Working on Now

The known is our past.  The known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning.  And when there is no evolution, there is stagnation, entropy, disorder, and decay...Uncertainty, on the other hand, is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom.  Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence.  
...Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories.  You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.  
-Deepak Chopra

Sometimes on the trails I get confused as the fatigue sets in.  I get disoriented.  I don't always know the answer to 'where am I'?

I, however, have unconditionally accepted one axiomatic expression of knowledge.  And it is the answer to 'when am I'?  Which is now.  When now? Now now.

Snowshoeing slows you down.  And like trail running you have to be attentive to each foot strike lest a miscalculation take you out of the racing equation.

All the mountain side contracts into one point of contact where you root yourself into the data stream beneath you.  The contact point is now.  You can't step into the same river twice.  But who cares?  I don't want to.  I want my feet underwater, now.  Once.  And then again.  Once again.

When?  When I'm there.

I'm not by a river bed at the moment.  I'll cross that bridge when I get there. When it's now time for stepping into streams.

The data feed of my consciousness is often riddled with sensory perceptions of extreme pain as the hours of training go on.  In the midst of racing the last place you want to inhabit is the now.  You stretch your mind to that cold beer after the race.  Or, as things really begin to become agitated in my brainwaves I want to be anywhere, than 'here'.  You want to be anywhen but now.

I'm coming to realize that you've stopped racing for intrinsic purposes at this moment, or should I say, this non-moment.  You have been affected into a state of being other than what you are, which, in this case, is racing.  What you are doing, then, at that time.  That present.

If you are not inhabiting the race moment, what are you doing?  I don't know.  Probably whatever it was that I was doing for the last 7 years.

And that is striving for results.  Calculating.  Looking at things through a lens of pros and cons.  Becoming benchmarks - not the transitions between them.  In fact, I wasn't becoming because I wasn't even there.  I wasn't.

It's all the past now, anyway.  And I'll let the disillusionment slip aside when I side-step the obstacle of then and focus on now.  Now now.

All the pain, and fire in my legs.  The delirium of now in mile 50 or 50.01.  The moment that I couldn't possibly want extended indefinitely in the present I hope to, one day, welcome as the manifestation of a goal that was never a goal.  Something that was nothing but a signal that I was moving in the right direction.

Burn Your Training Log: Write Your Story

Great, you started measuring your sweat rates and are running your long run impaled with a rectal thermometer that measures your core temperature. I’m very interested in hearing about the experience – just keep the data to yourself.    

  

Let’s be honest.  I don’t care about how many miles you ran today and what your heart rate was on the various gradients.  Yes, you can link me on Facebook to your uploaded data from your Garman 405 and I can see a Google map with all your biological stats interwoven with your route’s topography.  Exciting stuff!

But even as someone ‘really into’ what you’re doing, my eyes are glazing over.  I actually skimmed the whole thing.  OK, I’ll go a step further.  I probably ignored it.  So did all your friends and family.  They’d rather you spend the time telling about your day.  I promise.

Personally, I’m more interested in hearing about the thorn bush you fell into when you were in flight from a belligerent shih tzu.  I’m more interested in hearing about your reflections upon the park benches reflecting in the river you ran beside. 

I want to know why you were running.  Maybe you were running your intervals at suicide intensity.  Literally.  That break-up you’re working your way through has been damaging and you thought if you ran hard enough your heart might explode.  Take me there in your Tweets, status updates, and blog entrees.  Don't give me time splits.

Now, this is coming from a data junky.  For a whole year I recorded my heart rate and time split for every mile I ran.  Sweat rates, calories consumed, watts powered, laps swam:  you name it, I wrote it down.  

What did it result in?  I’ve got a couple large computer files of stupid ass numbers.  Really, that’s all I have.  Yes, times and heart rates lowered while performance increased.  Whoop-ti-freakin'-do.

But is this the narrative of my life?  I hope not.

Now I write about how Death Cab For Cuties’ What Sara Said can move you to tears as you hit the two-hour mark in Jockey Hollow during a Morristown autumn.  Now I record how my fatigue after a high volume workout made me put my hot cup of coffee into the refrigerator and take a gallon of milk to my office desk.  Now I document the stranger I met on a trail who looked like what Emerson would look like if he wore short shorts and compression socks; or the collection of bucks I nearly crashed into at 50mph on a blind corner on a cycling descent where I was out too late because of a flat.

Now I write about my methodical deductions regarding as to if I prefer diet Pepsi or diet Coke or why I insist on using the phrase ‘soft drink’ to denote soda.  I just note the setting such an internal dialogue.  It was actually dominating my mind in 2003 during the 4 hours I was approaching Aberdeen, South Dakota while riding from Oregon to NJ.  I wrote it all down in a post card in some crazy strange laundry mat with the worst off yellow colored machines.  

My point is that our energy is on the wrong aspect of recording our training.  If you are a busy athlete managing a job, family, chores, and basic life necessities on top of training, you don’t have time to write down methodical data after all your training.

Lance Armstrong has a nice GPS system on his bike that shoots all his vital stats of his ride to his coach Chris Carmichael.  I’m pretty sure you don’t have that luxury.

So just keep a diary instead and focus on the things that make you love training.  The numbers will work their way in, I promise. 

The narrative of your journey is the essence of it.  Every step of ‘now’ trumps the anxiety producing ‘what if’ or ‘when’. 

Take it from someone who’s been there.  I have a drawer full of awards of top finishes in triathlon and running.  I never open it.  I surely don’t go back and read my notebooks of data.  You think certain friends' pictures of their trip to Disney World is boring?  Imagine what you are doing in your discourse about the graphical representation of your lowering resting heart rate over a three month period.

I’m not paid enough to make winning my life.  I’m not paid at all for racing, actually.  And if you are reading this, neither are you, most likely.  You’ve just fallen into the trap, maybe, that getting faster is a validation of becoming. 

Instead now I’m opting to live my life through my training.  I’m not training to invent my life.  I promise you, if you don’t get your head straight, crossing that finish line in Kona might be your most hollow victory to date.  It will just be another number in your notebook and another thing checked off on your way to the next unfulfilling conquest.  Another life dampening been there, done that.

The essence of every finish line should be in each and every nowness of training and racing.   

Destroy the duality of who you are and who you should be.  Make a oneness of who you are and what you are doing.  Continually find yourself where you happen to be.

I’m trying this.  And, as a consequence I just might be getting faster and my fitness improving.  But I’m not focusing on that.  That’s ancillary to my focus.

When you lay off the science are you risking burnout and injury?  Are you jeopardizing peak performance?

I’m sure you are.  Frankly, I’ve forsaken peak performance for peak living.  The burnout makes for a better plot!  Maybe I’ll finally breakthrough what was unbreakable.  Maybe I’ll just break.  I’ll take that.  Or maybe, I’ll just keep doing my think with ear-to-ear grin. 

And this doesn’t mean you need a philosophical justification for your running or racing.  Just keep doing what you are doing and loving it.  Your justification is irrelevant.  What is relevant is your story that I hope to hear sans heart rates and rectal thermometer readouts. 

Don’t be afraid of losing or slowing down.  You just might catch your breath enough to capture a glimpse of who the hell it is that is actually pushing forward at breakneck speed, leaving life in the wake of a distorted landscape.  You’re so much more than numbers.  Your friends and family know that.  Do you?  Better catch on before you alienate them even more.

This is coming from a man whose senior thesis in college was:  The Quantitative Self:  Its Relevance to a New Ethics.

I burned my training logs, so to speak.  And I’m becoming more than an unopened drawer of finishing medals that will have stories to tell, now that I’m ready to listen.

Balboa vs Drago: Ironman vs Ultra Distance vs Death Race

I always get the same response when I describe to someone what I'm doing in Vermont.

"Ummm, you mean, uhh, like in Rocky IV?"
(I'm from Jersey so please imagine the vocal inflections.)


And all I can respond is, "Kinda, yeah."

Every day now I'm training by moving piles of rocks around.  I'm carrying backpacks of lumber up 1000' ft climbs to a mountain's summit.  I'm running through waist deep snow.  I chop wood with a big ax.  I go running along frozen roads and rivers.  I grew a beard.  I LIVE IN A BARN.

I actually begin to question the impact Rocky IV must have had on my subconscious when I was growing up.  I mean, I did watch it every time it was on TBS.  In fact, I watched the whole marathon every time it was on.  I had it on VHS, too.

I distinctly remember being 6 or 7 years old and taking a pair of old clunky roller skates that were the heaviest thing around and doing bicep curls with them.  Afterwards, when my Mother asked if I wanted grilled cheese or Spaghetti O's for lunch I replied, "I'd like steak!"


(Aside:  And does it mean that I'm old that I can remember a time when it was OK to hate Russians.  You were supposed, too!  I mean, Sly had to make Rambo IV all about Cambodia, leaving his Russian fetish aside after Rambo II and Rambo III.)

For those of you who are not a male between the ages of 20-65 this might help explain what I'm talking about.  If you are a male between the ages of 20-65, enjoy!

Ok, now that we're all fired up, let me get to my point.  I know, I know...at this moment you are downloading Hearts on Fire and are getting ready to go run...

Anyway, the juxtaposition of training methods is truly the embodiment of the difference between training for Ironman and training for Ultra Distance races.  Particularly the Death Race which I'm signed up for in June.

I've done 5 Ironman competitions including Kona.

Now I will come out and say that in terms of functional fitness I was not the greatest as an Ironman.  Many are, I'm sure, but I was not.  I could swim, bike, and run like an animal.  Ask me to move a couch or help you nail sheetrock to a ceiling and I was helpless.  I wouldn't even try, actually, because I'd be risking injury.  I'd be all, like, well if I didn't have to get to my masters swim class right now and eat my chia seeds I'd be there for you, but you know how Ironman training is...

Excelling at Ironman was about specificity.  You had a rigid program and if you stuck to it you had a damn good chance of succeeding.  Any of the 700 books on doing an Ironman will get you to the finish line.  Be diligent and you'll crack 12 hrs.  Train hard and you'll be under eleven.  Make it a lifestyle and you might beat the 10 hr mark.  (Full disclosure:  I've never cracked 10.)

And with all these 700 said books there is one thing that is definitely out of the equation:  guesswork.

When I was an Ironman I had every workout planned 6 months in advance and every race charted two years out.  I counted calories burned and consumed.  I engineered each workout in terms of duration, intensity, and frequency.

I love Ironman.  I always will.  It is the greatest popular endurance sport.  Period!  It's full of passion, glory, commitment, drama, and humanity.  It's awesome.

But now I'm trying something different.

Training for things like 100 mile snowshoes and 100 mile trail runs don't fall into this guesswork-less category easily.  The Spartan Death Race absolutely does not.  In these you just need to be rugged strong, intense, determined, and crazy.

Yes, yes, yes, you have to be all those to be a great Ironman, too, I know.

My point is you have to throw out the old training manual with the crossover.  This is what I found out.  Being a pretty elite Ironman does not make me even an average ultra distance athlete.  Folks, Ironman is short!  I'm going to say it.  People are out there running 250 miles at a clip.  They ride their bikes across America in 8 days, on 90 minutes sleep a night!  My boss snowshoed the Iditarod without tent of shelter in -30 degree weather.  People die out there with freaking dog teams.

This doesn't mean it's tougher, it's just different.  In all aspects.

And thus, we come to Rocky and Ivan.  Here they went head to head and rocky came out on top.

Who would win between an Ironman and an ultra distance athlete or Death Racer?

Who knows, it be a disaster unless one of them knew how to box!  The Ironman would win at Triathlon, the ultra runner would win the 100 milers, and the Death Racer would finish the Death Race.  Not rocket science.

What will be interesting, tho, is how I perform at an Ironman this year while training for ultra distance and the Death Race.

Here we can return to Rocky IV.  I'm using a 100 mile ultra run as prep for an Ironman two weeks prior to IM TX.  Very non-traditional.  Ballsy?  Yes.  Stupid?  Probably.  Fatal?  But doesn't Rocky teach us to pull for the underdog, and that his 'heart on fire' will pull him through?

As an Ironman I used to try and be Ivan.  Now I'm good old Sly each and every day.

Pittsfield, VT.  You can count my sit-ups while I hang from the rafters!

First Monday on the Job at Spartan Race HQ

It's official.  March 5th I'm going to try and snowshoe 100 straight miles...and I went snowshoeing for the first time yesterday.  Coming from an Ironman background I've never even ran 100 miles yet.  I'm waiting for the McNaughten to attempt that in May!  

But, anyway, even if it's impossible on paper to do, as many will say, I'm going to give it all I have.  If I listened to my inner doubts I never would have accomplished half of my best races.

Woke up fresh at 5am and got to office work so I could have a few hours to train once the sun was out and it wasn't 0 degrees F.  Pounded out some office work (man, I love working in the same beautiful Barn loft that I sleep in) until 10 where I got a wicked tasty breakfast at the General Store.  Spinach ommellette with home fries.  Then I could squeeze in my workout.

Training for this season will be VERY different than my typical Ironman training.  The Peak Events are rugged long.  The Death Race is insane full body functional fitness.  I can't rely on being super specialized to just swim bike and run, I need to be a full fledged monster. 

Especially in this new snowshoe scenario.  The course is approx 6.5 miles relatively straight up and down Joe's Mountain.  Going to have to dig deep and train hard, fast, without over-training.

But life is about doing pushing past normal.  About doing what I feel might be impossible.  I can't let the notion of failure deter me.  The possibility of failure is the mark of quality.  I high degree of failure is the mark of attempting something excellent.

And that's why I've moved up to Pittsfield, VT, Spartan Race HQ, to work and train non-stop.  Doing things I never dreamed - getting ready for the big Death Race after doing all the preceding Peak Events.
J'sWOD: 

1)  Moved a big ol' pile of wood.  Kept tempo up and my heart rate monitor stayed right around 145bmp.  Full aerobic mode with great arm work since the pile I was stacking got taller than me.  1.00.00
2)  Straight to 2.15.00 snow shoe up and down Joe's Mountain on parts of Snowshoe Challenge course.  Put for pieces of wood (approx 30 lbs) in my back pack for the ascent.  Just walking with load pushed me near my lactate threshold.  Forget about running.  Gradients are just too steep going up.  Dumped load at top and sprinted down mountain. 
3)  Once I hit the street I ran 30 minutes carrying all my snowshoe gear.

3.45.00 in total and I was glued to office chair IMMEDIATELY upon return for Spartan Race work in office.  Couldn't even change of eat for near 2 hours.  Just settling in some 5 hours later and have a second to type this.

So, I actually had to miss Bikram Yoga which I had on the schedule.  Tomorrow, I guess.  

First Day Snowshoing...

I'm proud to present the pilot episode of the soon-to-be-hit series:

Matt and Jason Live in a Barn:  Adventures from Spartan Headquarters in Pittsfield, VT.


This was my very first film using iMovie on my Mac.  In can only go up and get better from here - which, by all cinematic standards, is most likely rock bottom.)

This is our adventure where I have to learn to snowshoe 30 days before a snowshoe marathon.  But a revelations occurs to me before the summit!  Oh no, what can it be????

And be sure to schedule your own snowshoe tour under the guidance of Matt by clicking HERE

I Can't Possibly Do It

5/5/11    100 mile ultra run through Green Mountains of Vermont
5/21/11  Ironman TX (2.4m Swim, 112m Bike, 26.2m Run)
6/4/11    53 mile ultra run over steep gradients of Vermont
6/24/11  The 48 hr Death Race

When I wrote this list out before me I distinctly heard of voice well up in my mind:  You can't possibly do it.

Each of these races will knock me out for months, and I'm going to do them all within 7 weeks?

It begs the question, why?  But I don't have an answer for you.  Sorry.

When George Hillary was asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, he simply said:  "Because it's there."

Maybe I'll just follow his lead.

Otherwise, an answer would have to lie within the immediate resistance that surfaced when I faced this goal.  Something in me said not to attempt this.  This was difficult.  Possibly impossible for someone such as myself who has very ordinary DNA.

Nope, no super high lactate threshold or VO2 max for me.  No frighteningly low resting heart rate.  I sucked at high school sports.  I never went jogging till I was over 20 years old!  After only 8 on and off years of training can I do this?

So, of course, my brain is screaming at me to cease and desist this nonsense.  My primitive, reptilian brain is suggesting I better go hide under a rock lest I die!  After all, for The Death Race I had to sign a waiver that stated very simply, 3 words:  I may die.

A simple 5k usually has a whole page of waivers.  Obviously those waivers must be unnecessary if you readily sign you life away.  Literally.

And why do this when it will make my Ironman time so much slower than it should be?  Maybe I could break 10 hrs in Ironman TX, but probably not after ultra-running 100 miles two weeks prior.  Why jepordize excelling at a race to do mediocre at all?

No.  There are no straightforward answers.  Is it about ego?  Only in the indirect sense.  I have questions about who I am.  What can I survive?  How far can I push myself?  What are my limits?  It is only ego in so far as much as ego is a component in the desire for self discovery.

One can dial up 'ordinary' everyday.  And most people do try to escape it by booking a cruise ship to the Bahamas or touring vineyards in Napa.  That's good for them.  But something in me screams to shut up the voice that says I can't do something.  And currently part of me is saying I can't accomplish this goal, these four grueling races in succession.

And to me, that is motive enough.  Something worth pursuing even in the face up absolute failure.  It's hard to fail wine tasting in Napa.  You're not really putting yourself on the line.  And believe me, after I'm done with these races, I want a cruise to the Bahamas.  But I have some self discovery to attend to first.

And, I think I deliniated a route in the race schedule above.

Strength

There is little I will need to say within this post.  The link included below speaks for itself.  The reasons for its admission into my blog should be self evident.  I believe in strength.  I believe in overcoming adversity.  I believe in finding hope when you feel hopeless.  I believe in getting back up and moving forward.

Katie Piper speaks to each of these beliefs by having the courage to share her story with the world.  I have nothing but complete admiration for this brave and inspiring woman.  Please enjoy this brief 'about Katie' from her website:

Katie Piper's Story