Appearances are important in all aspects of life, if you are
going in for an interview, working at a job or a professional athlete. They are
part of your image. People will judge and connect with you based for of your image.
As a professional triathlete my image is also my brand.
There are two key pieces to my brand at the moment that I am
building. The first that I will give a little story about is my haircut. I have
chosen to express image through having a mohawk. I have been racing with a
mohawk haircut for 6 years and it is part of my race ritual now. I will not
start the season with out having this haircut.
It started in second year university, after going through my
high school long hair faze. It was time to move on. I went up to one of my room
mates and said cut my hair into a mohawk for the up coming track meet. At that
meet I ran a personal best of 8:42 in the 3000m.
Later that year before 5k Around the bay race I chose to cut
of the mohawk. The day before the race I ran into my varsity XC captain. How
said, ‘Taylor you cut your hair! Why? That was the source of your power…
Welcome to the slowest day of your life.’ Surprisingly I did not have a very
good race and from that day forth I chose to never race with out having mohawk.
Through the years of my racing career I have kept the mohawk
as part of my image and slowly building it into my brand.
I my next post I will discus the history of the Wolf and how
I have built that into part of my image and why I chose it.
