Isn’t it interesting how life puts you in the right place at the right time? I was sitting in San Francisco’s AT&T Park with 30,000 people Saturday night, watching Opera at the Ballpark. I was there with friends, meeting other friends. And who do I end up sitting beside?
It was Rod Raymond – triathlon and endurance guru, motivational speaker and master trainer. Turns out that Rod was just in town for a few days from his home in Minnesota. Rod and I had crossed paths in Nashville at a conference seven years ago and hadn’t seen each other since. Can’t say that we knew each other, but I remembered him for his outlandishly positive energy as a fellow speaker at the conference.
In our brief conversation between acts of “Rigoletto,” I learned that after a lifetime of pushing his body to the extreme, and helping others do the same; Rod was pursuing a doctorate to get deeper inside the heads and spirit of his athletes. Likewise, I’ve been researching and doing lots of work the last couple of years to master the same thing with my clients.
Though our conversation was short, I hung on each word, as he also did for me. We shared a few quick stories about mindfulness, being in the flow and the mind-body energy connection.
He thanked me enthusiastically for telling him a story about my untraditional mind-body “healing” just days before my first ironman race in New Zealand in 2009. Apparently, there was a piece of that story that he needed to hear. Likewise, I was so appreciative of his insights that after working with athletes for over 20 years, he had come to realize that it is the mind and spirit that truly opens up a new dimension which has been relatively untapped by trainers, coaches and the like (recognizing the same thing, this was my primary reason for getting my triathlon coaching certification earlier this year).
It reminds me of the book my friend, Kristin S. Kaufman, wrote, Is This Seat Taken? Being open to the possibilities of random encounters is pretty amazing. Realizing that they may not be so random after all is even more so.
