Sometimes things doesn´t work out like planned and I got a broken spoke.

I wanted to do some mountain pass in the Swiss Alps with my bike over an extended weekend, but on the first descent from Albula Pass one spoke broke.

Luckily I managed to stop before the bent in the wheel got worse and would have blocked the wheel completely.

What this could mean when you are going over 60km/h (37mph) downhill … I don´t want to think to much about it.

When I finally realized that my weekend dream of doing some mountain pass was over, it started to rain.

Sometimes everything seems to go wrong, but instead of screaming into the heavy rain I started to laugh.

So I called my wife for a lift and walked the rest down to the valley with a smile on my face.

Now I have to buy a new wheel, because this one is irreparable.

Staying positive even if things don´t work as expected or when failing at something is essential.

You become and are what you think. When I think negative or have a constant negative self talk in my head, the situation only gets worse.

Before my Ironman Race in Klagenfurt back in 2001 I went to a workshop hold by Mark Allen and the one thing which is ingrained in my brain is the story he told us about his last title in 1995 ( 1995).

His story as I remember it:

After the bike ride he came into the transition zone. He knew that he was fare behind Thomas Hellriegel (13min), Jürgen Zack and Rainer Mueller. So there he was saving 30 sec with his new shoelaces. Super (irony). When he run around the first corner of the running course he heart two women talking: “Mark dosn´t look good today, what do you think?”. “Yes indeed”.

His thoughts were running wild. He then started to calm down his thoughts to the point where he had no thoughts at all. And eventually he caught up one after an other and was able to win the race.

He was in the zone.

Since then I try to apply this mental attitude to my live. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it´s harder to achieve, then only laughing at myself helps.