frustration – Serenity Through Sweat

Lurking

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past weekend we had a 6ft gator lurking around our backyard. It got me thinking about what other threats are lurking.

I was especially ready to hit the heavy bag on Saturday. My wife had a hernia repair at the beginning of the week. That left me dealing with a rambunctious 3 year old El Duderino, and a nonpliant newly toddling Speedy, neither of which were ready for a week without mommy snuggles.

Our reptilian friend still lurking in the background

I first noticed the gator when I started to hang the heavy bag. The heavy bag seemed to be a magnet, drawing the gator to the water’s surface in the middle of the lake, and then swimming a beeline to the lake’s edge at the foot of my backyard.

With a gator at the water’s edge, I thought about my level of risk aversion, especially while wearing boxing gloves and hand wraps, and being focused on my workout rather than the reptile. The threat was lurking, was I comfortable with it, and was there anything I could do to be more prepared?

Ultimately, it was the thumping of the heavy bag waking up Speedy that ended my workout, not our neighborhood gator. I found myself with my sweat cut short and my serenity still lacking.

My blood still pumping from the first five rounds, my patience worn thin from a challenging week, and now an interrupted sweat session, blinded me to the threat that had been lurking closer and closer throughout the week, my temper.

My wife did not deserve my frustration, but she was the recipient. My boys did nothing out of the ordinary to precipitate my descent from mostly calm fatherhood, but nevertheless there is was.

The threat (my temper) had been building all week, lurking below the surface, and was finally exposed by the accumulation of minutiae.

An old boss and friend you used to tell me “this business is full of traps, what is the trap that is going to get you?”. He wasn’t referring to parenthood or marriage, but I think it applies equally to both.

This week the trap was one of my own making, born out of my inadequacies. To my wife and boys I am sorry. This week I fell short of serenity. But, as El Duderino often says, “maybe we could try again tomorrow to make the good choice”.

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

Back in the saddle with Layla and some longer running miles with the boys in daycare

Tradition

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. With Christmas behind us, I was thinking about all of the things I did growing up with my family, and the things I want to do with my family now. I started to wonder, what makes a tradition?

By definition, a tradition is “an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior”. Basically anything we pass on to the next generation is a tradition.

Upper thigh parade in the new shorts for the 2020 Christmas Half Marathon

The creation of, and passing on of tradition is a powerful responsibility. I think it is important to not only explore the actions and behaviors that we are passing down themselves, but also the why behind them.

This year marked the ninth annual Christmas half marathon. What started out as an excursion in masochism and mindfulness to combat being alone on Christmas, has turned into something more.

Speedy and El Duderino ready to get the festivities started.

In 2012, after signing up for Ironman Florida to take place the following November, I ran 14.5 miles on Christmas day. While keeping my training volume up after a recent half iron triathlon and a century ride, the run was really about being on call over Christmas and not being able to see family.

As a charter pilot and particularly one junior at the company, I spent the next several years running half marathons on or around Christmas, either in different cities or on hotel treadmills. Finding solace in street, and comfort on the concrete, I pounded the pavement to combat the rising tide of frustration, emotion, and solitude that went hand in hand with professions that work through holidays, especially away from home.

Milk, cookies, carrots, and our letter to Santa

This pattern continued from 2012-2016. Five years, five half marathons, mostly a steam pipe venting pent up holiday emotions while working away from home. Then in 2017, El Duderino was born at the beginning of December. In addition, my grandmother passed right around Christmas in 2017.

I was planning on being home for Christmas 2017 one way or the other. But that year I was home with my wife and newborn son. I was in-between jobs on a sick time paid paternity leave from my prior charter job, and getting ready to start at a new airline that would be my career dream job. With a three week old baby, a well accumulated sleep debt, and the emotional toll of a lost family member very fresh, the pavement was calling for a whole host of new reasons.

2 is 1, and 1 is none, has never been truer than when your toddler takes your roller after you’re done running 13 miles. Thank God for backups

What started as an escape from solitude and an outlet for frustration, had changed with my growing family. There is a clarity that endurance challenges offer in a way nothing else can quite match. Whatever stresses or anxieties you lay on the alter of repetitive cardiovascular motion can be alleviated with the proper offering.

Over the past few years, managing my holiday schedule has become as much about being home with my growing family, as it is about making time to log those miles. My physical, mental, and emotional state has been different each year, and what I needed to get out of the run has been a little different as well.

A bold strategy for the days preceding the half marathon.

One aspect of SerenityThroughSweat is the process of working through those demons out on the pavement, in search of being a better person. The tradition of a Christmas half marathon, has helped me in what can be, despite it’s many joys, a stressful season.

Long distance running during the holidays has become an established pattern of behavior for me. While I would love to see my boys pick up and ultimately pass on that tradition, the run is just the mechanism and the reasons behind it, serenity, clarity, solace, relief, are what is truly important. I hope that those are the thoughts, behaviors, and actions, that are passed down through generations. In the end, I hope that I can raise young men who are capable of finding their own path to serenity, and making their own traditions

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

Embrace and Harness

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. For the moment fitness has taken a backseat to fatherhood (in the context of blog topics, it has always been in that order in life in general). With the arrival of Speedy, and managing him and his big brother El Duderino, life has gotten a bit hectic. Throw in the added complications of COVID-19 and it is easy to be overwhelmed.

I’m reminded of a particularly tough loss in a wrestling tournament I had my senior year in high school. Crying in a mostly deserted high school hallway, not knowing what I did wrong or could have done better in a close semifinal match, my coach found me and gave me a quick pep talk that has stuck with me.

The bullet points were, “be pissed, be sad, be disappointed. Feel all of it. But after ten minutes, it’s time to get back to work and most of those are not productive emotions.”

I think it’s easy to find ourselves in many of those emotional states (anger, sadness, depression) with everything that has changed in recent weeks. Kids at home 24/7, uncertainty about jobs or finances, heck just plain old cabin fever is enough to test your mental and emotional fortitude.

And just like my coach told me all those years ago, I think it is important to embrace those feelings. Ignoring them or bottling them up isn’t healthy. Dig in to them, let them wash over you, but only for a short period of time. Whether it is once an hour, once a day, or once a week, check in on those feelings and realize that this isn’t normal and it’s ok to feel them.

But then it’s back to work…

This isn’t an easy process. Most rewarding things aren’t. This is a lesson I’ve brought with me for the last fifteen years and I’m still struggling with it.

With a toddler at home adjusting to a new family dynamic, a newborn on a two hour sleep cycle, and a wife who isn’t supposed to lift anything after just giving birth, (I still got the easier end of that deal, BY FAR,) my daily to do list is getting more difficult than finding toilet paper at the store. And with those chores piling up, and the sleep debt accumulating, comes the frustration, the self pity, and the jealousy.

Performing for the family is always the number one goal, especially when the shit hits the fan (read: job uncertainty, global pandemic, and newborn). It seems like I’m mostly running on caffeine, but harnessing those emotions helps get me over the hump. (At least until speedy starts sleeping more than a couple hours).

So in between the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry. After the potty training, the arts and crafts, and the outside play time. And when bath time and bedtime have come and gone, I can harness those unproductive emotions, remember that it is natural and normal to feel them, and keep soldiering on towards Serenity.

Thanks for joining me and stay sweaty my friends.

This week’s SerenityThroughSweat has been tapered back a bit with it being speedy’s first week alive and all. But I have been able to sneak in two Simple and Sinister kettlebell workouts, some push-ups and air squats, and a few rehab mobilizations from The Ready State.

This post was started this morning while El Duderino was playing in the sand, Speedy was in the basinet, and my wife was taking a much needed nap. It was finished while I took the first watch with Speedy and my wife gets as much sleep as she can before he wakes up hungry.