How this Abba competes
My imperfect recipe for healthy competition Pt.1
Cancun, Mexico.
Where the sunburns burn, tequila flows, college students rage, and honeymooners moon.
A little over 6 years ago, my wife and I enjoyed 3 out of those 4. If we had gotten married 6 months earlier while still being in college, we could have enjoyed all 4.
The day after the best day of our life, we headed to DFW airport and flew south to Cancun to enjoy our weeklong honeymoon. Having never taken a trip together until that point, being newlyweds, constantly holding hands in the airport, and smiling ear to ear on a flight to Cancun, we stuck out like a sore thumb as honeymooners. The flight attendant walked up to us and asked, "Are you on your honeymoon?” Besides it being blatantly obvious that we were, we said, “Why yes! How’d you know?”
“Well, normally married couples don’t look that happy.”
Heartbreaking but true.
We ended up landing in Cancun and traveling 1 hour north to Playa Mujeres, where we stayed at the Excellence Playa Mujeres All Inclusive Adults Only resort. It was there where I met the love of my life.
The Iceberg.
The Iceberg was a drink that myself and my soon to become best friend, Juan the bartender, conjured up one lazy honeymoon afternoon.
Half frozen lime margarita, half Dos Equis lager, a shot of tequila on top with a lime wedge in a 24 oz tall large glass.
Twenty four ounces of heaven.
Unfortunately, as a recent college graduate at an all inclusive resort where “I had to get my money’s worth,” the word “temperance” was not in my vocabulary.
So I had a few Icebergs.
Every day.
And by a few, I mean more than a few, each day.
Now, I would spread them out throughout the day to still be right minded enough to enjoy my honeymoon with my beautiful wife. And while that helped with the alcohol content to ensure sobriety, it did not spread out the caloric portion of the drink.
My guess is each of those drinks was roughly 500 calories. Add to that the reality of being at an all inclusive resort with plenty of desserts and fried foods, and the calories hit hard and fast on the honeymoon.
To the tune of 12 pounds.
Yep. When I got home from the honeymoon, I had gained 12 pounds in just 7 days.
That has to be a record for most pounds gained on a honeymoon.
And those 12 pounds didn’t leave either. They hung around.
At the beginning of my marriage, I still lived very much like I was in college. Fried foods, light beer, lots of desserts, sleeping in, laziness around the house, not pulling my weight — plus 12 pounds — when it came to household chores. Selfish living.
Then the first kid came.
Hit me like an absolute freight train.
Turns out that having a kid doesn’t just magically make you selfless. You're still the same guy you were before, but now with responsibility pressing hard against your weak points.
It took me about 5 to 6 months to get out of the fog of the train wreck of having that first kid. As I left the fog and started to look in the mirror, I realized that I needed to change many things about my life in order to raise this beautiful life and hopefully many more beautiful lives in the future.
Physical Competition
Out of the laundry list of things that needed to change in order for me to perform as an Abba was my physical habits.
As a hyper competitive high school athlete, when I went to college I was burnt out from exercise. Plus, it never seemed to have a point to me. Working out in the gym for an hour each day always felt pointless. I struggled to exercise without there being a clear end goal to work toward.
That continued after college as well. I would recommit to exercise over and over again, have a great week or two of consistency, and then fall off for a couple of months.
So after years of this failed experiment, I knew that if I were to change my physical habits, I needed to do something differently. So I set a goal. A half marathon.
As a recovering competitive baseball player, I absolutely hated running. Always had. I couldn’t fathom how someone would just “go on a run.” That is precisely why I played baseball my whole life — very little running.
I went on my first run to train for my half marathon and put my head down and ran. I ran and I ran. Pushed and pushed. Gritted my teeth through the pain. Pounded the pavement. After what felt like hours of running, I looked down at my phone.
Point four miles.
I was supposed to run 3 miles. I wasn’t even 20 percent done. It had been 4 minutes.
After walking more than running for the next 40 minutes, I completed the 3 mile run at a blistering pace of 13 minutes and 20 seconds per mile.
That was 5 years ago.
Since that traumatic first run, I have competed in 10 half marathon, marathon, and triathlon races.
In 10 days, I will race in another marathon. In July, I will compete in my first ultra distance trail race — 31 miles or more — and then in November compete in a hybrid fitness race called Hyrox that combines functional weight training with running.
And I haven’t won a single one of them. Haven’t even gotten top 10.
In some races, I have barely placed in the top 50 percent in my age group. But I train my butt off for them. Wake up early to get the workouts in. Try to watch my nutrition to perform better physically. Calculate my sleep to optimize recovery to work out smarter and stronger the next day. Spend money on gear, races, and supplements. Why? To run a marathon 10 minutes faster than last time?
No. Because of the value of competition.
What I realized is that what I thought was pointless exercise was really just competitionless exercise. I would go in the gym and just lift weights without understanding how it was bettering myself or those around me. What I have discovered with endurance training, but also with weight training, is that my exercise is always pointed, for a reason, heading toward a goal.
Showing our kids that we compete is a powerful side benefit of Abba competition
Now I train because I want to compete against myself. I want to see if I can beat my time from a year ago. To make incremental progress each day to see how if I stack bricks day after day, I can create a big house by the end of it.
Two weeks ago, I PR’d my half marathon time by 9 full minutes. That’s about 40 seconds per mile faster than my previous best in the half marathon. And it was an incredible feeling. I did not even check where that time put me in relationship to others racing. Rather, I was so elated that I had come so far through my training. (I did look a couple days later and was in the top 20 percent of racers and was super pumped to see that.)
Me absolutely dying at the end of my recent Half Marathon
Here in 10 days, I will race a full marathon and am shooting for a 45 min PR in the marathon (about 1:30 min/mile). Not sure where that is going to put me compared to my peers, and am definitely not going to qualify for Boston, but this race is about all competition, to see how I measure against my past and evaluate how far I have to go in the future.
Wbu: What about you?
How can you add some physical competition to your Abba hood? It doesn’t need to be marathons or triathlons. It can be rec basketball and improving your jump shot. It can be in the gym building up to a big deadlift PR. It can be getting in shape so that you can get on the floor and wrestle your kids, or future grandkids.
It can be feeling confident physically so that you feel competitive in the workplace. It can be an Ironman or a 5k as long as it promotes a healthy competition inside you to begin to live a life of gravity, responsibility, and ownership.
Competing against yourself pushes you to grow from within, measuring progress by your own standards rather than external validation. It builds discipline, humility, and consistency—qualities that strengthen your character far more than fleeting victories over others. As a man, true strength comes from becoming better than who you were yesterday, not proving you're better than someone else today.
CHA,
Chasing What Matters,
John Michael Lucido