And there was a mix of amazing athletes and Ironman South Africa, for me, was the first time that we really saw just this incredible feel of athletes that were lined up and getting ready to race. It was, without doubt, at the time, the best field that had ever been assembled, and so it was going to be a huge race. And at the start of the year, Sam and I had a challenge, because while he had secured fourth place, we knew that what would be required of him to. To even repeat that, let alone go faster, was going to be a much greater level of performance. You could feel the winds changing. And we felt like even though it was a relative strength of his, we wanted to have a very strong focus on the swim so that he could come out in a element of control. So we wanted him to be at the front of the front pack of the swim so way high up there, so that we could ensure that he wouldn't get quote dropped. There wouldn't be any separation if there was any split in the swim pack. These are very, very strong swimmers. So over the course of the year, we had a very heavy emphasis on swimming train. We also wanted to up level, if you want to call it that his bike prowess. We knew that this field of athletes was going to include many athletes that were just simply better than Sam at running. The trajectory of running ability over the course of that year, Sam just wasn't going to be able to close that gap. There were some very fleet footed athletes that were could run very, very fast. So tactically, we both felt, Sam and I that bringing the bike to the next level was probably the best strategic approach that we could do. So the whole of our season, from a training standpoint, was focused on taking performance to the next level with two main goals. The first is, if the racing scenario allowed Sam could be strong enough on the bike that he could break away from the chasing group, so in other words, get a little bit of a lead, either solo or with a group of other very strong bike riders to create a gap from those very, very fast runners. So that was one option of why we wanted to improve the bike the second component is if the race scenario just didn't allow a breakaway, which is what happened, by the way, if we didn't allow a breakaway, at least be able to ensure that the bike ride was so strong and so hard that the fast runners legs were maybe a little bit muted, and maybe the effort of the bike ride could suppress their ability to run very, very fast off the bike. So we had different reasons that we felt like the bike was a really important component. Now, of course, under all of this swim, very strong bike, really up level. We still wanted to progress the run. So it wasn't like we were ignoring the run, but we really felt like the bike was the great opportunity. And so the whole season of training was designed around this. We had a winter of very heavy strength work in the gym and also outside on the bike and on the trainer, doing low low cadence, very heavy strength endurance work, as we call it. So actually putting high torque on the pedals and low leg speed, where you could really create a lot of strength endurance, as we like to refer to it. We also did a lot of skill development, a lot of improvement in Sam's craft of riding the bicycle. You've heard me talk about this in recent shows, by the way, of what we do of our athletes, of trying to get more speed return out of the fitness levels that we could gain. And so with Sam, we did a lot of hands on coaching, where he could improve his specific Terrain Management, how he would crest over the top of the rollers, how he would carry speed through the bottom, different tools that he could use, with leg speed and standing to try and navigate the grades and even the descents and so trying to help him become, effectively, from a Craftsman standpoint, a better bike rider. So not only chasing fitness gains, but speed return gains, and by the way, that proved incredibly fruitful. He was one of the first athletes that we really felt this vortex of, I'm a better bike rider from a craftsman standpoint, that yielded the bigger gains than even what we could achieve through straight physiological improvements or strength improvements. So that became a really important component. And then, as I mentioned, to back all this up, his ability to come out of the ward already fresh right at the front was very important. So we also, right from the winter months, did
Matt Dixon 14:17
more than usual swimming. Sam came from a swimming background, and so perhaps counterintuitively, we doubled down on swimming. He would typically swim 3, 4, 5, times a week. We were swimming 5, 6, 7, 8, times a week. So sometimes double swims in a day to really improve his swim speed. But also, as I sort of alluded to, there lower the physiological cost on race day. So this was the mindset, and I'll never forget, we were about three weeks out of the race, and everything was great. As a coach, I reviewed Sam's progression. We already had the validation that he was racing very, very well that year, and if I had to really reflect on it a little bit, I would say we are in a perfect place. The body was primed. We yielded the performance gains. His swim was stronger than ever. He was biking out of his mind, very, very strong. And he also had a toolbox. He had better self awareness, and so he was a more confident bike rider, and the run hadn't gone anywhere. He was still running very, very well off the bike. And so, as I like to say, with athletes in this situation, three weeks out of the race, we pause. And I said, All right, there is no need to chase any more fitness. We need to be brave here. It takes courage to recover. And Sam and all of the other pro athletes and all of her purple patch athletes, have heard me say that many, many times before. In fact, that saying is on the wall of our center. It takes courage to recover so there is no more fitness gains. All we need to do is stay sharp and fit and ensure that we do all we can to rejuvenate, freshen up, stay healthy, and get to this race fit, which you already are, but also fresh and so therefore Sam, what we need to do now is just land the play, and then with confidence, we can go and Have at it. Well, he speaketh too soon, exactly two weeks out of the race, Sam got sick. In fact, he got very sick, goodness me, sore throat, fever, stuffy nose. It was one of those debilitating sickness, absolute cessation of all exercise for multiple days, more than 72 hours, by my memory. And at the same time, he also had the resurgence of a very small niggle that just popped up. And it's so often you reduce the training load, the niggle pops up, and his Achilles was talking to it, little bit of tendonitis in there, and that can be incredibly debilitating for running speed and performance, and so he had no opportunity to train through he was sick, and we had this big question mark that ultimately wasn't going to get answered before race day, which was, is my Achilles going to handle running very, very fast off of A very demanding bike course with these fleet footed runners, so what could we do? Well, the answer was nothing. His only path was rest, sleep and hydration. And so for the next three to five days, he did nothing. And for a professional athlete, in fact, for any athlete that is mentally absolutely debilitating. You lose all of the rhythm. It's like trying to land the plane in extreme turbulence. And we actually lost all oversight, because as I'm going through I don't have any rhythm to see okay, is he freshening up too quickly? And do we need to keep the work out there, or is he still carrying some fatigue? And do we need to really freshen up his body cannot yield adaptations. It's fighting infection, and the muscles while they're getting rest, because he was lying in bed, for the most part, is still not getting that little bit of activation that all athletes really rely on. And so the mission went from, Hey Sam, we need to learn or land the proverbial plane, to all we need to do is get healthy. That's our mission. And one day before, Sam got on the plane for a very long journey, flying to Europe, transferring through Frankfurt, by memory, straight down to South Africa for another 10 or 11 flight. We had a conversation, and that was, should he go? Should he go from Boulder to his base in South Africa, all that way, not even knowing if he was going to be able to be on the Start loan, let alone get to the finish line, let alone have any impact on the best field that's ever been assembled for this distance of race. We decided we'll go for it. Had such a good season, and everything was there, and magic can occur. You can't gain any more fitness, and there are some things that we just don't know. But let's go and see what happens. And so we got to the race location, probably four or five days before the actual race itself. And the good news is, at that point, he started to feel much better. And I'm sure, as a listener, you've gone through this before, you can be incredibly sick, and it's almost impossible to imagine even running five kilometers, let alone competing in a race. But as soon as that fever breaks, within a day, you can hardly remember that debilitating feeling, and you don't feel rhythm, you don't feel primed, but you can't feel how. You can't remember how bad you felt. And he got to that place right when he landed in. So suddenly we had the cruelest of all things. We had hope. Now this was incredibly challenging for him. He felt better. His Achilles didn't hurt, and that was good, but we had no idea how the body was going to respond, and he hadn't run for more than a week at this point. So we had no idea how he could handle 21 kilometers of running at, give or take, about three minute per kilometer pace. So that's around five minute miles for 13 miles. It's running very, very fast. So let's pause and consider the situation here, massive training, ideal runway, and then two weeks ago, the carpet is just pulled out from under his feet. He had no compass, no direction, and a whole host of reasons that could have, perhaps should have added fear, doubt, concern in his ability to perform against the very best endurance athletes in the world. So how would you respond there, what would you do? What do you imagine your mindset would be? And before you just say, Oh, I'd be F it and just go and get it. This is your career. You're actually reliant because it's not like Sam was just rolling around in the dollars here. These race performances had a direct impact on his ability to earn money for the whole of the next year. And so how can you do it two days before the race? We had a very important conversation, and I asked Sam, as I would with any pro, all right, how are we going to do this? Sam? You see, I don't like to just tell athletes what to do. I don't want to force my opinion. I prefer it to emerge from then from them themselves, and then I can course correct if I have my own perspective to act. And you know what? Sam's response was, no compass, no direction. Had some hope, but he really had no idea. He said, I race like I'm ready. And what they meant by that was there were going to be zero changes to his approach. There was going to be no shift in mindset. He wasn't going to have any backing away from the challenge, and I'll never forget the words that I sold Sam. I said, Look, I have to be honest here, we have no idea what your body is going to give you on race day, but why don't we do this, why don't we ask the body the question, and then allow the body, not the mind, to provide the answer? And that's a really important component. Ask the body the question, what are you going to give me today? And commit to bringing your best effort, and then allow the body, the space to provide the answer.
Matt Dixon 23:05
So really, what I was saying there is something very similar, simple, and that's a high performance mindset train, Sam control the controllables. So I ask you, what could Sam control? Well, he could control his mindset, and he decided on one of attack and his absolute commitment, that no matter how his body responded, he was going to go in on the front foot. He was going to bring his best on that day, whatever it was, there were echoes of Mark Allen, there, whatever percentage you show up at the race, get 100% out of it. And that was Sam's approach. Yes, there was uncertainty. We didn't know what the body was going to give but he went in on the front foot. So he could control his mindset. The second thing he could control is his execution, and so don't be defensive here. Ride at the swim line up at the front. Ride strong how we were trained for all year. Ride strong on the bike with the approach that we've been developing and working on throughout the whole of the season, and then try his best on the run. And that was going to be the moment that we would see how the body would respond. The third thing he could control is his decision making a commitment to stay aware within the race and have the courage to make the brave decisions based on the dynamics that were unfolding at professional racing you can't just have a race strategy that you're going to go and deploy in a vacuum. You need to have the ability and the courage to make decisions around what's going on in the race dynamics. And so he had control over those decisions. And then finally, practically, he had control over making sure his equipment was race ready and ensuring that he had his race fueling and hydration dialed in, and he executed it so all of these elements were under his control. And that's empowering, mindset, execution, decision making, equipment set up race fueling and hydration. Well, that's suddenly quite a lot to focus on. That's good. And so in the last 72 hours going into the race, the last 48 hours, the last 36 the last 24 hours, all of that energy went into aspects that Sam had direct control over, control the controllables. And so after that talk, that discussion that we had, that was only about five minutes in duration in the last couple of days, we never discussed sickness, setbacks, disruptions, Achilles, we weren't going to give that any mind, because we couldn't control that anymore. The body was going to provide the answer. Instead, we talked about execution, mindset, decision, commitments, all of the aspects under his control. On race day, Sam sent me a simple text, I'm ready, ready for what you might ask, ready to win, to go and have a great day to be others. No ready to aspect, to execute every aspect under his control to the best of his ability. That's what he was ready for, because that's what he could control. Ready to execute every aspect that was under his control to the best of his ability. When you do that, you cannot fail, because you bring your best place all of the emphasis and the focus on this, put aside the what ifs, the potential excuses, the worries, the concern, the fear, and ask the body the question and allow it the body to provide the answer. Now make no mistake, this was the most relaxed and calm that I'd ever seen Sam going into a world championship, and it was among some of the worst two week preparation going to a race that we've ever had, and I could have imagined. So what happened in the race? You want to know, don't you? Well, here it was the swim. First, it was fast, very fast. And if you need translation, fast on TV, Sam was flawless in execution, but not because he just went out and he was right to the front. In fact, it was quite different than that. This was one of the first races where they really had great TV production, including drones over the main pack of the swim. And at one point, me with my BDI, looking at all of the swim strokes I could see Sam, and he was sitting in about 13th position.
Matt Dixon 28:00
I was concerned that was a little too far back. But you know what happened? Sam realized it a two. Two. Remember I talked about race awareness in the middle of the chaos and the turbulence and the physical contact of a pro swim at or above a threshold heart heart rate, so you're breathing in your heart rate up close to max. He was thinking he was gaging where he was he was managing, and he realized he wasn't in an optimal position. And I saw him meander through and accelerate and slide through the pack, and he moved up three to four to five to six spots. Suddenly he was sitting on the third swimmer. And you know what happened? 45 seconds after that, there was a split in the pack. 10 swimmers broke away, and Sam, who was sitting in 13th, would have been, despite physically being well capable to be in the front group, would have suddenly found himself in the second pack, but he moved, and he earned his spot in that first group. You know what happened at the end of the race? Of those top 10 swimmers that got out of the water with that gap, nine of them finished in the top 10, so it was absolutely decisive on the race day. Now, if Sam at that time in the swim was worried about sickness or uncertainty or setbacks or any of those components, he wouldn't have been able to put his focus and attention into awareness and decision making. He focused on the controllables. He controlled that. He made decisions. He moved. And it was decisive. Control the controllables, the bike. It was also very, very fast while the group were 10 meters apart. There was minimal drafting. Sam, after two weeks of almost nothing and having absolutely no idea how he could run, he was the protagonist on the bike. He kept making the bike harder and harder. He ended up finishing first off the bike. And the big thing wasn't that he broke away solo. He still had the nine others in that group with him. But you know, what did occur? The gap between 10th and 11th was huge. He was one of the main protagonists to ensure that the bikers rode the bike hard and got the gap on those very, very fast runners. In fact, there was only one single fast runner left a long way behind who managed to build back into the top 10. The rest of them, 11th to 20th in a world championships, kind of irrelevant. And so Sam was the primary catalyst to break that race part, and that whole season, race plan executed, and now to find out the answer. Well, you all wanted to know the answer. Now, what was the body going to provide on the run? Well, was it a dream run? A massive breakthrough? No, but it was pretty good. He didn't get the first in the world, second in the world, third in the world that we dreamed of, but did it get six highly respectable and more importantly, a spectacular personal performance set amongst massive adversity, and the only way he emerged with this performance was because of His mindset. The physical preparation was there for months before, but the adversity would have knocked many people off their pedestal. He was pushed back on his heels physically, but it would have been so easy to enable that to destroy his race and smash his confidence mentally. And so Sam, for me, was a massively compelling story about a key mindset trait of high performance control, the controllable. When a pro athlete or a high performer is met with massive adversity, I consistently observed over the course of the last 20 years that they tend to revert back to their really basic habits. They filter out distractions, and they make things simple, and they come back and basically ask the sim the question to themselves, what can I control? And in this situation, all Sam could control was his mindset, his execution, his decision making. And so we went with that, placing focus on the things that could maybe provide a tempek in the hurricane, that they're existing in the ability to move forward and progress, and ultimately, what emerges out of it is the very best personal performance that they can achieve in the context of what's occurred. And so that world championships for Sam, it wasn't the dream performance, but it was a dream performance on a personal level, he did everything under his control, and that for me as a coach, is how you earn ultimate respect. That's why I have so much respect for him as an athlete, because I looked at him that day and I thought, you brave bastard. I'm not sure if I could have done that back in my time. It was tremendous. Now, why am I telling you the story? Because this is a story about an elite athlete, but you don't need to be any sort of an elite athlete to apply this lesson, because this mindset trait applies to anything that you care about and want to perform it. All we're talking about here is high performance. So as Sam's story around a world championship was another fine example of why I place so much emphasis on focusing on aspects that you can control as a part of my coaching, this principle controller controllable. It extends far beyond sports. Research actually supports its power in both athletic and professional settings. Studies show that when you focus on controllable factors, it improves your resilience, your ability to perform under pressure. Hmm, that story sounded like that, didn't it? It's true. For example, a study out of the Journal of sports and exercise Psychology found that athletes who focus on controllable aspects, such as their effort, their mindset, their execution, had high levels of performance but also lower levels of anxiety. And remember, in the story, I said, this is the most calm that I ever saw Sam. That's because he succeeded on placing the emphasis on the controllables, versus an athlete who focuses on uncontrollable outcomes and raises anxiety. That's all peer reviewed. Now if we apply as. To a business setting, the absolute same approach can be transformative. When executives focus on what they can influence, such as their strategy, their communication, their decision making, they remain adaptable and effective even when they're faced with uncontrollable market shifts or external pressures and similar research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology absolutely support this as well, showing that individuals who emphasize controllable factors experience less stress and are better equipped to cope with workplace demands. Really interesting stuff, and so I hope you enjoyed the first edition our little essays of lessons of high performance. Folks, we're going to be doing this next time, I think next time, we're going to introduce a business executive and break apart a similar trait around high performance. We will see you next time. Have fun and keep cracking on the journey of high performance. Cheers, guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the purple patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the purple patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
purple patch podcast, high-performance lessons, Sam Appleton, controlling the controllable, Ironman 70.3, race strategy, mental resilience, performance mindset, race execution, athlete coaching, personal best, race adversity, mindset control, race preparation, professional performance