Dispprobation, Abandonment, Injury, Death

Summit of The Mountain after long day of training.  January 2011

Disapprobation, Abandonment, Injury, Death...

These characters are but a few of the incarnations of my dearest friend, Failure.  The list of aliases goes on and on and is utterly malleable - able to be cast into any shape as to fit into your life most poignantly, and therefore, most painfully.

This year I've invited Failure to dinner - the tables have been set, and, though I am a reluctant host, I'm ready to dish out my guts on the fine china.  Failure in its many forms has yet to RSVP but there is a good chance of its entourage showing up.

Little revulsion is harbored within me regarding this dinner date.  For space has been made for Success to sit shoulder to shoulder with Loss and Ridicule.

Failure is requisite on the guest list if you have any chance of Success's gracing presence.

Putting everything on the line is not necessarily a reckless gamble - a life savings wagered on black.

Owning up to the responsibility to your dreams will ultimately force you to stand upright in the midst of trench warfare - the sniper fire of Failing raining down.

Meditate on this today.  Are you in the line of fire?  Are you so on the path to personal greatness (which is nothing but the attainment of your own personal dreams) that you could find yourself with nothing but Loss?

For you must commit absolutely for a realization to arrive, thus wagering all stability and stagnation - Success never just shows up.

And if it does, or you somehow stumble upon it, what a hollow realization that would be.  What a non-realization of a realization!  What at tragedy, for your dreams were shattered by good luck, the pleasure of accomplishment tinged by fate, not a self actualization made by one's own will.

If this speaks to you pass this blog forward to someone who might need it.  Is there someone you know who has that great idea or big dream, but is sheltering themselves in the rut of mediocrity's safe harbor?

This blog of mine aims to be the infrastructure of a dismal failure.  That's right, I'm fully aware of that.  I might be documenting the greatest debacle of my life.  I'll be laying the framework for ridicule.  I'm in way over my head with all these ultra races this year.  I do, despite any other appearances, wake up at night and look into the dark and see only that emptiness and feel afraid.

There is a huge abyss before me in the Snowshoe Challenge 100 miler.  I've yet to run 100 miles straight.  (That's in May, two weeks before IM TX).  Suffering of a new level yet experienced awaits.  I'm not naive.  I actually have a rather advanced understanding of physiology at this point.  The human body, let alone my body, is ill prepared for such endeavors.  Only the mind, if properly braced and reinforced can keep forward momentum as the world collapses around you in sheets of fatigue, pain, and a conviction of the absolute futility of every additional step.

I'm blogging about what could be a devastating defeat.  Odds are not in my favor - what's under the underdog? - but at least 2011 will be distinct.  A unit of my life where I know I was on the limit of my potential.  And by going so big, the demarcation of my failure might just be a cherished success.  For setting the bar low is in our nature and diminishes the grandeur of the act, itself.  Of life itself.

But, buried beneath this scaffolding of accountability will be a well of achievement and success that is just ready to erupt once given half a chance.  That is worth every 'I told you so' or 'You're freakin' crazy'.

Ultra Essentials

I found this gem in the General Store here in Pittsfield.

With the huge workout weeks I need lots of calories.  The problem is I often compromise on the quality of those calories.  On a 8,000 calorie training day, I sometimes am forced to go to Ramen in mass quantities.  And, yes, I've spent much of my life smearing Skippy in mass quantities on everything I eat.

To be honest, I can't afford to be picky on calories.  I just need enough of them.  If I was forced to go all organic I'd be broke in a week.

Peanut butter is an essential staple of my diet.  I won't touch on any science or zen regarding this.  I eat cases of it.  During training and racing and recovery.  Most athletes agree.

Vermont Peanut Butter has won the Peanut Butter War, in my brain.  Folks, check out www.vtpeantubutter.com and order some.  I already cleaned out the General Store in Pittsfield.  Here quality of a product trumps any disparity in cost to the competition.

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!