As a word document

The theme of my early morning today was prep work.  Up at 5:50 with the goal of cleaning last night's dirty dishes, prepping and making the french press coffee, bagging my snacks and lunch for the day, cutting the fruits and vegetables and loading them in the blender for my latest smoothie concoction, prepping baby girl's bottle, showering, shaving my balls, being ready to cuddle, change and feed baby girl when she woke, blending the smoothie, out the door and to work on time for once.  Doesn't seem like much but for me that's quite a challenge.  Anyways, right around 6:07 when I was midway through the massive pile of dirty pots, this scene I haven't watched in years popped into my head, right at the exact moment where he says "As a word document."  The rythm of the conversation up to that point, the tone, the look on his face...I just put those 5 seconds on a continuous loop and it kept getting funnier every time.  That's just the best.  6am, dark out side, in the kitchen in my boxers doing dishes and giggling uncontrollably.  Socializing with other humans is so overrated. 

Forgot to manscape and got to work 6 minutes late.  Nobody's perfect. 

This is how I do it

There's an activity called yogging.  I used to do it regularly.  Not so much anymore.  I'm not sure exactly how little, because I don't track these things, but it's minimal.   Also, in a feeble attempt to be a considerate boyfriend, I recently co-participated in a 10 day cleanse that involved a very restrictive diet.  This resulted in 13.5lbs of weight loss in the first 7 days, bottoming out at 162.5lbs and staying there for the remainder of the cleanse.  I didn't really want to lose weight, and was aware that if I actually knew the proportions of Fat vs Water vs Muscle loss that made up those 13.5lbs I would probably be horrified at what I was doing to myself.  I felt completely sapped of energy, and my few attempts at yogging felt like I was starting at around mile 33 from the second I stepped out the door.  Yet it was still enthralling to see the numbers dip day after day, thinking of the last time I was at that weight (16yrs old), and realizing that I was exactly 40lbs lighter than the first time I stepped on that same scale when I first moved to California 7+ years ago.  I knew there would be some disappointment in watching the numbers rise after the cleanse was over, and I'd think about what the scale would say each time I considered eating something that tasted good.  I didn't like the mindset that was developing, so the weekend after it ended, I ate a bunch of burgers and pizza, drank beer, and resolved to stop looking at the scale cold turkey.  Fuck it.  But before fully committing to my ascension back to my starting weight, only with more fat and less muscle, I signed up for Carlsbad.  Which brings me to my upcoming OTCYs. 

There are 2 OTCYs on my schedule.  First, the Carlsbad 5000 OTCY on April 1.  I decided to completely ignore the lack of speed work or volume in my training, my increasingly poor performances in my last 5 OTCYs, the fact that I generally feel like ass most of the time, and instead postulate that my newfound temporary 162.5lb frame will be able to fly in spite of it all.  Following Cbad, on the last weekend of June I have the STCC (Squaw-to-California-Club) 101.  This OTCY requires co-participation and completion of the less prestigious Western State Endurance Yog, followed by a 1 mile yog to the legendary Auburn dive bar California Club and consumption of at least one beer prior to last call.  Additionally, in STCC 101 official timing results, one hour will be deducted for each shot of tequila slurped out of the bellybutton of the Drew Barrymore look-alike bartender.  Barrymore's agreement to participate is unconfirmed but expected. 

So I got to thinking about these OTCYs.  I'm obviously completely unprepared and they won't go well.  Furthermore, this is exactly my routine.  I looked through my athlinks results the other day from the beginning.  Counting the OTCYs that are missing, I'm over 100 for my lifetime.  I'll give myself a pass on the first 20 or so.  I got my money's worth.  Yogging was new, I knew nothing about training, the learning curve was steep, the possibilities were wide open every time out, and it was exciting just to be able to yog several miles in a row at a pace that would have been an above average mile time in 5th grade gym class.  But around 2007 I decided that I'd try to learn something about training and actually make a point of improving.  Looking through each of the results, with the exception of perhaps 5 races in 5 years, it's all the same.  Mediocre results that were inevitable due to poor preparation.  So what keeps me coming back?  I can't help myself.  At some point, no matter how brief, I get an image of success and satisfaction with my performance into my head (realistic success relative to my ability level, I don't think I'm going to win or anything), and before I know it, I've clicked the mouse a few times and I'm signed up for another one.  I've never actually felt this theoretical sense of accomplishment after any OTCY, even the very few where I've actually prepared and performed well compared to my expectations, but I continue to believe it will happen some day.  This summer at Headlands 50 there was an awesomely low key finish line.  They had marked out a line in chalk in the mostly empty Rodeo Beach parking lot, and as I shuffled across the finish, the race organizer guy acknowledged me out of the corner of his eye without turning his head away from his laptop screen and said in a complete monotone "nice job."  I trudged over to a picnic table to enjoy some soup and conversation with the Suffer Seeker and the American Hero, and about 15 minutes later a young kid came across the line.  He was treated to the same uneventful finish line experience that I got, yet immediately upon crossing the line, he raised both clenched fists over his head and let loose with two of the most invigorated primal screams I've ever heard.  The specatcle was kind of comical, but at the same time I'm deeply envious of what that young men felt that day.  I continue waiting for it.  And on the other side of it, I have a very special place in my heart for all the spectacular blowup failures that I've piled up over the years.  My 2:55 2nd half of the Marine Corps Marathon, my multiple 2hr + run splits in 70.3s, my loopy death march in sideways freezing rain on Pikes Peak.   I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.  So when you think about it, aside from the waste of my time and money, and the insanity of repeating this process over and over, there's really no down side.   

Random Optimism

A funny thing happened last week as I was in a steady groove of being a total miserable SOB.  I decided to give that tennis league another shot.  Some guy sent out an e-mail looking for a match and I responded.  I'm not really sure why I did that.  I wasn't looking forward to it.  I haven't missed not playing.  In fact, I expected to play horrible, lose, and feel disgusting about the whole process.  If anything, I probably just figured I should practice forcing myself to do stuff I'm not excited about.  That stuff makes up the meat of life anyway right? 

So there I was on the court and everything is going to plan.  I'm stumbling around like a drunk and am quickly down 3-0 to my opponent, a 40ish Asian junkballer guy.  This guy was much, much better than the clown I accidentally played last time.  In fact, in many ways he was downright crafty.  Yet, as I was going through the motions, it was impossible not to think about my feeble serve and all the easy shots I was missing and compare it to the way the 17 year old version of myself would have dispatched this guy.  And that's when it happened.  These thoughts had the opposite effect of what I'd expect.  They didn't make me want to throw a tantrum, walk off the court and never play again, or just wallow in self pity.  I'd calmly play a horrible point, shank a sitter overheard, remember about how I never, ever would have missed that back in the day, and think to myself, "I'll get back to that."  It wasn't an intentional thing.  It's just the way I felt.  I became emotionally detached from the pathetic version of me that was playing out there and found optimism and confidence that I'd eventually recreate a version of myself that would make this game fun again.  Of course, as those feelings built, I was able to have fun in the moment.  I wish it could have made me a better player on that day, but nothing could save that.  It probably did make me a little bit more scrappy out there.  I was pretty amped up afterwards and had trouble sleeping that night, not because I was excited about coming back to win a long match, but because I felt total confidence that I'll be good at this game again at some point, and that will be fun.  Random optimism.  I did nothing to create it and nothing to deserve it.  It just came out and grabbed me.  Fun feeling. 

Oh, and my body was physically wrecked afterwards.  Forearms, Rotator cuff, deltoids, traps, obliques, hip flexors, calves, my NECK...all just hilariously sore.  It made me smirk to think about the exact inverse being true 14 years ago, when I could play twice as long and feel no soreness the next day, but randomly signing up for my first athlinks result, a 10k OTCY which I completed in 49 and change, left me sore for a week. 

This blog is like life!

It started randomly with no real purpose, I never work at it so it never amounts to shit, and when it's gone no one will ever remember it.

A couple years ago I paced my friend Geronimo at Western States.  It was awesome.  He was completely unphased by the physical challenge of the race.  Total confidence.  Total calm.  We went from outside the top 100 at Bath Rd to cracking the top 50 at the finish line, comfortably shuffling past all kinds of physical and mental carnage along the way.  Geronimo has a blog that he very rarely contributes to, but in one of his last posts he equated ultrayogging to life, and made a number of apt analogies.  Geronimo's outstanding performance with such a ho hum attitude has been something of a running joke between Suffer Seeker and I, as SS last year and this year I take our own stabs at Western States.  "Yeah, don't worry about training for a 100 miler, it's just like life, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, sometimes supported, sometimes on your own, longer the better, bla bla bla..." 

Anyways, surfing through the blogosphere a couple weeks ago I found another post from a very accomplished ultrayogger where she equated trail races to life, also with several apt analogies.  It suddenly hit me  that although these analogies always seems insightful, life is probably the most non-descript word out there.  It encompasses everything.  In fact, there's not a single object, concept, event or whatever that cannot be accurately compared to life.  It's a fun game!  Pull anything out of your ass, come up with the 3 ways in which it's like life.  This post started with example 1A.  Now I need to come up with some rules and make a drinking game out of it.  I should probably copyright it though before some shithead comes along and makes millions off it. 

Heck Yeah!

A few weeks ago I drove to Vegas in order to loan some money to some of their struggling casinos.  On the drive out, an epiphany struck that among the stash of old cd's that still reside in the center console of my motorcar was Roxette's Greatest Hits!!  Alas, despite a frantic search by girlfriend and I, the desired cd was nowhere to be found.  Inferior music provided the soundtrack to the rest of our drive there and back.  Fast forward to last night.  Roxette was being discussed over happy hour conversation, and Dr E piped up that he had been rocking out to my cd for some time and that it was probably high time that he returned it.  Booyah!!  Fading Like a Flower is one hell of a song.  That is all. 

Social Yogging

Tonight is group ninja yog night.  Maybe people will show up, and maybe not.  I do hope some people show.  It was a month or two ago that I was looking forward to a Thursday night ninja yog, and after most people had already cancelled, I began to wonder if I should even yog if no one else was coming.  At that moment it hit me.  Whoa.  Who am I and how did I get here? 

For a stretch of about 7 years starting in college, yogging was an on again, off again, holy-shit-my-pants-don't-fit-I-gotta-do-something-about-that activity that would stay for a few months then go for who knows how long.  But finally, about 6 years ago, mostly because San Diego weather is so accomodating, it latched on as a continuous, sustainable hobby.   For the first couple years, almost all of my yogging was solo, and through all that solo yogging I began to understand and embrace what a genuine introvert I am.  People aware of my yogging would often ask how I dealt with the boredom, if I had headphones or such.  Boredom?  Monotony?  What?  Moving along the coast alone with my thoughts was the most stimulating part of my day.  Internal discussions about politics, social philosophy, poker strategy, my disorted personal values and failed relationships and any number of other things would flood my mind, never leaving a second to agonize over the repetitive nature of the activity.  Track workouts were the only occasion for social yogging, and I enjoyed that.  But, when people would invite me on a group yog, I'd pretend that was a good idea, because I didn't want to seem like some kind of anti-social freak, but would intentionally never follow up on it and hope they wouldn't either.  Forced social interaction during an activity that I cherished for myself?  Fuck that!

So how did I get to the point where I'll consider not yogging unless I have company?  I dunno.  These fuckers I yog with crept up on me.  At some point, when yogging 6 days a week, I didn't mind adding 1 additional group yog per week.  As my overt resistance to social yogging was wearing off, along came the ninja yog.  It started by inviting the quickly improving Dr E along for Thursday evening runs, thinking he could benefit by being pushed just a little bit beyond his comfort zone.  That went well.  CBB started joining sometimes on her always trashed bike legs and that was awesome.  But really the additions of the Suffer Seeker and Shoulder Toucher as regulars took it to a new level.  The Suffer Seeker brought his physical invincibility, his incredibly pure passion for the yog, the ability to breathe 200x a minute while yogging in total comfort, and the tendency to drop the hammer and establish dominance just at the moment you most wanted to take it easy.  The Shoulder Toucher brought his utterly inimitable personality, the penchant to drop off near the end and limp it in with an excuse always ready in hand, a passion for surveying the female talent, and of course, touching shoulders.  Both of them invariably refused to look at the route for the run that I'd e-mail out the morning before, and as the days turned to night earlier, this would often lead to us bumping into and stumbling over eachother when it came time to make a turn or road crossing.  The yogs were challenging, unpredictable, and just kind of goofy.  It was a great dynamic. 

From there on, group yogs became more and more of the norm, not because I expected that dynamic with every person or every group I yogged with, but because I associated that positive experience with social yogging as opposed to seeing it as an unwanted intrusion on my precious internal monologues.  The outlets for my introverted needs got slowly pushed into other arenas.  I remember thinking, after a weekend full of idiocy in the canyons and bars in 2010 with the Suffer Seeker and the American Hero, at a time where I thought my yogging improvements had flatlined forever, that that experience is exactly why I wanted to continue my yogging.  Challenging.  Unpredictable.  Goofy.  If something like that was happening, I needed to be in shape enough to show up.  It didn't occur to me at the time what a departure that was from the basis of my yogging hobby a few years earlier. 

It was really an unremarkable transition, but fun to retrace the steps. 

I have a great idea!!

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