Serenity Through Sweat

Better off

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Tonight Americans will make their voices heard at the polls. This blog has always tried to steer a clear line around politics, and will continue to do so. In that light though, a common question asked around elections, are you better off now than you were two, four, whatever political term limit years ago?

Frankly, I find the question offensive, especially in the context in which it is asked. Our lives are so complex, and measuring something as open-ended as “better off” is really hard to pin down and subject to interpretation.

So, right off the bat, it is a bad question that is hard to define any real answer to.

Add to that the context, whereby the question implies that whatever politician is directly responsible for your bounty or misfortune.

Now, if you ask yourself that same question, putting the onus on yourself rather than some distant bureaucrat, it’s a totally different story.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Are you better off than you were a year ago? Are you better off than you were a month ago? Yesterday? Why or why not?

Life has thrown a lot at all of us in the last four years. But skilled sailors are not made by smooth seas, as they say.

Have you grown? Have you changed? Have you gotten healthier? Have you learned and loved?

Politics have little to no impact over most of those things. And, those are among the most important things.

Make your voice heard at the polls. Vote for the ploicy direction you believe in. But also, vote for yourself.

Vote for your health. Vote for your relationships and your loved ones. Vote for adventure and experience. Vote for growth and knowledge.

If you are better off than you were four years ago, what is your personal platform for the next four years?

If you aren’t better off, no one is going to change it for you. You are running unopposed and have no red tape to cut through to implement change.

Regardless of the election results, you will have a super majority to make changes in your own life.

Getting more time on the bike inside and outside

You likely won’t have to convince anyone other than yourself.

I hope you are better off now than you were four years ago. I hope you are better off tomorrow than you are today. I hope you are better off four years from now.

Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy. You get to be the architect of your future, whether that leaves you better off or not. May you find serenity along the way.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Auto pause

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. A few weeks ago, I completed the six gap century ride and I wanted to reflect on that experience.

It was not the ideal backdrop for the 104 miles and 11,000+ of climbing. Hurricane Helene had just pushed through north Georgia and western North Carolina. Roads were wet, trees and debris were all over, and the forecast was for rain and fog in the mountains.

A lot of the participants, including some of my friends and teammates, were delaying their departure, thinking the event might be rescheduled or canceled.

It’s difficult to explain the mindset leading up to a big event like this. Most of the time, it is something you haven’t done before. The most miles, the biggest climb, the longest day, maybe all three, for this particular event.

All the training and preparation lead you to this moment on the starting line for something you’ve never done before. The uncertainty of the outcome and the uncertainty of the circumstances combine to test your resolve in a strangely invigorating way.

It’s important to go into any event with a plan. But, the longer the event, the more likely it is that the plan is going to blow up at some point. So, it is important to be able to pivot and be flexible within your overall framework.

I gave myself plenty of time to wake up, stretch, and drive to the event parking area, even leaving in some extra time for the unexpected.

The unexpected came in the form of my third trip to the port-a-potty and my new bike computer failing to load the route within the final minutes before the starting horn. Better to get it out beforehand, I suppose.

Two thousand of my new best friends and I started through the quiet streets of Dahlonega, a parade of multi colored lycra and flashing bike lights.

We climbed and descended, weaving our way through small mountain towns, making our way through the foggy peaks and fall foliage.

The steepest of the climbs on the day, Hogpen gap came 37 miles into the ride. Averging a 10% gradient with parts of the climb above 15%, it was a slow and quiet climb.

The road had been closed off to vehicle traffic, which made the climb eerily quiet. The slow clicking of pedals and deep rythmic breathing echoed off the trees and the damp cliffside rocks.

Not having the route on my bike computer, I didn’t know how far into the climb I was or how much I had left. (The precise feature I had purchased this bike computer for, c’est la vie)

Looking down, I noticed that the computer was paused. I had not turned off my auto pause feature. This is a feature, (usually helpfull for Florida training rides), where the bike computer realizes you aren’t moving and pauses the activity tracking. It auto resumes once it detects movement again.

So if you stop at a traffic light, or break to eat or refill a bottle, your training stats are not affected by the pause.

The trudging dance of pedals up Hogpen gap was slow enough that my bike computer thought I wasn’t moving at all.

That was a little deflating.

But, the bike computer doesn’t know the struggle. It doesn’t know the experience. It is binary. Above this speed is moving, and below it is stopped.

The whole thing made me think of Einstein. One of his many famous quotes, coming from a letter to his son, was, “Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving”

Even when it looks like you are standing still or treading water, struggling to keep your head afloat, the movement is what saves you. The movement is what balances you, literally and figuratively.

I made it over the top of Hogpen gap with lots more miles and lots more climbing still in front of me. I kept moving. It wasn’t always fast, and it wasn’t always pretty, but it was always forward.

Every bike I have had since I started racing has had a name. This bike was purchased with the six gap ride in mind. It had to be nimble up the climbs and fast and stable down the descents. I struggled to come up with a name for the first few months I had it.

Her name came to me while listening to this Shawn James song on a training ride, looking out over the mountains.

“So you think you got it all figured out?
All this money in the bank and the women all about. Well, now what you gonna do when your ship starts to sink?
Caught in a monstrous sea and you won’t be able to think. Yeah, and it’s there you’ll learn what I know. That all of this world will fade You gotta learn to let it all go, oh And flow like the river”

Flow like the river. Always moving. Always forward. Changing course if something blocks its way, but constant power and movement.

One of my favorite TV/movie combos is Firefly/Serenity. It features a rag tag bunch of outlaw space adventurers defying the odds aboard their shuttle ‘Serenity’. The story centers around a character named River.

Constant movement, serenity, an incredible cinematic journey, some funky blues guitar, it all lined up perfectly for what I wanted this bike to be.

Flow like the river

A reminder of why I keep coming back to new endurance challenges. To keep growing. To keep moving forward. To find serenity. To flow like the river, whether the world thinks you are on auto pause or not.

Thanks for joing me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Here it is your moment of zen

Recalibrate

Sometimes, ego gets in the way.

My heart rate strap, the large puddle of sweat underneath me, and my own intuition after thousands of hours on the bike were telling me one story.

My power meter was telling a very different one.

The same course and roughly the same intensity, with a recalibrated power meter.

I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know how to fix it. As much as I tried to ignore it, the numbers on the display are there to be used, and when they are not right, it can be disheartening and distracting.

The whole experience reminded me a little bit of my days as a college flight instructor.

I can remember the flight instructor meeting vividly. Sitting in the conference room, a bunch of type A personalities in our matching flight instuctor polo shirts.

Having just sat through a training presentation on the new avionics suite that would be installed in our new Piper Warriors, one of my friends asked what our students would be expected to know and be tested on.

“So, air data goes in, and pretty colors come out?”

This was almost all of our first experience with a “glass cockpit”. All of us had learned and instructed on mechanical flight instruments.

A knowledge of how those mechanical instruments were built and how they functioned was critical to understanding the data they were giving you.

It was also important to understand the limitations of the mechanical systems. To learn any potential fail points or errors. How or why might the instrument give you bad data? What could you do about it?

So when those instruments are transtioned from mechanical devices to data computers, the fundamental knowledge of how those instruments were doing their respectively similar job went down.

Back to my sweaty bike trainer on the back deck, I knew something wasn’t right. I suspected my power meter, but my understanding of the decice was similar to that of the new air data computer. I push on the pedals, and pretty colors and numbers show up on the screen.

Why was I getting bad data? Was it bad data? How does the tool even work? Is it something I can fix? Am I just being a wimp? (The power data being shown was tragically low compared to what i was expecting/used to seeing)

Taking all the jerseys and bumping up the FTP numbers

These were all the questions going throughy my head. I decided to phone a friend and found that my pedals just needed a simple recalibration.

By recalibrating the pedals to a new zero set point, they immediately started showing the correct (and much more reassuring for my delicate ego) power numbers.

But I still didn’t really understand what I was measuring, or more accurately, how I was measuring it.

God bless the internet. What a time to be alive.

A power meter, measures torque using an electricity sensitive strain gauge. Basically, an electrical mesh is placed inside of whatever surface or tool is being strained. A small computer measures the electrical resiatance in the mesh. When torque (twisting force) is put on the surface or tool, the electrical mesh feels some of that force and the electrical resistance changes. The computer measures those changes and then transmits them to another device for display.

I had a basic understanding of pedal harder more power. Push on the power meter and pretty colorful numbers show up on my bike computer. Only the numbers were less pretty and more disheartening.

Even the idea of recalibrating, while it made sense, left me with an unfinished feeling. That went away once I researched how the power meter worked.

I think that’s an important part of the recalibration process that gets overlooked. Something is broken, or something isn’t working right. We recalibrate, and the issue is resolved, but we don’t know enough about why it was giving us bad data in the first place.

Without that knowledge, without that insight into the why and the how, we are left with input->computer->pretty color display. When things break down, that becomes painfully insufficient.

I try to remind myself of this silly lesson whenever I need to recalibrate. We all need a reset sometimes. Underatanding the why and the how, and getting back to baseline can help on the path to serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

What could go wrong

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I admittedly got away from writing over the summer, and it is well past time to rectify that.

I used to fly quite a bit with a captain who would always end his briefing by saying, “What could possibly go wrong?”

It was said jokingly, of course, but with an all to telling note of seriousness. There are always things that don’t go to plan, especially when flying airplanes.

There are just too many balls in the air. Too many moving parts. Logistics that can seem insurmountable. And yet, flight after flight, day after day, we find a way to make it work.

We thin1k about and brief the things we think may go wrong, and how we plan to react. We train for processes and procedures for responding to unexpected problems. We maintain an awareness of where we are and where we want to go.

The question, though, is ever present. Nagging, like a fold in the sock under your foot. Just enough to remind you with a slight discomfort every step. “What could possibly go wrong”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but not as it relates to aviation. That nagging feeling has been with me my entire adult life. I’ve been thinking about the question with my upcoming bike race.

I have spent more than my fair share of time on a bike over the past decade of competing in triathalon, but over the last few years, most of that has been on an indoor trainer.

The indoor trainer is safer and more efficient. It is far more versitle than what I would have access to in my local area in terms of terrain. It allows for precision training without concern for traffic, weather, time of day, and road condition. It solves a lot of potential problems.

I’ve signed up and have been training for the 6 Gap Century ride. The race runs through the north Georgia mountains covering 103 miles with more than 10’000 feet of climbing. Needless to say it will be a long day.

Over the summer, I was able to scout out the course with some friends. We rode about half the course, including two of the biggest climbs.

Leading up to the ride, I had been simulating lots of climbing on my smart trainer, but descending down steep and winding mountain roads, would be another thing entirely.

Six gap scout ride with a special mountain top surprise

What could possibly go wrong?

The scenic highways in north Georgia are beautiful. Winding roads cut into the majestic mountainsides with spectacular vistas. They also feature very little shoulder, impatient drivers, and a small piece of fabricated metal between the edge of the pavement and a very long fall.

I dont think nervous is the right word. I would get nervous as a kid before riding my bike down a big hill. Knowing that soon, the exhileration would push that feeling aside even if there was a chance I could get hurt.

The calculus has changed a bit from those days. It is still just a hill (mountain) and a bike. But I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t recover the way I once did. I have a family to support, bills to pay.

So, without having ridden my bike not on a stationary trainer in more than a year, and on flat ground in FL at that, I set off with my friends for this mountain adventure.

What could possibly go wrong?

Despite some challenging weather and road conditions, nothing went wrong. We all had a great and very memorable day.

But that nagging feeling was still there. All it takes is one mistake. One unforseen problem. You hope that if something happens, it will only be a minor consequence. That isn’t always in your control.

I have continued my training and preparation throughout the summer, rediscovering my love of riding outside. Especially with the new challenging terrain.

I took advantage of some opportunities to train while on long layovers. With those incredible opportunities came added concern. Not just my health, and my family, but now this is an activity with inherent risk while I have an obligation at work.

What could go possibly go wrong?

I had dreams about it. Not nightmares per se, but the thought of crashing my bike while going down a steep hill is something my subconscious likes to remind me of.

So, it was a pleasant surprise, and a welcome change when my thinking shifted.

Flying down highway 50 at 40 miles per hour, with nothing but open road, cresting mountains, and the clear blue waters of lake Tahoe filling up my view, I had to remember to breathe.

In fairness, I frequently have to remember to breathe when descending. My senses are so enhanced and focused knowing that the stakes are raised. But the truly awesome natural beauty took my breath away.

I remember thinking to myself that I needed to snap out of it. To focus on the road. To avoid any myriad of potential mistakes that could prove catastrophic.

And I did snap out of it. But I also started thinking, I know what could go wrong. I’ve thought about it, dreamt about it, worried about it. But what could go right?

That is a much more powerful question. Even a harder one to answer, I think. We are wired to look out for threats. It is a survival mechanism. It takes a freeing of those powerfully ingrained survival instincts to think about what could go right.

There will still be nervous energy and hightened awareness as I approach each mountain crest, knowing the gravity of the potential consequences that lie ahead (figuratively and literally).

But more and more I find myself thinking, what could go right? It is a powerful shift. It just took a little push down a hill to get there.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Rules

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I’m working my way through the second book in the Wheel of Time series and wanted to share a quote that I found particularly appropriate for Father’s Day.

I was first introduced to the Wheel of Time when my wife and I watched it on Amazon Prime last summer.

After we put the boys to bed, we would wade through the magical world that Robert Jordan created one episode at a time.

A broken world, doomed to repeat itself, cycle after cycle as the “wheel” turns each age. The only inhabitants of this magical realm who seem able to exert any control over the fate the wheel has laid out for them are the Aes Sedai.

The Aes Sedai are a group of women able to channel the magic of the “one power” to do incredible things.

The Aes Sedai are split into factions (ajahs) denoted by their color. Each faction slightly different in their methodology, beliefs, and purpose.

Each Aes Sedai has a male guardian, a warder, assigned to her. They are bonded to each other till death. The relationships are complicated, and while they are reciprocal in many ways, the warders are subordinate.

In ages past, there were male Aes Sedai who could also wield the one power. Theirs was slightly different than that wielded by the women.

Opposite powers but complimentary, male and female, yin and yang. But at some point ages ago, the male side screwed it up and broke the world. Now, the women are left with the pieces, trying to hold it all together.

The Aes Sedai of the red ajah do not have male warders. Their mission is to root out men who may try to channel the one power.

One of my favorite layover runs in Roanoke

Any man who tries to wield the one power will cause chaos and destruction. Reaching out to the source of the one power will, in time, drive a man to madness.

The women of the red ajah find these men and “gentle” them. Cutting off their ability to touch the source so that they won’t cause any harm. The men still end up going mad.

Some Aes Sedai, particularly of the blue ajah, believe in a profecy of the dragon reborn. A man who will be able to channel the one power and will restore the world from it’s broken state and win the eternal battle against the dark one.

This was the back story given in the Amazon Prime show and tracks fairly well with the books.

Beautiful day for some miles on my Traverse city layover

The world created by Jordan and the characters that populate it are rich and enticing.

Both the books, and especially the show, have a significant feminine lean. Men break the world. Men cannot control the one power. Women are the saviors. “Gentling” bears a striking resemblance to castration. I was worried this would put me off, but i was pleasantly surprised.

The warders seem to be excellent male role models. The main characters who are male while still defering to the Aes Sedai, are anything but subordinate.

Lan, one of the warders, is training Rand, a simple sheep herder but also the dragon reborn, in swordsmanship. The scene has them practicing atop a castle tower, with the warder getting the best of the sheep herder and talking to him about the challenges that lie ahead of him.

“There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet. “

The scene came right at the end of the chapter, and it just hit me a special kind of way.

Maybe it was that I wasn’t expecting much in the way of masculine advice based on my experience thus far with the show and the first book.

Maybe it was the elegance and simplicity of the statement and the stoic and thoughtful nature of the character it was coming from.

Maybe it was the added irony from my time in Jui Jistu, where I face obstacles sitting on my butt or laying on my back.

Whatever it was, the scene, the quote, the moment created in the story, it felt significant. It resonated with me beyond just a story in a book.

The past few months have come with no shortage of challenges. I haven’t always risen to them in the way I would like. But I haven’t run from them either.

Some of my proudest moments, after the happy events of life and the triumphs and successes, have been some of my failures.

Not because of the failures themselves, but because of the way I was able to face the failure. To own it. To feel it. To grow out of it and through it.

Just like a triathlon, you put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Sitting down doesn’t get you any closer to the finish line, and there is no one coming to get you.

I wrote in this post about The Martian. You solve one problem, then the next, if you solve enough problems, you get to go home.

I think that is what Lan is trying to say. You don’t take whatever life throws at you lying down. Stay on your feet, nimble, agile, ready to adjust course. If nothing else, you go down swinging.

It’s easy to feel helpless. It’s easy to feel like you are steering into uncharted waters with strange currents. It’s easy to feel ineffective.

I hope that I can show my boys the alternative. Demonstrate for them Lan’s first rule of manhood. Cultivate in them, the attitude and ability to face the many challenges of life on their feet.

Find your footing, dig in your heels, put on a brave face for what may come. There is surely serenity in taking charge of your own destiny.

Lots of miles getting ready to ride in the mountains

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Mistakes

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. In the last few months, I’ve been reading more about investing (as well as watching old seasons of ‘billions’ on Prime video), and I wanted to share something that stuck out to me.

I came across this quote from Warren Buffet from his 2023 Berkshire Hathaway investor meeting. It reminded me of advice that my mom has been giving me for the last three decades.

“Thanks to the American tailwind and the power of compound interest, the arena in which we operate has been – and will be – rewarding if you make a couple of good decisions during a lifetime and avoid serious mistakes.”

From the investing standpoint, you want to maximize your upside potential, while also minimizing your downside risk. The problem is, those two things are often not possible simultaneously. Generally speaking, in order to have a large potential, the risk is inherently greater.

Making a mistake in that risk/reward equation, or in the way you evaluate an investment, will have monetary consequences. If you can learn to impartially evaluate those mistakes, to make sure they are small mistakes, not life changing ones, there are incredible lessons to be found.

If you can learn from those lessons and at the same time avoid the big mistakes, you are probably going to pretty well for yourself. In investing and in life.

Mistake in this context casts a very wide net. It can be moving your body incorrectly, and having a jui jitsu move not work. It can also be moving your body incorrectly, having a jui jitsu move not work while also tearing your knee apart. The tricky part about a lot of mistakes, is that it is hard to fully comprehend the potential outcomes before you are already committed.

Mistakes are an interesting subject. They are a critical part of the learning curve. Our brain needs to understand the wrong way to do something (the mistake) in order to properly wire in the correct process. Small mistakes create neuroplasticity and learning.

As long as those mistakes are not catastrophic, they are an important part of the process. (Doing the BJJ move wrong 5 times before getting it right the 6th, while avoiding that whole tearing your knee apart thing)

But what about mistakes of omission, or mistakes of substitution? What we’ve talked about so far is investing in the wrong company or moving our body in the wrong way. What about things we opt not to do, or things we should do that are replaced with so thing else?

We all know we should eat healthy and move more. Skipping your morning workout or walk and replacing it with idle scrolling would hardly be a “serious mistake” in the sense that Buffet or my mother cautioned about.

That kind of choice, (replacing healthy movement with idle screen time) certainly wouldn’t have the catastrophic effect of tearing apart your knee or drastically altering your family finances.

But, what happens when that small mistake becomes a habit. When momentum shifts from healthy choices to frivolous ones.

I’ll admit I’ve felt a bit stuck in this loop. Building momentum in healthy habits, only to falter back into less productive choices. What is the cost of these mistakes? Are there enough good choices and tailwind to stay ahead of the consequences?

The magic of compounding is dispassionate and directionless. It can work for you just as easily as it can work against you. How long before those small mistakes compound into a serious one?

Most small mistakes, especially in a first world country, are relatively harmless. They are also easily dismissed, and almost mindless. It is precisely these qualities that make them so dangerous. You ingest the poison without any immediate or significant consequence. By the time the dosage has built up it is too late.

As I write this on my phone, I know that the same device is a large source of my small mistakes. Rushing back for innocent seeming dopamine hits, while neglecting the things that truly matter.

Worse still, my limited ability to recognize this mistake. My occasional stumblings into a more mindful existence, leave me feeling ashamed and guilty rather than refreshed and relieved.

I know that this is a natural human tendency to focus on the negative over the positive. To be ashamed of the mistake rather than celebrate the recognition and correction of it. Again, a loop I am often stuck in.

But that’s the battle right. To identify those mistakes. To fight in order to shift the focus from the guilt to the mindful acceptance. To take advantage of the compounding and the tailwinds on good habits.

Avoid the big mistakes. Cut off the loop on the small ones. Establish habits that can take advantage of the magic of compounding. And, maybe find some serenity in the process.

Lots of elevation getting ready for 6gap

Thanks for joining me. Stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Results

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week is want to talk about results. Or, more specifically, a result oriented versus process oriented paradigm.

I recently competed in the IBJJF Pan championships. In the the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the gi, this is considered a grand slam event.

People travel from all over the world to compete and watch this tournament. It just so happens to take place right in my backyard. It also happens to take place during spring break time when I had time off work.

It seemed silly, given those factors, not to sign up and compete. Even though I knew I would be unable to train and prepare to the full extent I wanted to, I signed up for the competition with high expectations.

Having competed the previous year losing my first match 0-0 via a referee decision, I went into this tournament hoping to improve on my performance but also on my results. Two very distinct categories.

I wasn’t unhappy with my performance from last year, but the results were definitely a gut check. They led to a reassessment of my training and preparation.

This year I signed up for a smaller local competition a month before Pans. I wanted to get a more recent reminder of the competitive atmosphere in my memory than the previous loss at last year’s Pans. I wrote about that tournament here.

Through a freak accident to the wrestling coach at our gym, I ended up taking over teaching the class. This meant not only more reps and training, but also much more time thinking about the wrestling and takedown aspects of BJJ competition.

I also took over teaching the Gi class that I normally attended since that instructor had moved out of the country.

Again, this meant a lot more mental preparation and thinking about techniques, even if the amount of time spent physically training was less than I would have wanted it to be.

I felt good going in to Pans. Mentally strong. Physically strong. I had a solid three plus weeks of very clean eating and living in order to get down to the lightweight limit. A roughly 10 pound drop from my normal walking around weight.

I arrived to the convention center early so I could have a long, low, and slow warmup. Waking up the body and the mind, as much as working out the nervous energy, I jumped right out of my jump rope. After about an hour of watching matches and intermittantly jumping, the set screw gave way, and one of the rope ends flew right out of the handle. It was strangely self gratifying in my ability to outlast the equipment.

I made my way to the weigh in and the fighter holding pen. Mutch different from my wrestling days, weigh-ins are immediately prior to your match as opposed to first thing in the morning. The fighter pen is a small cattle herd of metal barricades, keeping in the nervous energy and testosterone, jittering bouncing and going over final preparations for the combat ahead.

I felt the anxiety of the impending competition. Those familiar butterflies in my stomach, even after all the years of grappling. If that feeling is no longer present, I will have to rethink further competition.

Like I have done before every wrestling or BJJ match I can remember, I started my final warmup with an our father prayer. I followed that with my own prayer to wrestle 6 minutes hard. 6 minutes strong. 6 minutes smart. 6 minutes safe. To have a performance that I can be proud of, and that my family can be proud of. To be gracious in victory or defeat. To keep myself and my competitors free from injury.

My name was called along with my opponent for the first match. We shook hands and hugged before walking to the mats.

I bounced and stretched at the mats edge, trying to clear my mind, creating a blank canvas for the match ahead.

I’ve written before about the special place that competitive athletic endeavors have for me. Like walking through a portal, I feel transported. Stepping onto the mat, for those five minutes, (high-school wrestling matches are six and my prayer has not been updated, better to err on the long side anyway) everything else fades away. The canvas is blank to create a piece of art and tell a story, together with my opponent, without any of our other baggage.

We stood wrestling for the first two minutes or so of the match. I felt I had the upper hand with takedowns and pressed my advantage. After a few near takedowns, I saw my opponent gasp for a deep breath and change his stance and posture. I knew my next shot would be successful.

After scoring the takedown, I followed my game plan and won the match on top, threatening to pass his guard and attack his left arm. The match went about as well as I could have hoped for and I advanced to the quarter finals.

I had plenty of time to catch my breath, stretch, and recover before being called up for my next match. Again, I shook hands and hugged my opponent before walking from the pen to the mats.

Already in a better spot than I was the previous year, I knew winning this match would see me on the podium. That was the goal I had set for this competition, make the podium.

The match started similar to the first. We wrestled standing for a minute or so were I felt I had an advantage. My opponent recognized this and pulled guard.

We ended up in his 50/50 guard, a leg entanglement where our respective right legs are interlaced, knees to knee with him laying on his back and me standing.

It is a difficult position to get out of, and comes with the risk of an easy transition from bottom to top. That would give my opponent 2 points for a sweep and in all likelihood a deficit that would be hard to overcome.

I pressed forward, testing the flexibility of his hip and the strength of his lock on the other leg. With enough pressure I could break the lock and potentially attack the knee. I had to be careful to keep my balance, falling backward even if i stayed on top could give my opponent and advantage point that would be hard to overcome.

At one point, I was able to break the lock of his legs and press forward. He recovered, but i felt i was making progress. Before I knew it, the match was over.

0-0 no advantage points given. Under the circumstances, the match would be decided by the referee. My opponent won the referee’s decision.

To say I was disappointed by the results would be an understatement. It is hard to walk away with a loss, without feeling like you were beaten. It is a confusing mental space.

In contrast, I was happy with my performance. I was aggressive. I didn’t make any tactical or strategic mistakes. Every position I found myself in, I had a clear mental path forward. I was gracious in victory and in defeat.

I’m still not sure how to process the outcome. It isn’t a win, but it doesn’t feel like a loss either. Complaining isn’t helpful, nor is beating myself up or second guessing my performance. There are always areas to improve upon, but there was no glaring hole in my game that was exposed by those two matches.

I’m trying instead to shift focus away from the result, and back to the process. I have much more control over the latter than the former.

Focusing on the process is something I can change. I can take the frustration over the results and direct it somewhere positive. There are levers that can be pulled and dials that can be turned. The results, are what they are, and revisiting them is unproductive.

A cold damp run on a Toronto layover. The hairdryer I used to dry out my shoes afterward turned one of the insoles into a shrinky-dink

I can continue to work on my wrestling in the gi, not giving my opponents the chance to pull guard, or forcing them to do so from a place of weakness.

I can continue to develop a style that is aggressive and attacking. I can work to improve positions where I find myself stuck. I can find additional time to train, and prioritize bjj as i approach competitions in the future.

I’m disappointed with the results, but I’m content with my preparation and performance. Resetting my focus back to the process has brought some much needed serenity in the face of uncertainty over those results.

Some higher intintervals and some weight management rides

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Memory

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was recently listening to an episode of the human performance outliers podcast (HPO) with arctic explorer, Akshay Nanavati. He said shared some powerful advice that I wanted to explore and pass along to you.

Akshay has already tackled some incredible feats in his exploration career, and is getting ready for his biggest one yet. Before he was an endursnce athlete and an explorer Akshay served as a marine in Iraq.

After leaving the service he found ultra running and transitioned form their into arctic exploration type endurance challenges.

Clearly, this man knows a thing or two about going to the pain cave. About how to be comfortable there, and how to come out without the physical, mental, or emotional scaring that so often accompanies those visits.

He was speaking with host Zach Bitter about his preparations for the first attempt at a solo crossing of Antarctica without a kite.

He is hoping to complete the project in 110 days. That is longer than the support staff for Antarctica explorations normally stays there. The exploration “season” is normally 90 ish days.

So Ashkay will carry everything he needs to survive alone in Antarctica, and drag it on a sled across the continent by himself for almost four months.

Four months or solitude, and empty white nothingness. Accompanied by dragging a 400lb sled 15ish miles a day before making camp in a hellish climate and landscape.

Ashkay talked about how he is preparing for this epic adventure, both physically and mentally. One of the things he talked about was deliberate marking and repressing of memories.

Memories are tricky things. Sometimes we remember what we want to. So.etimes we remember only the most vivid or explosion or emotional part of a much fuller experience.

Ashkay talked about deliberately branding memories. Making a point to bookmark events as they were happening so that he could lean on them at a later date.

He went on to describe a particularly challenging night of arctic camping. How he was not enjoying himself, feeling the self doubt creeping in, but decided instead, to mark the memory as one he could look back on with a positive mindset on his upcoming expedition.

It reminded me of cleaning airplanes…

Before I started flying private planes I was working as a flight instructor and got a job at a charter company cleaning and fueling airplanes, and generally helping out with whatever else I could. This was in the hopes that at some point I would be able to fly the same airplanes I was polishing and vacuuming.

Right around the same time, (late 2000’s), Darius Rucker, formerly of Hootie and the blowfish, was blowing up in a solo country singer spot. His number one song that year was “history in the making”

“This could be, one of those memories, we want to hold on to, and cling to, the one we can’t forget”

Keeping the cycling mileage up in the middle of the BJJ season

The song would be all over the radio that played in the hangar while I was working. Often late at night after all the flights had returned for the day. His deep southern drawl would draw you in, but with just enough rough edges to make you feel like he could be sweeping the hanger floor and dripping sweat while cleaning an airplane bathroom with you.

I remember those night, all alone in the hangar, drenched in sweat with planes left to clean, thinking, this is a memory I will look back on. This isn’t fun in and of itself, but it is important. It is helping me to get where I want to go, and do the things I ultimately want to do.

Like Ashkay and Darius so eloquently say, those memories, even of an insignificant or less than pleasant event, can be bookmarked and returned to as a source of pleasure, pride, and motivation.

It is hard enough to just be present. It is even harder to be present in a difficult moment. Harder still to earmark that moment as something to look back on fondly.

Getting in some intervals work before my trips

Difficulty is not without its rewards. There is serenity to be found in the challenge. What history are you making? Will you be present to bookmark it appropriately and revist it?

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Change

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to talk about change, how we are the most adaptable creatures on the planet, and at the same time, are incredibly resistant to change.

It has been longer than I like since my last post, but as you know, life has a a tendency to get in the way.

El Duderino had his second cataract removal surgery this month, which saw me home with him helping him recover. By helping him recover, I mean making sure he gets all the requisite eye drops in. Sometimes, that done with a gentle hand and a gentle word. Other times, it was my best grappling skills to stabilize bodied in a pacifying manner.

Last time bouncing before surgery and healing time

The surgery went well, and El Duderino is on his way to a bright new future, quite literally. In the days immediately after the surgery though, he refused to open his eyes. Both the recently operated on eye, as well as the already recovered eye.

The first day after surgery is crucial for examination, I’m told. So much so, that the eye Dr asked about putting him under anesthesia a second time if she was unable to examine the eye.

It took every ounce of physical and emotional strength I had to hold him down the day after surgery. Squirming and screaming in the eye doctor’s chair, he was adamant on not opening his eyes.

Outside of normal human functions, breathing, moving, talking, the one activity I have spent more of my life doing than anything else, is forcibly controlling bodies. I felt uniquely qualified for this task, in spite of the emotional toll it took on me.

It didn’t occur to me that this change would be so jarring for him. I don’t know what his vision was before. I don’t really know what it is now. We have metrics that we can assign to vision, and those metrics have improved. But his lived experience, even as a very articulate six year old, is very hard to discern.

Going from a cloudy field of vision, to a clear field of vision, even with a brief hiatus in recovery seemed like it should be a good change. One to be welcomed and embraced. Instead, he retreated. He stayed in a self imposed darkness for almost three full days.

We were able to pry his eye open safely the day after surgery. Every other attempt to get him to open his eyes over the next three days was unsuccessful. Look, your favorite show is on TV, “no thanks”. Can you help me pick out some cookies to share with our friends? “Maybe you can just tell me about them”.

I’m not sure what he was thinking or feeling. The most I was able to get out of him was, “it feels funny when I open it”

And still, after the third day, his eyes opened, like it had never happened. He adapted to his new reality. How can we as a species be both so stubborn and so adaptable?

I’ve been doing a lot more grappling in the past few months as I transition out of triathlon season. I’ve also tried to train at different gyms across the country as I travel, preparing for an upcoming competition.

I was recently training at a 10th planet gym, known for their unorthodox no gi style, especially their guard. The head instructor commented that I had one of the best “wrestler guards” he had seen in a while.

Wrestlers are programmed from day one not to go to their back. I heard Daniel Cormier (UFC double champ and Olympic wrestler) recently say he can’t sleep on his back without having nightmares, a sentiment I had during my high-school wrestling days as well.

Cycling miles fell off a bit as BJJ season picks up.

As I have transitioned to BJJ over the last decade, I have made a concerted effort to play guard and feel comfortable off my back. At this point, most of my training time is spent there, fighting from my back, or at least the bottom position.

I have adapted extremely well to the new rule set and strategy of Jiu Jitsu. And yet, at this latest competition, I found myself stubbornly insisting on wrestling, despite almost none of my training and preparation for this competition, including wrestling of any sort.

Like a small child with my eyes closed, I clung to what was familiar, shaying away from a change that had already happened. A change that has made me better.

It is difficult in the heat of the moment to embrace the new game plan and not revert to the comfort of old patterns. I’ve done a great job making this change in the gym, but have yet to see that transition fully materialize in competition.

Adaptable and stubborn. Embracing change, and simultaneously rejecting it. Hiding from it. Eyes closed curled up under the blanket.

As the saying goes, the only constant, is change. We are incredibly adaptable creatures, and there is serenity to be found in embracing that change.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Heart

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog.

Sometimes, you find words that just hit you the right way. Maybe a song, maybe a line from a book or a movie.

The words can be incredibly powerful in their own right. Or, it can be a confluence of events, mood, vibe, context, that enhance the power of the message.

Life size Super Mario Bros made of chocolate

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past two days. What is it that makes the same words, the same message, so powerful?

It isn’t some magic spell, that when uttered, affects everyone uniformly. But there is something there. A motivational quote or a song that can give you an extra push, an extra gear.

I had just finished my morning swim in the pool on the twenty fourth floor of my hotel. Swimming indoors is already something of a strange feeling. The thick fog blanketing the streets of Houston and obscuring most of the floor to ceiling pool deck windows made it feel alien.

I still had my goggles lightly perched above my brow, and my waterproof swim headphones in, when I climbed into the hot tub. I fiddled with the strap on the back of my head so I could lay my neck into the crook in the corner of the hot tub paver stone floor.

I instantly relaxed as I sprawled out. My arms and shoulders floating in the steamy water, welcoming stillness after exertion.

My eyes closed as the song started to wash over me. “Somewhere in middle America. When you get to the heart of the matter, it’s the heart that matters more”

I hadn’t heard the counting crows song in quite a while. The music downloaded onto my waterproof swim music player is something of a time capsule. Closed and sealed somewhere after the fall of Napster, but before the rise of Spotify.

The next day, on my long layover in Albany, it was time to revisit my slightly stupid holiday tradition. For the 12th year in a row, it was time for the Christmas half marathon.

I queued up the live album to start my treadmill run in the dingy hotel fitness center, knowing I would need more than a little heart to get me through.

This tradition has come to mean a lot of things to me. One year it was a time to grieve after a loved one had passed. Another year, it was an ill advised death march, when I knew I was sick, and pushed on anyway. It has been a welcome adventure in new towns, and it has been a stale and stagnant trot on hotel treadmills.

Endurance sport, especially this particular event, has a lot to offer in the form of self exploration. What I kept coming back to this year is that emotions are not linear and rarely predictable.

I think it was Yogi Berra, who said predictions are hard especially about the future. Here is one prediction that isn’t so hard. Almost every endurance event will have some sort of low point, some place of self doubt or questioning.

Made it home to see these smiling faces on Christmas

You start to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” No one else is here, no one really cares, you can stop the treadmill now and get on with your day.

Humans tend to forecast current conditions out into the future, even when there isn’t great evidence to support that trend line. Look at the housing crisis of 2008 and the inflation that has plagued the past few years. We think things will continue on just the way they are, in spite of changing conditions, until we are smacked in the face with change.

It is especially easy to get into this mental space with some miles behind you and some fatigue in your legs. You start to think, “if I feel this bad after (however man) miles, how am I going to make it the rest of the way?”

If running got me feeling this way and thinking this way, how is more running possibly going to make me feel better?

And yet somehow, like those magic words, or songs, that have the power to change our state of mind, pushing through can make you feel better.

I was struggling around the hour mark at just under 8 miles in. I slowed my pace to a brisk walk and took the opportunity to talk to my wife and kids who had called to check in. Finishing was never in doubt, but the shape those last 5 or so miles would take was still to be determined.

Making the best of an unscheduled LAX layover

Before our quick conversation had even ended, I found myself pushing the pace wheel on the treadmill back up.

I worked my way back towards my target pace while still continuing our quick Christmas conversation.

It is a strange thing, that an endurance event isnt linear. That there will be highs and lows, ups and downs, while covering the miles. But thats a lot like life. Its not predictable. It’s not linear. It depends a lot on the mindset you are willing to approach it with.

Some climbing miles and sprint win on my new bike, the still be named newest lady of the house

And, when you get to the heart of the matter, it’s the heart that matter more.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe, and stay sweaty my friends.