The Mind/Body Divide/Union

The out of body experience.  The out of mind experience.  Where are you then when you have achieved both simultaneously? I can't remember.  I've only been there a few times.

I'll hypothesize that in this place you are engaged with the mind/body union, not the divide, and wrapping yourself around an unthought - engaged in a non-act of non-doing and therefore, you're on the road to great things.

I've blacked out a few times.  This is not this place.  This is the opposite.  I was totally present as my eyes rolled back in my head.

I am a monist.  Dualism has too much baggage - a world's worth, actually.  We compartamentalize Being into factions instead of letting it be undifferentiated lovers.

The only way to get there is to be where you are.  Allowing all the non-memories to seep in so that they can't be recalled, but only cherished.

I'm beginning to understand that pushing only can take you so far.  So, maybe it's just time to abandon the brakes.

Like dive bombing my Trek down Brandon Gap at 60mph.  There is a great letting go the first time you surrender yourself to the turns.  Vonnegut wrote of 'fates worse than death'.  Braking might be one such fate.  Worse than gravel and guard rails.

Endurance racing too often becomes a mall-metal, cock-rock song.  Like a Nickleback song it signifies a deprivation - a testament to testosterone and all that you've lost and are compensating for.

Endurance racing should be in the vein of Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht.  It should be written in the text Wittgenstein refused to write - for he believed 'of that which we can't speak of, we should remain silent.'

Maybe the minute you can walk away from the starting line you are ready to begin.  Then you don't have to overcome your body with your mind.  Suddenly such a notion is nonsense.

Tough

"The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching."
-Anson Dorrance

Racing is 90% preparation and 10% toughness.

Most people get it backwards.

(Oh.  And preparation?  That's the tough part.)

Race day romance is easy.

Sorry.  10th place was a pretty freakin' tough competitor, let me tell you.  Probably as tough as 1st.

1st was just better prepared.

If you really think your 'mental toughness' is the key to getting ahead on race day, you're probably deep in the mid-pack.

Wake up.  Almost everyone showing up is ready to go to the limit  more or less.  

In endurance racing we romanticize the 'grueling' or 'punishing' aspects of our sport.  And behave as if the only solution for success in endurance racing is getting ourselves in a transcendental mind-set brought only by watching the 6 Rocky movies on loop for a week.  

What is tough?  

- Get out there day in and day out when no one is watching - accountable only to yourself.

- Taking responsibility for your preparedness.