On The Surface

I noticed a crack on my front Carbon wheel about 10 minutes ago.

My heart sank.  This could derail my whole Epicman race.  I have no backup wheel set.  I have no money to buy another wheel.  I'd have to borrow a wheel and it would probably effect my performance.

The bad performance would, no doubt, cause me to be a complete failure in my eyes and lead to utter despair over how dumb I could be.

I worked out the equation (possible series of events)  to me being homeless and a burden on my friends and family.

Then I decided to really look at the crack.

It was really a harmless decal peeling in a strange way.

And so it goes.  The constant trials of beating ourselves up over false beliefs. 

Looking at things properly is important.

Mindful Thoughts

Intelligence comes from awareness.  Just as emotional intelligence comes from emotional awareness.

I'm going to infer that physical intelligence comes from physical awareness.

Regardless, this all rests on awareness being synonymous with mindfulness.

Two weeks before racing Epicman I will tune into feeling my body instead of ignoring it as I pound it into submission.  (If I were a gifted athlete, I'm sure I'd be able to pound my body into submission while feeling it instead of numbing out.  There is a wise athlete!)

This leads to me trying to dial my mind into my body so that the distance becomes irrelevant.

Why?  Because I can't wrap my head around the distance of a Triple Ironman.

7.2 Mile Swim, 336 Mile Bike, 78 Mile run.

So because I can't be mindful of the distance, I have to really look into my body now.  (And get to know it as best as possible, because I have no idea what will happen then.)

For what is the entire event  but many millions of tiny moments that I have control over processing and interpreting? 

I will happen.  The event won't happen to me.

The triple ironman will be the unfolding of myriad nows.

It's so simple...but goddamn impossible

Time I got something off my chest:  lofty words and ideologies are best suited for reminiscing - in the immediate we are too busy making mistakes.

I didn't get where I am by believing in myself.  Quite the contrary, actually.  But self-loathing will only take you so far, and I'm ready to take it to the next level. 

Setting your standards beyond your ability is destructive.  Essentially so.

It's all part of the Great Negation embraced by any drug addict.  When you are not yourself you are juxtaposed to your own Being - and any easy way out is welcome.  Blacking out becomes easy enough when you are tired of being awake.

I've seen beautiful perspectives pushing things.  But elevation is reciprocated.  What goes up comes down and the descent is proportional.  Essentially I've been on tour since I was in college.  I changed one rock n'roll life style for another.

But maybe perturbations between Myself and the places I inhabit are shrinking.  Two sine waves not in union produce a tempo with their disunion.  This was the push beat of my life this last decade.

And it isn't going away anytime soon...

...but it's reducing in intensity.  It's so easy to understand, so impossible to practice.

It's sounds so easy to stop when it hurts so bad.  But I'll have to be ridiculously fit before I get near stopping.  It's time to go home, when you arrive, I guess.

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.

EpicMan to Benefit Pittsfield, VT (Spartan HQ)

I am wrapping up my season, and 2011 too, for that matter, with what might be the greatest Triathlon spectacle I've heard of since I was first captivated by the Ironman World Championships at the fable location simply termed "Kona".  The privilege of participating in EpicMan on December 29^th, still keeps me up at night in anticipation.  

7.2 mile swim, 336 mile bike, and a 78.6 mile run.  Non Stop.  On the island of Oahu.  The cut off time…New Years - 60 hours after the start.  24 competitors to throw down and see who can get it done first.

Getting to the starting line of this event will be in no small part owed to the town of Pittsfield, Vermont where I have lived and trained all of this 2011 season.  And as I exit 2011 and head to 2012, I want to give something back to the town that stood vigil over my runs through the mountains.  The community here is something deeper than I've known elsewhere.  And this showed most prominently when Pittsfield was recently struck by Hurricane Irene.

I still pass the collapsed houses and properties on my rides and runs.  I still can’t ride without considerable detours and construction plaguing the trip.  I’ve seen resolve and strength in the people of Vermont that far outshines anything that I've encountered.  I am in admiration.

This is why I will be competing in EpicMan to raise money for The Pittsfield Hurricane Relief Fund, www.pittsfieldhurricanerelief.org, in an effort to help this town to which I owe so much.

So as I head into the Double Ironman this weekend in VA and as I ready for Epicman in December I am going to continue to point everyone to:  www.pittsfieldhurricanerelief.org.  There was an outpouring of support immediately after the hurricane, but this needs to continue.  Just like an extreme endurance event, focus and persistence are required.  We still have a long way to go to get back to where we were.

This is why I'm dedicating my racing of Epicman to raising money for www.pittsfieldhurricanerelief.org. Please contribute directly on that site or contact me as JasonJ@SpartanRace.com if you can help in any other way.

A Bit Charred, But the Burnout is Momentarily Behind.

“And you can’t break through with the one that you want.”

Maritime ~ Parade of the Punk Rock T-Shirts

Wading onto the shores of the over-trained is common enough as to evoke no screams from the lifeguards.  And we’ll all, at some point in time, wash up unconscious and shaking on the rocks.

How many times can you go to the well?  When does evoked distress usurp your body’s ability to battle back?  When is bruised battered?  When is battered broken? 

It’s different for everyone.  And I can’t even begin to figure it out for myself.  As much time as I spend with my own body the more of a strange guest I appear when I try and speak open and intimately.

*

If burnout were purely a physical phenomenon, a concoction of muscles and tendons refusing to respond, a platter of strains and limbs polluted with lactic, then we could at least chart the problem with medical journal explicitness.

Personally, I’ve found, burnout takes on a more manipulative role as it firmly embeds itself into my  psychic regions and encamps before unfurling itself outward, systematically shutting down one system after another. 

Parasitic.

Burnout germinates as a repetitive Fuck My Life that accompanies all usual activities.  Some invisible element materializes from the atmosphere and settles upon every object - a patina of misery you can’t brush away. 

Burnout affixes itself within the deployment of hormones and serotonin, making sure it disrupts any standard operating procedure with outbursts and emotional conflagrations.

Burnout disembowels your favorite songs.  It weakens the syntax of language.  Burnout doesn’t wash off no matter how long you stand in the shower.

Burnout injects those established race goals with doubt and gags and binds all core beliefs regarding the timeless question:  Why should I wake up today? 

Burnout then complicates recovery on a cellular level.  You’ve been stripped of any motivation to workout first, and then your immune system starts operating like a that frenetic vacuum cleaner in your basement closet you refuse to throw out. 

I’ve been known to fall over rather embarrassingly, the composition resulting from my balance and leg musculature a knocked over Scrabble Board of confusion. 

But this is not the trying part.  Crying on the ground inexplicably trumps all in terms of embarrassment. 

Burnout sutures shut within you an amnesia of all your accomplishments to date along with a conviction that all is lost if you don’t get right back on the fucking track.

And then you do.  And prolong the misery.

*

In readying for Kona in 2006,  I didn’t trust the fitness that got me there.  I went skeletal and near anemic.  I remember crawling from my bed to the kitchen, propping myself against the cabinets trying to climb up to the Keurig. 

Battered into broken. 

It took me two years to battle back.

I did in 2010  when I broke my hip while overtraining.  Broken into shattered.

This time I ran away to a Swaziland hut for 5 weeks…before absconding to Vermont after finding Joe Desena’s passport on my return trip.

And now, during the last three days I’ve imbibed the compounded misery of those previous episodes before I finally recognized what was going on.  Again.

Has anyone ever learned his or her lesson the first time?  Can I have your autograph?  Saint.  Bodhisattva.

*

I hadn’t worked out in three days and the guilt was coiling like a stiff mattress spring. 

Internal pressure has internal cause.  “Remember that”, I kept reminding myself as I lambasted myself with accusations of dogging it.

But finally I stood firm and refused to elevate the damage and prolong the illness.  I went so far as accompanying my workout partner to the lake…

…and watched her swim while I was sprawled along the shoreline, too tired to stand.

And finally, as strangely as the untimely cold front blew in, it started to dissipate.  The fatigue dusting every action was beginning to catch in the wind.

This morning I woke up to a whole new Vermont.  Clean and crisp lines of thought caught at the fog covering the valley. 

I could taste my coffee.  Music took on its original tonality.  Words fell into place, syntax restored and semantics returned to boot.

Fuck My Life translated into Hello My Life (Damned As You May Be).

At least you’re interesting.  At least there are explosions in the distance to investigate. 

Once I’m strong enough to get there.

And then you go to your one shot to where you are.

Rouge Wave ~ Love’s Lost Guarantee

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.