For an athlete who’s ascended heights the size of Mount Everest, why would it sound crazy that OCR superstar Ryan Atkins finds relaxation in sewing himself a comfortable sleeping bag?
Atkins is one of the world’s best OCR athletes on the planet. He’s the reigning Spartan Ultra World Champion, winning back-to-back titles in Iceland in 2018 and Sweden a year later, in the sports’s 24-hour winter event that is recognized as the hardest on Spartan’s Championship calendar.
For those not in the know, obstacle course racing — or OCR — is the ultimate athletic test for pushing one’s physical limits. Its races last anywhere from a few miles to ultramarathon lengths while competitors travel through any number of obstacles (think mud and barb wire).
Besides being defending champion, Atkins also won the first season of the Spartan Games , a five-day competition comprised of obstacle course racing, ultra-running, wrestling, functional fitness, and other competitions. Atkins holds the unassisted record for ascending the height of Mount Everest on foot. He accomplished the feat at a ski mountain in Sutton, Quebec — making the 8,848-meter ascent in 11½ hours. He’s completed the 7 Summits Challenge, climbing the equivalent height of the highest summits of each continent (Everest, Aconcagua, McKinley, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Vinson, Carstensz Pyramid).
Atkins is now preparing for Spartan’s 2021 season, which has returned after canceling its 2020 schedule due to COVID. He plans to compete in the Spartan US National series – leading to the 2021 Spartan Ultra World Championship in October and ultimately the 2021 Spartan World Championship this December in Abu Dhabi.
In between his high-octane and long-suffering workouts, which can go on for hours and hours, Atkins says any number of household hobbies, from woodworking to the peaceful process of putting needle to fabric and sewing his own hiking gear, give him the much needed mental break to balance each day’s intense training.
“I made the sleeping bag that I use,” Atkins says. “I made a superlight down sleeping bag with all the baffles and down and other lightweight material. That took me about 30 hours to figure out. And it’s awesome. I take it on hiking trips. So, yeah. Sewing is pretty satisfying.”
After starting out as a BMX racer, the Quebec native learned early on that he had penchant for physical punishment. Atkins won his first event — a 50-kilometer race — without ever running that far in his life. So besides finding balance, Atkins explains in this week’s Winning Strategy how you can find your hidden talents and skillsets. He also shares what he’s learned climbing some of the world’s most difficult terrain that can help push you to your limit, while also alerting you on when it’s time to step back and give it a rest.
When you compete and do well at it is a pretty good indicator that you’re good at something, at least to me. But more important, when you do something, and you find out that you really love it, it then becomes a combination of talent and finding the thing that gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning and start thinking about it 24-7. When you can define those things you are passionate about AND you’re good at them, that’s kind of your calling.
The first time I knew I was good at endurance racing, I signed up for an ultramarathon. It was just a 50-kilometer race and I won it. It was pretty cool. I never ran that far before, and it was just such an amazing experience. I was having so much fun the whole time. It was awesome and challenging, and I was good at it. That type of passion really fuels you to keep pursuing these events.
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Courtesy of Spartan Racing
2. KNOW WHEN IT’S TIME TO SHUT DOWN
I think this is something you probably learn through experience and perspective. If you’re in the middle of an event and it’s something that means a lot to you, then obviously you’re going to push through. But, it’s not like a really specific workout that you need to complete — or a do-or-die kind of moment — and either you’re not psyched, you’re not getting your heart rate up, or you’re just feeling low, it’s time to shut down. These are a few little cues and signs that I’ve learned over the years. You just kind of know.
For me, there was one recent workout in which I was running uphill and my heart rate wasn’t going up and it just felt really hard. My exertion was high, but my speed was really low and my heart rate was low and my body wasn’t reacting. That’s a pretty good sign. Or there are times when you’re doing what you normally love doing, but it just doesn’t have the same feeling. I eventually realized that sometimes there are times when you need to shut it down. I guess, you just have to have the ability to say, “You know what? I’m not going to push it today.”
You only have so many big efforts, so why push through every moment? It’s a lot better to save those efforts for like, something that’s worthwhile.
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Courtesy of Spartan Racing
3. LEARN TO SCALE BACK
Sometimes you may need a few days to get back to normal, but if you keep digging yourself deeper and deeper in that hole and you get into a state of overtraining, it can take months — I’ve seen people never come back from it.
Earlier in my career, I overdid it several times. As a young athlete, you see other athletes and what they’re doing with their workouts, and before you know it, you’re trying to get to their level by doing what they’re doing—I think that’s actually a logical human response. So you start imitating them. Meanwhile, you never saw the 15 years that they built up to these feats or all the times that things went wrong for them. A lot of athletes won’t show you that part.
I used to race mountain bikes, and I went and did a ton of training. When I first finished university and finally had the time to put in three to five hours a day, I was doing it because that’s what I thought it took to be that type of an athlete. And after about three months of training like that, I tried racing, and I wasn’t doing so well—it was literally one of the worst races of my life. It was definitely a case of overtraining, and from there I had to take it easy for several months. It ruined my entire season. So that was my one big lesson.
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Courtesy of Spartan Race
4. PROGRESS GRADUALLY
Having a training plan laid out is a really good idea. But I think it’s equally important to have the ability to adjust to that plan on the fly.
Another really good lesson is to always err on the side of caution, especially when you’re training for an event. It’s always better to show up to an event undertrained — 1% undertrained — than to show overtrained, injured or unmotivated. Another good rule of thumb: Never increase your training load by more than 10%.
When you start going down that road, it’s not just your body that suffers, your mind does as well. You start having different stresses and your cortisol levels go way up — it’s a whole package of bad.
So having a gentle progression, one that you can map out, not just week to week, but month to month, even year to year, is really important.
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Courtesy of Spartan Racing
5. KEEP A MARATHON MINDSET
If you’re always looking at how big something is and how monumental it is, then it’s going to wear you down quickly. Because if you’ve been out for 12 hours and you’re only halfway in, or you’ve already run 50 miles in an ultramarathon and you have to run another 50, you’re already exhausted. You’re probably also thinking how you’re going to get through the next two miles, let alone 50. That’s when it becomes so mentally tough.
But, if you just say, “Oh, I’m just going to get to that next hill, or next obstacle, or what am I going to eat,” a switch does go off, and you just kind of go through the motions. It’s kind of like showing up for an eight-hour shift. You’re like, eight hours is a long time. But you start doing something, but then it’s lunch, and now you’re halfway through. And then your day’s over.
Trust me, there will be some low moments, but you try not to dwell on the lows. I kinda try to shut it off, not associate with it mentally, and then the highs become awesome. You’re outside, the sun’s coming up. This is really great. It’s these moments of elation you really try to hold on to.
When I did the Eco Challenge — the world’s toughest race — that race was seven days long for us. And there were probably 100 highs and lows over the course of that week. One day we got lost while we were in second place —we were actually able to see the first-place team. Then we got lost again, this time in the mountains for about five or six hours, and we were exhausted. It was the middle of night and it was just like, such a crushing low.
At that moment we just laid down and had a 30-minute nap. We got back up and started running. Then and the sun started coming up and it was a gorgeous day. We were in Fiji — it was beautiful — and it became and incredible moment. I think that’s pretty good example of how a low moment can quickly turn into a high.
