There are few elite athletes in the world who train alone. They have a community of other athletes and coaches that are there alongside them for much of their training. It’s difficult to quantify the motivational role that that community provides, but needless to say, it is a huge part of athletes’ success. How often after a big event do we hear someone thank their coaches, their partners, and their teammates. Whether it’s a teammate suffering alongside you or a coach challenging you to do one more, we train better when we have a community. Many of us don’t though. Whether a result of where we live, the hours of the day that are available for us to train, not knowing any like-minded athletes that are working towards similar goals, many of us train in a vacuum relying solely on the motivation that we can conjure up. That motivation for most of us is incredible. Year after year, we climb with thousands of climbers who have performed monumental feats of training with only a voice in the back of their head as motivation and that is inspirational. Could it be easier though, could it be more effective? Absolutely. The interconnectedness of our lives with the Internet can be a really strong tool. While we might not have a training partner physically there with us, we can see what they’ve done, look at their stats, maps, and efforts, and use that to motivate and challenge ourselves. When we post that back to the community, our effort can serve as someone else’s motivation, and as a group, we all train harder, smarter, better, and show up fitter and ready to climb.  As an attempt towards creating this sort of community around us as climbers, we’ve created a club on Strava that we invite everyone to join. You can find it at https://www.strava.com/clubs/rmiexpeditions. Post your workouts, peruse those of others to gain inspiration, and have discussions about training plans and ideas. We accomplish some amazing feats, and we also all go through dark days in our training when things don’t seem to be going right. Let’s let this community strengthen us. As such, let’s keep our conversations positive and constructive. For some, it may be intimidating to post their workout in an open environment like this, but realize that inspiration from your workout may be just what someone else needs to take a step up in their training. Get motivated, have some fun, and enjoy some friendly challenges. We’re excited to see what everyone is up to! _____ Questions? Comments? Check out the RMIExpeditions Club on Strava and share your thoughts there or here, on the RMI Blog!