Transcendence

It's time to dust off the old blog. Whenever I'm posting regularly on this blog, it helps me to transform and become a better version of myself. In 2008 I left a failed life behind and became the person I will be for the rest of my life by racing my ass off. In 2010 I stumbled, and had to work out the bugs and reinvented myself again. When I stop writing, I seem to lose myself. Blogging has changed since I started in 2007, and I'm going to attempt to change with it. Longwinded posts lose readers, and if it doesn't fit into 140 characters and a pithy photo, then it's not worth reading or sharing. So I'm going to use some self-control to sweep the curser over large blocks of type and keep it short.

But not today.

My life is in order in a way that it never has been before. I live in a place that I love. I have a job that I'm good at and earns me enough money to support the lifestyle that I want to live. I'm in a great relationship with a woman that I adore who accepts me for who I am, and makes every day happier. I've achieved things that I'm proud of and don't feel like I have to prove anything anymore. And for the first time in 3 years I have the time and energy to turn back to goals. But what goals do you set when you don't really care about the results anymore?

Because of my 12- to 14-hour work days, I haven't been able to ride my bike much for over a year, but that's okay. When I hung my bike up, I was so burnt out on riding that I was ready to pardon myself for expectations that I didn't have the gumption to live up to anymore. The other day I rode my bike for the first time in forever, climbing up a one-hour hill, and realized that in my heyday, every ride was full of self-loathing. When I rode with self-acceptance I didn't know what to think about and kind of got bored. Bored and cold.

Instead I've been doing a lot of trail running. The Bay Area has to have the best trail running in the country, and lately my training plan is to find the green spaces on Google maps and explore a different one every day that I have time. I like trail running, because when you're climbing a 1000' hill or finding your footing at 8 min miles over flowing single-track you can't concentrate on a clock, just staying upright. Just getting up the hill is accomplishment enough, and who cares how long it takes and if I walk a bit along the way?

Yet I'm itching to test myself again. When I think back over the accomplishments that I'm most proud of, it's not the ones I trained for that I'm the most fond of. It's the ones where I came in with no expectations, and the results were secondary. I miss the days where I had a greater purpose, and adventures were just a way to keep it interesting. In 2008, I had no expectations and did whatever race sounded like it would create the best race report, and I had a blast. In 2009 I fancied myself competitive, and set success/fail goals; then I didn't meet any of them. In 2010, all I had to do was survive, and while there were extreme lows, loneliness and desperation also led to experiences that I never would have thought of otherwise. 2011 and 2012 were about balancing out my life, and my interests lay more in business than in sport.

Now I have the itch again. I'm itching, but I have no clear goals, and nothing to run away from. I don't know where to scratch.

What fires me up these days?

I have this friend Chris. When I met him in January 2012, he had started a 60-day challenge to work out every day and finish with a marathon. Every day Chris posted a picture from his workout on Facebook, and so part of the challenge became finding the best moment of the workout and sharing that moment with his friends. So hanging out with Chris feels like you're taking part in the most fun life ever.

Somewhere around day 65 of the 60-day challenge, Chris decided that he was going to run 60 marathons in 2012. People told him that he was going to burn out, he was going to get hurt, he was going to get slow. And around April, it seemed to be happening. Chris's knees were sore and his ankles were constantly giving him trouble. And just then, that was when things started to change. By May, Chris was getting faster with every marathon, and had decided to run not 1, but 2 100-mile races six weeks apart, and with a week of 7 consecutive marathons in between. (Did I mention he also had a few weeks that summer that he was shitting blood?). And it's not just the adventures that I see Chris having every day and the who's-who of ultrarunning that he tags in his Facebook photos that light a fire in the pit of my belly again. Something intrigues me about the "wall" of impossibility.

The human body has limits. I have found that from personal experience. But when there is a higher calling, those limits seem to fall away and there is something on the other side of overtraining. I've started thinking of it as "transcendence." Chris's story is not the only example I've found of it. On a smaller scale it's the "second wind" that we have all experienced in a tough workout. On a large scale, there are cases like Chris's. For example, in the book "Wild" Cheryl Strayed talks about how showing up on the Pacific Crest Trail she could barely walk under the weight of her 70+lb pack, but after a dark breaking-in period she reached a point where she could hike 20 miles per day for days at a time.

And then there is my newest obsession: The Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei in Japan. These monks run 30-40K a day (depending on the course) for 100 consecutive days. After the first 100 days, they get the option to quit or to continue. If they continue, they commit to 7 more years, at the end of which they achieve living sainthood. But if they quit, then they must kill themselves. The remaining 7 years are as follows (according to Wikipedia):

Years 2&3: 30K a day for 100 days

Years 4&5: 30K a day for 200 days

Year 6: 60K a day for 100 days

Year 7: 84K a day for 100 days, followed by 30K a day for 100 days

Year 8: 30K a day for 100 days

There's something to be said for doing something extraordinary every day NO MATTER WHAT. Tired? Keep going. Bored? Keep going. Sick? Keep going. Injured? Keep going. Wild boar attack? You guessed it: Keep going!

How much more would we be capable of if our lives really did depend on it? (This is true of most things, not just sport.) By the end of the journey, the monks describe a feeling of oneness with nature and being able to know the exact moment when the birds will start singing, and being able to smell the weather days ahead of time. All that metaphysical stuff aside, they describe a feeling of understanding how small a role they play in the universe and the insignificance of their personal suffering. And THAT is what I'm after: the feeling that no matter what mini drama I'm going through ('I don't WANT to wake up at 4:00 every day this week!' 'I don't FEEL like doing the dishes!' 'I'm too TIRED to do 10 sessions today!' 'I had a rough day, I deserve to eat this!'), that none of it matters, and it's those who have the strength to transcend their melodramas are those who achieve extraordinary lives. I guess that's called self-discipline.

The question is what balance of challenge, expectations, and rest is the right combination to create discipline and not burn-out? I have no idea.