Ultra-runner KAY BRETZ beat the race record of Australia’s Big Red Run by more than five hours and was awarded the Ultra Performance of the Year Award at the 24-hour world championships in France — but it took a significant change in mindset to do it. In this excerpt from his latest book, the elite athlete shares his amazing personal journey on overcoming physical, mental and professional challenges to achieve his success…
I had lived in Albert Park [Melbourne, Victoria] for almost three years and ran daily. Yet, I had never come out of my front yard and turned right. Every single time I had left my house, I had turned left at my garden gate. I didn’t even have a reason for it. My street was parallel to the beach, so I did two left turns to get to Beach Road. Instead, I could have done two right turns to get there. That was what Corey did, when at the suggestion of my new coach Gavin, he took me on my first mystery run.
I had no time to further ponder our choice of direction. We were only a few minutes into the run, and my concerns were growing. This felt wrong and uncomfortable. Corey was on a mission and, once we heard the first kilometre beep of his GPS watch, he increased the pace. This was a very different Corey from the one I normally trained with. It always took him forever to get moving in the mornings. Now, we were only five minutes into the run and he was running at marathon pace. And so was I. My thoughts were racing: How long would he be doing this? Why was he doing this to me? I should have known better and not said yes to this mystery run. Silly me. Maybe there was a way out of this? Maybe cut it short. Or even better, stop now.
Before I could pull the pin, I unexpectedly got a bit of time to breathe. After only one kilometre of this faster pace, Corey slowed down and took a very unusual route through St Kilda, passing shops and some random, unfamiliar residential streets. He was clearly taking me on an emotional roller-coaster, shaking me up in a scary ride, oscillating between hope and despair. We were about to hit the next bumpy section and accelerate. Corey took us on to a footy oval, where he picked up the pace to almost a sprint. Huffing and puffing, I managed to finish the first lap. No stop, no rest, onto our second lap. “Corey! Don’t break me!” I said, but he didn’t hear. The cries for help were happening in my head. I didn’t have enough air to scream out loud. Again, it must have been my pride that prevented me from giving up. Soon, though, I would have spent the last drop of it. My breaking point was close.
Luckily, we left the oval after just two laps. After not even 10 kilometres we were on our way back towards Albert Park. Less than an hour had passed since we had left my home, and I was grateful to have survived the first session. Corey looked at me and, smiling, mentioned he’d signed up for a triathlon the following day. That explained why we were easing into these mystery runs. I quickly learned it was a mistake to assume anything, however. Corey waved in the direction of my house, laughed and picked up the pace again. The session was far from over. We kept on going towards Port Melbourne.
This time, he was not going to let me off the hook, and we did the next two kilometres at a punishingly fast pace. Corey was clearly relishing his power over me. The struggle for me was not the speed. I was keeping up. The issue was the next edition of the narrative unfolding in my head. I was thinking through the worst-case scenario, still unsure when to give up. Normally, the idea of approaching a fixed finish line got me through to the end. My self-talk could be, “I’m exhausted now, but I can hang on for another kilometre. Then it will be over. Now, only 500 metres left. I can see the finish line; 200 metres to go. Done.”
But now, how could I unlock those last reserves and push through if I couldn’t make any assumptions? I felt helpless and stripped of any comfort by this man, Corey, who was no longer pretending to be a friend. Luckily, he didn’t try to “break” me and, after 17 kilometres, we reached home. I was still alive. Instantly, I played down the discomfort and fear. The run itself had not been as hard as expected. I wasn’t sure I enjoyed the run — it was different from anything I had ever done before — but I appreciated that we’d eased into it. As I reflected, I realised that the most intriguing aspect had occurred at my garden gate, before we actually got started — I had turned right.
I tried to figure out what turning right meant. Every time I left my house, I turned the same way. Over time, I had become rigid and was acting on my conditioned reflexes. Although I constantly had a choice to explore the alternative option, I repetitively chose the predictable outcome and turned the way I knew inside out. In the moment of turning right, I felt I had stumbled over something very important; however, now, with a bit of distance, I could not see any benefit. Reviewing it rationally, nothing seemed to be wrong with turning left. It had helped me gain numerous successes. How would turning right make me a faster runner? It didn’t make any sense. The more urgent question was, what did I need to do next?
Through the mystery run, my model of the world had been shattered. I had always been very disciplined and, with that, had become a faster runner. Yet, due to the law of diminishing returns, the efficiency gains were getting smaller and smaller. Trying harder had its limits, and I had reached a plateau. What got me to this point was not get¬ting me much further. Nonetheless, I kept on clinging to old ways of working and missed the point that their usefulness had expired. The less I saw them working, the more my motivation to avoid failure grew. My self-control, which once had been my strength and had gotten me to where I was, was now limiting me. I had over-extended my gifts.
By making me go on this a subsequent mystery runs, Gavin had taken away my ability to play out my default behaviour and conditioned reflexes. No longer could I be planned, disciplined and well considered. I didn’t know what Corey was going to do next, so I had to wing it. The trick was to not listen to my seductive voice of reason, which was also full of self-criticism, judgements and set expectations. When I stopped thinking altogether, I went beyond what I believed to be possible. As a consequence, I experienced a completely different approach — getting me to unexpected heights.
I had turned right at my garden gate into unknown territory in my first mystery run, disrupting engrained behaviour. Subsequently, metaphorically speaking, I turned right more often. It did not even matter whether I turned right coincidently or intentionally. Each right turn was nothing more than crossing the threshold into unknown territory. I perceived uncertainty as danger and, therefore, needed courage to keep going. The reward was a sig¬nificant shift in my perspective, perhaps even a paradigm shift.
The nature of turning right meant I couldn’t predict the result. By letting go of conditioned behaviour, I opened myself up to unknown possibilities. Instead of securing predictable results, I embarked on an adventure with uncertain outcomes. When I fully immersed myself in the unknown, suspending my thinking, surprising solutions presented themselves and could lead to unexpected outcomes. This discovery surely could have consequences for mindset shifts in any of us, allowing us to let go of rigidity, predictability and fear, and instead become curious, courageous and full of energy. When you stop thinking and your intuition takes over, solutions present themselves effortlessly, which could lead to unexpected performance and growth.
I had a lot to take in. If there was a simple message, it was this: I was my own worst enemy. My head was getting in the way of extraordinary experiences. To see more of the magic unfold, I had to turn right more often. The price to pay was to overcome discomfort and fear. Courage was key. My primary objective had been to avoid disappointments, and I had gotten stuck in the reactive habits and patterns I had developed consequently. Instead of reacting to problems from a state of fear, I had to learn to embrace challenges, driven by my aspirations. ■
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kay Bretz is a German born Australian, corporate leader, elite athlete and explorer. He earned his master’s degree in International Business and received a Doctorate in European Law before embarking on a successful leadership career across Europe and Japan which led him to Australia in 2011. He improved the race record of Big Red Run, a 250km, multi-stage, running event in the Australian outback, by more than five hours. He followed this with a series of podium finishes in events up to 350km. In 2019 Kay was selected for the 24-hour world championships in Albi, France, where he was awarded the Australian Ultra Performance of the Year Award. In 2020, Kay founded Turning Right, a business that helps individuals and organisations thrive, without the need to run crazy distances.
TURNING RIGHT – INSPIRE THE MAGIC by Kay Bretz (Major Street Publishing $32.95rrp) is now available at all good bookstores. Find out more about Kay at turningright.com
