Author Archives: Marnie

Nice to know vs Need to know: The important bits and pieces

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2013- athletes get to be tourists. 2014 athletes will be athletes

2013- athletes get to be tourists. 2014 athletes will be ‘working’

<La version française suit>

A few years ago, Dr. Robert Thirsk, a Canadian astronaut, spoke at an Olympic Excellence Series meeting. He told us that before he went up on the Space Shuttle Columbia he needed to master over 20 simulators that represented bits and pieces of a single task that he had to perform in space. None of them, he said, could simulate totally what it would be like to perform his task in the weightless environment of space. When the time came, it was his ability to combine the variety of his experiences and training that made him effective in space. I was struck by how similar his experience is to an athlete’s preparation for an Olympics. There is no one thing that you can do to prepare for competition inside the Olympic bubble but you still need to be familiar with and master as many bits and pieces that you can.

I have written and erased this message many times … it wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to write about my recent familiarization trip to Sochi/Adler/Rosa Khutor and the bits and pieces that I observed while there. I was having a lot of fun thinking about the chaos of the construction and traffic that I saw. Nothing says ‘ready for the world’ like gaping manholes with no covers, knee-deep mud surrounding omnipresent construction, grocery shelves stocked with meat-in-a-can, and summer Olympic temperatures in a winter Olympic city.

But the reason I kept hitting delete on my draft message is that I try to make these messages pertinent to your Olympic preparation. Continue reading →

Discussing Goal Achieving with Kathleen Petty

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On Feb. 20th I was on CBC Radio’s ‘Ontario Today’ with host Kathleen Petty. Following a discussion of the challenges of achieving goals the phone lines were open for callers to weigh in with their goal achieving paths. I had a tonne of fun and was so impressed by the diversity of challenges and goals that people called in to share.

Olympian Marnie McBean on Achieving Goals

CBC Radio’s Ontario Today interviewed three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and Athlete Mentor for the Canadian Olympic Team Marnie McBean about her recently published book, The Power of More: How Small Steps Can Help You Achieve Big Goals, and how she achieved her own.

Time and Action

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calendarLa version française suite

This might be quite obvious, but February comes up really quickly in the calendar year. What I mean is, we’re only 31 days into 2013 and already it is February. Not surprisingly… the same thing will happen next year. In 2014 those first 31 days will move extraordinarily slowlyand unbelievably quickly. (Actually, this whole pre-Olympic year might go that way.) Seems that time always moves that way with respect to anticipation; simultaneously slow and fast.

As a summer athlete I had 6 or 7 months at the beginning of a year to get comfortable with the fact that my Olympic year – those numbers that had been in my head forever (’92, ’96, 2000) – had arrived.  I could be way off on this, but sometimes I think that the Winter Olympics must kind of sneak up on people. Don’t let that happen to you: Be comfortable and ready when 2014 and specifically, February 2014 arrives. Continue reading →

Setting new goals and keeping your New Year resolutions

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CatMedal

Putting a medal on a cat might seems way easier than putting jam on one – but the ‘jam’ has to come first!

After a conversation with Matt Galloway, the host of CBC Radio’s Metro Morning ( Toronto, RadioOne) a podcast of our conversation and this article was posted on CBC Books web site. Their title is partly right… but the truth of the “Jammed Cat” is that it helps anyone achieve any goal, big or small. In no way is the Power of More about Olympic size goals only.

How to win an Olympic medal with a jammed cat

Three-time Canadian Olympic gold-medalist Marnie McBean knows it’s a weird concept. But she can’t help comparing her journey to becoming Canada’s most successful summer Olympic athlete to a cat slathered in jam.

One day, McBean’s jam-covered piece of toast fell, she told Metro Morning. Of course, the toast fell jam side down. It always does. Most people, would make a new piece of toast, but McBean started wondering if there was any way to stop the open-faced sandwich from falling that way.
“What happens if you put jam on the back of a cat and you dropped it?” she said. “It would never land … like a perpetual motion type of machine.” Continue reading →