An Ode to Discomfort

Life does not provide a final finish line. There is no end to discomfort until the cessation of life itself. If a cool breeze braces your cheeks at the end of a competition, you should still anticipate the turbulent storm that is bound to follow.

I think most adults believe the act of growing up deserves them a lifetime of ease and painless sustenance. In the west particularly, adults tend to shun struggle, believing the rest of their years should be lived without pain. They “deserve” comfort, they seem to tell themselves. It’s somehow a reward for “struggling through youth.” So, they seek air conditioning, the drive-through, the chair, booze, television, gluttony, and phones. They adult bicycle collects dust if its owner fears the dirt outside. It is those who embrace the chaos outside who last the longest.

I try to avoid comfort as though it’s a disease I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I aim to thrive in chaos and live well in the maelstrom. Pain is a necessary part of living and the precursor to growth. Without pain there is no life.

How have I embraced pain lately?

Somehow I managed to bike ten miles home immediately after breaking my collarbone and hitting my head hard enough to not know what year it was.

I bike commuted 20 miles to work in sub-zero temperatures winter mornings over the past few years, while gusts of wind sometimes rocked me with sleet. I learned to change tires on the side of the road while my fingers numbed.

Tolerating pain helped me train for a marathon while my right arm was still broken and unable to swing naturally in stride.

I finished a long run after my face was stabbed by a tree branch (and drove myself to a nearby Urgent Care to have my face stitched afterwards). I laughed as the nurse stitched me up. I now embrace this scar, whereas many would be “distraught by the imperfection.”

It’s why my old teammates at the University of Texas called me “The Manimal.” They knew I can absorb higher loads of pain than most.

My tolerance for pain helped me learn to run after 36 years of just swimming and lifting, and it’s how I ran my first marathon at age 37. To get back in the pool and beat people my age at swim meets seemed too easy. I wanted more discomfort.

When a car hit me in 2021 and tore up my right foot, I shrugged it off and decided that I’d eventually return stronger than ever. I’d run faster than ever as a final revenge to that shitty driver.

I don’t believe a pain-free day will arrive, nor should it, and I try to embrace pain’s inevitable return. I can’t rest on my laurels.

Discomfort keeps me honest. It keeps me strong, alive, and fiery. It is the best friend I’ve ever had.

Range of Motion

With each passing day I find myself regaining a little more range of motion in my right arm. Recovering from a collarbone break is a long process that requires patience, but patience is not a skill I naturally have. I’d like to snap my fingers and poof, find myself magically at 100% health. Healing is not always measurable in days, however.

I heard an interesting metaphor for the process of aging: you are essentially stuck in quicksand, and at some point you will fully sink. The most you can ask for is a few tools to shovel the sand away temporarily. Some of these “tools” include diet, exercise, and sleep. Without them, you’ll sink faster.

“Just keep moving” tends to be my own mantra. Or as the bone break taught me, “Use it or lose it.” Four weeks in a sling cost me a great deal of mobility that will take awhile to regain.

To think that I was set back so far from just a month in a sling is eye opening. A life of inertia is surely crippling to one’s range of motion. I see it often in the office: the typical office employee could never dream of running one mile, nonetheless 26 miles. Heck, I’m not sure most can jog 400 meters comfortably. Can the typical employee even kick up his or her feet? It seems doubtful unless supplemented with some sort of cocaine-like stimulant beforehand. Granted, many do not care, as money and career are supposedly the priority, which culture does preach. I also note though that most are oblivious to the gravity of what they’ve lost. I’ll choose mobility any day.

A 40-year-old sedentary type and a 40-year-old routine exerciser are not biologically the same age range. This I’ve seen visibly. Their vitality and appearance are vastly different, almost as though they are not both Homo sapiens.

At running events, for example, it is common to see a 50-year-old capable of running fast speeds for hours at a time. It barely seems possible when first introduced to such feats. I remember running the mile as a child, for example, and winning by default simply because most of the kids couldn’t run the whole thing. Yet it is easy when swept in the excitement of such an event to believe that the norm is to cover vast distances, often at a quick base, with just your feet, and to do so well into your later years. An office will remind you that it is not the norm in America. The norm is a struggle up a flight of stairs. The norm is a pained shuffle from the car to the desk. The norm is a drive-thru food order, or these days, a phone app food delivery service.

As I write I realize the magnitude of my own desire to “just keep going”. Above I mentioned quicksand. Most nightmares I’ve ironically had since childhood involve running, but feeling slowed, or sinking in quicksand. In nightmares that involve swimming, the pool is often too dark for me to see and I quickly find myself lost. Or maybe my goggles leaked water to blind me. This doesn’t surprise me because nothing scares me more than stopping. I don’t necessarily mean stopping a daily exercise routine either. I mean stopping movement. Stopping the bikepacking adventures, the runs, the ocean swims, and the occasional game.

If given the choice, I’ll choose motion every time. Give me a shovel and I’ll see how long I can stay above the quicksand.

Where’s the Awe

I wake up intermittently through the night because every turn of the body ignites pain in my collarbone. At least by waking I’m able to prevent further damage to myself. Still, sleep is a chore.

I’m at least finding some mobility returning. I’m putting on button-up shirts more easily, flossing, and nearly tying shoelaces. They are all things that I couldn’t do last week.

I’m finishing a book that I decided to revisit: The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. It’s a favorite from college. I was curious whether the book would enrapture me like it did years ago.

Parts of the book were equally as page-turning, such as the wild and macabre introduction. However, I also struggled to find an off-switch for my inner critic.

This section has too much dialogue, and all of the dialogue is exposition, I’d think.

This section’s character motivation is questionable.

Needless to say, some of the magic was lost. Often in place of story immersion was skepticism. A mind searching for flaws replaced a mind that dared to wonder.

I recognized this inner critic and managed to barricade it for the book’s final section. For a few hours, I was again attuned to my inner dreamer.

What is it about age that causes us to increasingly kill the magic around us?

At times, the industrialization of the mind seems as inevitable as the industrialization of the environment.

It’s as though the process of adulting wrought enough grim realities to shock the inner dreamer into submission. Survival and magic are mutually exclusive. Life is work, politics, and a steady and horrifying debilitation of one’s own body. Where is there time for awe?

Sometimes finding that sense of awe can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s there though, if you allow it to be. Just open a book from your youth and make the choice to see it.

Full Circle

The Stephen King argument that life, like the universe, moves in a circular and repetitive motion seems to be holding true for me right now.

I boasted that unlike 2022, in which I spent the final part of the year struggling to walk around my apartment neighborhood, I would finish 2023 with the ability to run farther and faster than I ever had.

Then I broke my collarbone in a cycling crash. I now find myself in the same position I was in a year ago. Walking hurts. Standing up hurts. I cannot tie my own shoes. Walking around my apartment complex is a struggle, with every step triggering pain in my collarbone. I realize now that I may spend the remainder of 2023 rehabilitating.

I can, at least, type one-handed.

The aftermath of this crash feels different than the last one. I know my collarbone will heal, as will the hit that I took to my head and hip. Spiritually, though, I feel a little something lost. I look at my bicycle and thoughts of selling it come to mind. The idea is both heartbreaking and relieving. I doubt I will sell it, but it sucks that the mind can maneuver that direction.

Time heals all wounds, they say. It isn’t true though. Ask a motorcyclist with a broken back. The pain exacerbates with time until eventually it is insufferable and crippling. Some wounds are spider venom in the blood: once they enter, they only spread and disintegrate.

I believe this wound will heal, but I do not know what my risk tolerance will be going forward. I know that I’m anxious to run again already. You can only fall so hard on a run.

Maybe I need to revert my thoughts back to the present. Of course the future holds some dread.

For now, it’s sunny and cool in Saint Louis. One day at a time.

Slow Healing

It’s a bit challenging to sleep well with a broken collarbone. That probably goes without saying. Every little twitch and turn during the night wakes you up.

I somehow managed about 7 hours of sleep last night, which is pretty good with all things considered. I can’t say the bone feels any better or worse than it did on Sunday. It might be that way for awhile.

I am still hopeful to be running again within a few weeks time. But, we’ll see how it goes. I missed the mark by months on my foot injury last year. To an extent, a recovery timeline is out of your control, especially with something such as a bone break.

My bikes remain on their racks in my living room. Because I’m housebound right now, I see them almost every waking moment. I want to visualize myself cycling again and enjoying it. I think that I will eventually, but the experience will be different. I’ll probably be intentionally slower and more vigilant.

That’s sort of how it goes with age in general. We try to repeat the thrills of the past, the adventures that exhilarated us when we were young, and to an extent we can. Yet we don’t have the same cells in our bodies, nor do we have the same minds, to experience those adventures. So we go through the motions, and it’s mostly the same… but it’s a little different. Maybe the once-vibrant colors our eyes saw long ago are now dulled or our emotions are a little more subdued. Maybe we miss the element of surprise or the delusion of feeling invincible.

Healing is also a lonely process. Your pain is uniquely your own. The entire right side of my body remains bruised and bloodied. It has been two days of ripping bloody bandages off of my right side.

To the outside ears, it was a “bike crash.” That has little meaning without feeling. To my own nerves feeling the pain, it is constant misery. Your physical pain cannot be shared; it is monogamous, and clings to you for life. It also sucks. Still, I believe that pain is a necessity. Life and death are painful, so you might as well get used to feeling pain.

In time I will be back. How many times have I said that?

Eating Scones and Breaking Bones

I’ve read that it’s healthy to eat foods while they’re in season. This fall I interpreted that to mean that I should consume extra pumpkin flavored beverages and foods at Starbucks. Pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin scones became regulars on Saturday morning through the months of October and November. Apparently this isn’t how you’re supposed to interpret “eat foods while they’re in season.” Oh well. I have no regrets.

On a more serious note, I had what may end up being the bike crash to end my bike crashes.

I was pedaling my road bicycle down the Riverfront Trail yesterday and turned into the Riverfront Park. Maybe because I’ve made this turn a hundred times in the last year, my eyes were focused forward for a moment, rather than on the path beneath the wheels. It turned out to be a critical moment to avert my gaze from the path.

Though the sun shone and the winds were calm that morning, a storm had hit the day before with severe winds. I didn’t take that into account. Some intense debris littered the road, included a large tree branch.

My front tire hit the tree branch and I flipped forward, sideways, and upside-down. I felt my head slam against the road first. I was wearing a helmet, but the force was enough to whip my head and nearly knock me out.

Then my shoulder hit and I immediately felt my collarbone break. I also heard something that you never want to hear come from your own body: “snap!”

Finally my hip landed with a loud thud. The pain was intense, and I knew that I was in very bad shape.

I was wearing a helmet, luckily, but I was still dazed. I was not sure what city I was living in or where I was going, and suddenly the trail seemed foreign to me. I was not sure what I did the past few days either. I just felt that I had to turn around and get home, wherever that was.

Due to the adrenaline and lack of logical thought, I hopped back on the bicycle and rode back. It was not for twenty minutes that I knew where I was or where I was riding, but somehow I still rode the correct direction.

It was an hour later, after X-Rays and a CT scan, that I learned that I somehow managed to ride the bike home with a broken collarbone and a mild concussion.

The adrenaline wore off the moment I stepped back in my apartment, and it was then that my right arm lost mobility. It was my right collarbone that broke. The pain surged quickly thereafter.

Later, at a nearby Total Access Urgent Care, I learned the full impact of the injuries quickly.

“Yep, that’s broken,” the X-ray technician said as he glanced at the first photo of my shoulder and collarbones. “It’ll be for the doctor to say, but the good news is, it looks like it’s the good kind of break.”

“There’s a good kind of break?” I said. I assumed all breaks were bad kinds.

“Yeah,” he said, “The kind that doesn’t need surgery.”

It turned out he was correct. The bone was broken but not displaced, meaning the bone would heal after two months in a sling and some physical therapy.

I regained my mental senses quickly and all of my memories returned. For that I’m also thankful.

I’ve had some nasty crashes over the past year. This was the worst one; it was enough, I think, to break me mentally. It raised a conundrum: how do I keep doing something I enjoy, when I seem to have a penchant for serious injuries while doing it? I’ve never been injured while running, after all.

Are my cycling days over? It’s difficult to say. I should be honest here though: they might be over. I have no interest in breaking the clavicle again. Certainly my cycling days are over for the remainder of the year. With bone breaks, the best thing you can do is nothing.

I guess it’s inevitable that these sorts of doubts flood my mind after such a crash. Maybe I’m just not meant to be a cyclist. Maybe I just have to commit to slow and leisurely rides from now on. What will I do?

I may feel young, but I know this bone will not heal as quickly as it would have twenty years ago.

Hopefully I am back on a bicycle eventually. To what capacity I’ll ride again, I’m not sure. Some cyclists bounce back quickly after bone breaks. They heal, and then they pedal with extra fervor. They love the activity. All pain is worth it. Suffering is hardly a reason to quit. Neither is a broken collarbone.

But I am not those cyclists. A part of me feels I’ve had enough bone breaks and ligament sprains to last a lifetime.

Every injury I’ve ever had has arrive via bicycle. You can only fall so hard when you’re on a run. You can only break so badly. On a bicycle, though, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of if your collarbone breaks in a crash, but how badly it breaks.

I guess time will tell what’s in store for me next. Though I feel down, I don’t feel “out.” I’ll focus on eating well, sleeping, and healing. There’s still life to enjoy.

I guess time will tell whether I hope on the bike again.

The Origins of Wind

I woke up just before dawn, stretched, and went for a brief jog that cut straight through downtown and then looped back to my apartment. I haven’t done much jogging the past few weeks; after a few half-marathons, I decided to spend November doing other exercises and activities. You can overdo anything, after all.

The weather forecast never indicated rain, though the skies were gaunt and the air had the metallic scent of an impending storm. Puddles blotched the streets from rainfall the night before.

A torrential downpour of rain slammed down on me shortly after I crossed the St Louis Arch. Gusts of wind gained intensity and lashed rain against my face. The wind, in my imagination, seemed capable of leveling each building and tree, and finally rendering downtown a pile of rubble.

Finally, I arrived back at my apartment, totally drenched.

I thought about when I was young and I always wondered if wind had an origin. In my mind, there was some faraway land, owned by wind’s creator, initiating these gusts and storms. Or did wind just appear out of thin air?

Obviously there is a scientific explanation for wind, but some things in life are best left a mystery. The unknown opens the imagination, whereas explanations kill it.

The rain stopped about as abruptly as it arrived. There was something other-worldly about it.

The escapist in me looks for these “other-worldly” signs. The day before, I crossed a rest station on the Riverfront Trail, and it reminded me of a train station. Suddenly I imagined the train station from Spirited Away that Chahiro took to visit the witch’s twin sister. It was the same train station occupied by various spirits, navigating a strange purgatorial world.

Would I take this haunted train, and would it take me on some fantastic adventure, away from the consumerism and hustle culture that seem to prevail in the city?

Spirited Away is an amazing movie. Who were these spirits, and where were they going? Brilliantly, the movie doesn’t tell us much. Like the origins of wind, it’s best left a mystery.

Managing Stress

I’m not an expert at managing stress, but I have picked up a few key habits over the years that have helped me maintain a decent equilibrium. In the current era of post-COVID work I’ve noted that many colleagues are constantly feeling extremely high amounts of stress. Some peers have told me that they are now pre-diabetic, and others have claimed that they feel constantly on edge, and that the feeling can be incapacitating. Sleep and exercise seem to have gone out the wayside. The trend is certainly troubling. This shift toward the “stressed and exhausted American” dominating the urban landscape has made me realize how vital it is to have stress-negating habits.

I believe managing stress effectively requires one to stray from the norm of Westernized work culture. What are the norms, and can some of them be prevented at all?

• Wake up early and check your phone immediately

• Rush to work via car, sit in traffic and a drive-through, and eat breakfast along the way

• Chug coffee to mitigate sleepiness

• Sit at the desk and stare at a blue screen

• Eat an unhealthy, oily and heavily processed lunch at the desk, and eat it quickly

• Drink an afternoon coffee to mitigate the post-lunch drowsiness

• Drive home and quickly eat a large dinner

• Plug eyes to phone screen, tablet, or tv screen while drinking alcohol in order to “wind down”

• Sleep with the phone next to your bed

When listed it seems obvious why people at work seem incredibly stressed. These habits are not only debilitating, they’re cancer-inducing, and the mental state of most employees is a key indicator of this. I don’t always do the opposite of all of these negative habits, but I do find myself straying from them as much as possible. Obviously the key is to do damn near the opposite of each bullet point listed above. Here’s my own “aim” for a norm:

• Wake up early (a necessity if working) but don’t check the phone. Exercise outside and let dawn be the first light that the eyes register. In a perfect world, we all sleep in at our leisure.

• Ride the bicycle to work if possible. If not, exercise before driving.

• Have one cup of pour-over coffee or tea before work (at most)

• Spend five minutes before logging into the PC either practicing deep breathing or meditating.

• Work with a standing desk, not a sitting desk (if you have a computer job)

• Take a five minute walk every hour, regardless of your Inbox (responsiveness be damned)

• Eat a healthy lunch (oatmeal or a salad), preferably outside and with people, not alone in a rat cage

• Drink water and electrolytes throughout the afternoon

• Ride the bicycle home from work

• Listen to calm music while making dinner

• Watch the sunset

• Read myself to sleep

There has been pressure, even in my own work culture, to trend towards the less healthy habits. For example, there is an option to work longer hours Monday through Thursday, and then to have Friday off. I opted out of this option due to the extensive time it tethers you to a computer screen on Monday through Thursday. I decided it’s better to have an extra hour for movement and “slow eating.”

The work environment is also typically rife with toxic foods. Potato chips, birthday cakes, candy bars, and hamburgers dominate the food scene. The post-COVID average weight gain shows it. To make matters worse, many employees now work virtually, and as a result move even less, while still eating a similarly terrible diet. One has to shield the eyes from the packaged stuff and opt for a salad or oatmeal.

After work, the phone screen provides a universe of dopamine. Avoiding this is difficult, and I still struggle with this one. But the phone interferes with sleep, so I try to unplug by 7 pm. Alcohol, likewise, destroys sleep. And a good night’s sleep, whether you believe it or not, is probably the best possible thing you can do for yourself.

I don’t always hit all of these habits; sometimes, adulting is tough and time is constrained. But I strive to make most of them routine. Addressing some of them has required some shifts in my own routine. For example, I enjoy metal music. However, it gives me too much adrenaline, and too much adrenaline places one in a constant state of “fight or flight”. I’ve had to switch my music a little. I still listen to some metal, but not as often as I used to.

If you find yourself in a constant state of work stress, you are not alone. By most metrics, the vast majority of employees are constantly stressed in America. I don’t recommend switching all of your habits at once—that might be overwhelming—but instead gradually addressing one habit at a time.

Let’s start with a good night’s sleep and add to that.

Fear of Finality

The morning after Halloween, I rode my Giant road bike along the Riverfront Trail as dawn broke.

The faint sun was veiled behind a dense sheet of clouds. About thirty minutes into the ride, a fog drifted in and choked out the environment. I could see nothing but gray. The animals, the trees, and the river seemed to no longer exist.

I found my mind drifting like the fog around me. I thought about Halloween and what scares people.

I think at the core of what scares people is the fear of finiteness, which is entwined with the fear of death. That one’s existence and consciousness can be wiped out in a moment is what keeps people up at night. It is what has helped conjure various religions and the stranger superstitions such as astrology and tarot cards. Their purpose is to deny this fear from being. We want to believe there is purpose for our existence and that we will continue for eternity. What is it like to not be?

I see this fear played out in every facet of the world.

Corporations and governments, like all organisms, want dominance, but empires come and go.

Modern young adults like to speak of building legacies. They expect their life volumes will be in print forever, but said volumes are quickly lost in the library archives. This reminds me of the ending to Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The city’s greatest gangster, who spent his entire life vying for power and control, is buried in the city. Then, over the course of a hundred years, we see nature steadily ruin his grave until it is barely perceptible to the human eye at all.

Money, like the tide, ebbs and flows.

Things fall apart, and things cease to be. But, this is only scary if it is denied.

It is not “ceasing to be” that scares me a fraction as much as something else: wasting the time in which I am.

Moving Forward to Go Backward

I personally find distance running to be a means of reversing course through the act of going forward. I think that’s why so many people discover their passion for it after the age of 30.

Endurance running is an act of discomfort, and potentially agony. When completely focused on each stride, on one’s breathing, and on the immediate environs, I believe distance running steadily rips off the facade that we created via adulthood.

Humanity never needed to run a long distance as fast as possible until relatively recently in history. Maybe it’s a draw now because there’s too much comfort in our lives. Maybe we’ve realized that comfort doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness, nor does comfort provide any important answers about our existence. A virtual meeting doesn’t make us “happier” than a real one, and an electronic purchase doesn’t make us “happier” than a trip to the mall.

So what do we do to rediscover meaning? We brutalize our legs and feet in half marathons, marathons, and ultra marathons.

I think back to the way I ran when I was young. Running was spontaneous and wild, a series of zigzags with no destination and only reckless abandon. It had no splits, required no heart rate monitor, was free of charge (all you needed was functional feet), and lacked a coach. It was always equipped with something many adult runners lack: a smile.

I miss those days and sadly know that it will now be difficult, if not impossible, to recapture them. I sign up for events and note my speed, my stride, my cadence, and my total time. I calculate, though I am conscious of my calculations. I push myself to exhaustion in an effort to reach some sort of zenith that really means nothing to anyone but me. And yet I still chase it.

This type or running, however, is fun in its own right. The chase is worthwhile, and I’m currently not sure why. And in this more predictable and calculated path forward, I try to bring back that wild youth, that gunslinger who was willing to dare a burst of speed up or downhill, willing to jump over a fallen log or stop and note the wildlife lurking in the underbrush, willing to deviate from all expectations. I try to revert back by going forward. So maybe the best I can hope for is a mixture of young and old.

Still, in spite of a watch on my wrist, with each additional mile I find myself hoping to rediscover the lost in me.

Circle

They say that life is a circle and we end it at the beginning, but with a different lens to view everything that we think we’ve already seen.

I find myself stretching for a Wednesday evening run with my training group. I’m 37 and one year removed from a bicycle crash that sidelined me for the final third of 2021.

I’m at the base of a long hill on Delmar Boulevard. I decide to run with a few individuals who are both fast and experienced. They ask what pace I intend to hold. “I’ll just try to hang with you guys,” I say. I don’t know whether I can. We’ll find out.

A long uphill slope toward the Centennial Greenway encompasses warmup. I’m feeling light and fresh. Ten minutes in and I barely break a sweat. At least I can warm up with these guys, I think.

We cross onto the Centennial Greenway and stretch for a bit. Then we’re off to the races and I’m holding 6 minutes per mile (3 minutes 45 seconds per km). The adrenaline from my competition gives me an added boost. My heart’s racing and my cadence is increasing. Keep your knees up, I keep telling myself. I know nothing about running technique or if this is even sound advice. I tell it to myself anyways; it’s just a reminder to keep my form.

Ten minutes go by and I’m running should-to-shoulder with the group. They’re surprised. So am I.

I’ve been here before. I’ve competed before, just not on land. Years ago, lap after lap, swimming against the best in the world at the Lee and Jones Jamal Swim Center in Austin, Texas. I trained and competed until I had nothing left physically and mentally to give to the sport of swimming. Then I swore off competition.

I ended my swimming career as a master of technique but began it as a blank slate. I’m back to the blank slate, but this time I’m on land, hitting it with high impact. The vibe is familiar. The racing is familiar. The cast is new. I like that.

“Let’s see what you’ve got, Matt. I’ll keep you in check,” one of the runners barks at me. I get an energy boost and a desire to beat him. The old racing spirit is somewhere inside after all.

We’re forty minutes into our run and our pace is actually quickening. I check my pace. We’ve actually sped up by another 30 seconds per mile.

My midsection is tightening and I’m hyperventilating. I’m covered in sweat. I don’t know how long I can sustain this effort. Probably not much longer. I have to be close to maximizing my heartrate. My legs are tightening. My face is grimaced. Keep pace, I keep telling myself.

You’ve been here before. Competing, climbing. You swore you’d never do it again.

Thoughts of the early swimming days flood through me. Preparing for swim meets at age 12, at age 15. Stretching and studying competition. The endless hours chasing and being chased. The long climb from an overlooked age grouper to an NCAA Division 1 record holder.

It’s a different sport. I’m a different age. I retired from swimming in 2008, almost 15 years ago. I don’t understand running, at least not well, and not yet. I don’t even know if I’m any good, really, though I suspect I can improve a lot. That might be enough. The joy is there. If the joy is there, nothing else matters.

The run ends. Somehow, I won the session. I “fist bump” the other runners. It was an effort I never would have given had I been running alone. I’ve trained to the brink before. I know what it’s like. That’s a major advantage.

The added sense of camaraderie gives me an added sense of purpose and an added feeling of accomplishment. I haven’t felt that in a long time. It’s much more fun when you accomplish something with someone else. I almost forgot that I enjoy training with a group.

It’s a different sport and I’m in a different phase of life. I’m climbing, but I don’t know why, or what the destination is. I know there’s a marathon ahead. I know that I’m enjoying this process.

I also realize that somehow I arrived back at the start, albeit with a much different perspective of it all.

Hustle Culture

Hustle culture can seem omnipresent in the city.

Cars rush forward at the break of dawn because hurry is the queen bee of the hive. Stoplight to stoplight, interstate entry to interstate exit, drivers hope to save ten seconds, for the sake of being on time (the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen). Their mood and their morale are fully dependent on the mercy of the stoplight and the traffic congestion. The roads, and their vehicles, are therefore their masters.

Breakfast is not so much an experience as it is an inconvenience, solved via the drive-through.

Coffee is slammed, not sipped.

There are agendas for the day. Emails to answer. Calls to take. Appointments to arrive at.

The best to-do list, according to hustle culture, is one that forever adds and never subtracts.

To that I say, the best to-do list is one thrown in the garbage and forgotten!

A breakfast is better spent over three hours than over three minutes. Give me jokes, countless cups of good coffee (and no deadline to finish them), merry company, and sunshine! Let me taste real food and engage with real people.

A rushed drive to work is best replaced by a slow walk through a forest.

A screen is best replaced by a book, a painting, or a music album to listen to.

An obsession over retirement is best replaced by a spontaneous and fun hobby for today.

Fretting over the future is best replaced by contentment for this beautiful, precious moment, a moment in which we are aware of our own existence.

This is what I aspire to… which is why I’ll take my time with my coffee this morning.

Conversion to Machine

I enter age 37 with a desire to take a trip and get lost on a random adventure. In a banal daily work routine, which can feel like a constant slideshow of indistinguishable and bland virtual meetings, interactions seem progressively colder and more detached. Work hours pass in purgatorial fashion. All smiling is off-camera. All laughter is on mute. There is an agenda and we must tackle it. We must perform. There is no time for small talk. No time for warmth.

The conversion to machine is gradual and is predicated on the need for comfort.

I try to counter these dark feelings, which I write about freely here, with cycling. Cycling is purely for me, the most selfish of hobbies. Adults generally don’t give a damn that I can ride a bike really far. There’s no one to impress. It’s not like my old days as a swimmer, when I won to gain the adulation of everyone around me. I just find cycling fun. Adults are often too consumed with their own consumption to be concerned with activities involving movement. Cycling is my antidote to the soul sucking virus that is careerism.

Is there still a ghost in the adults of today, or has the spirit left the shell?

Virtual work means that jokes are followed by silence and emails are followed by a false sense of urgency.

“This is the new trend!” I’m told, but I note that the general population has gained misery, weight, and anxiety since the pandemic. There is always a trade-off for convenience. Faust doesn’t grant wishes without taking something in return.

Years ago, I was lost somewhere in Russia. It was a random trip I took while living in China. It’s a coastal city with a relatively friendly atmosphere.

Getting lost is actually pretty fun; cycling reminds me of that when I take a wrong turn. Trips remind me of that when I meander aimlessly through the foreign city streets. Adults hate being lost, but kids generally love it. Adults prefer predictability and assurance. A destination is the ultimate form of salvation for the worker. They want a linear path without bumps. Point A to Point B, and not a minute to waste.

Yet the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen, as Alice in Wonderland showed. But the modern adults wants pavement, an air conditioned environment, and a to-do list that forever grows, forever demanding haste. I cannot relate: I find solace in the rocky terrain of a faraway trail, where haste is revealed to be arbitrary.

I remember hiking Eagle’s Nest Hill in Vladivostok and quickly getting lost, somewhere off the trail due to a lack of focus, and not really caring. Time ceases to matter when there is no agenda. Can adults abandon agendas for awhile? Who cares if the paved route is far away? I remember being somewhere high, on a bluff, overlooking the city. So I still arrived at some interesting destination. It’s the randomness and unpredictability that I prefer. I was on the opposite side of the world, which is both thrilling and terrifying.

The computer, and its primary appendage the phone, is placed at the altar of the modern posh careerist. It demands of its flock a new form of faith and a false set of promises. Mortality can be avoided, it says, with the swipe of a credit card, the pop of a pill bottle, or the adherence to a politician. Swiping requires money, which requires work, which requires sitting and staring and hurrying.

May we all be lost somewhere, in a strange city we’ve never been to, and wander aimlessly, without an agenda, in search of new adventures. Maybe somewhere, in the midst of that wandering, we’ll reencounter our long lost inner child.

The Last Day

My last day spent as a 36-year-old was a stark contrast from my last day as a 35-year-old.

I spent my last week at age 35 bedridden due to a bicycle injury that prevented me from running for the remainder of 2021. On my last day at age 35, I dreamt of running, but struggled to leave my apartment.

In contrast, I spent my last week at age 36 running longer distances than I ever had in my life. With each run my right foot feels better, not worse. I often imagine myself running like a Kenyan, gliding over the Iten hills and along the top edges of the terrain’s escarpments. In my dream I possess the seemingly effortless fluidity of a Kenyan athlete. I snap from this vision and reality reminds me that I don’t have their running ability, but then again, arguably no one else does either.

Because I ran throughout my last week at age 36, I slept for as long as possible through my last day at age 36. I ate donuts and drank a brown sugar shaken espresso from Starbucks. In short, I indulged, and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I hadn’t indulged in awhile. I might as well be gluttonous on the last day.

I visited a doctor for a final evaluation of an elbow injury that I suffered from a bike crash about a month ago. The X-rays were negative. The elbow sprained, but it did not tear. No surgery is needed. Time will heal the elbow. It might be weeks, and it might be months, but it’ll heal. That news was a very nice birthday present.

I continue to heal the pinched nerves in both of my hands, remnants of overuse during a bike packing trip I embarked on two weeks ago. I’m still reflecting on that trip and will post more about it.

I think of these injuries and realize that even when I’m healing my foot, I seem to be injuring other body parts.

I am about to finish repairing my gravel bike. In that aforementioned crash last month, the bike’s front wheel bent and its derailleur, cassette, and hanger broke. Yet somehow I didn’t break. The doctor I visited told me I have strong bones. I think that’s true, but these crashes also add up over time. I don’t know if I have another crash in me.

“How are you feeling?” The bike shop manager asked me when I took my damaged bike in for a repair. He noted my scrapes, bruises, and swollen elbow. It was a question I don’t often get from anyone besides my immediate loved ones.

We always ask, “How are you doing?” This beckons the default answer, “Good.” I was surprised that someone would ask how I’m feeling.

“I guess I’m good today,” I said.

“I mean, how are you feeling mentally, after the crash? Are you okay? Because after my last crash, I was never the same again. I wasn’t the same cyclist.”

I was touched that someone cared to ask that. It had been awhile since a relative stranger showed care for my wellbeing. I absorbed it for a moment. Was I really okay? Am I?

“I think it might be time for me to only bike on trails and greenways,” I said. I took a deep breath. There was a sense of finality in my words.

“I reached the same conclusion after my last crash,” he replied. “I hope you feel better though and keep cycling.”

“I’ll definitely keep cycling,” I said. “Maybe not on roads though.”

I left the shop and looked out at the clusters of brick and mortar buildings, the gaunt sky, and the constantly flowing currents of traffic that carried with them the acrid scent of car exhaust.

36 is over. There’s no getting it back. I was flawed for that period of time and I’m flawed now, but hopefully I learned a few things through the passage of time. It was quite a journey.

I’m on to 37. I’ll wake up and go for a run. Mentally, I won’t be running through a concrete cluster before work. I’ll be in Kenya, gliding through a valley, or along an escarpment, as the sun crests over the horizon. Away from the screens and keyboard warriors of the sedentary west, and away from the common materialistic ambitions and plastic goals that inundate the office.

Miles from me, a lion will stalk its prey. I will steadily accelerate my pace; the village has long-been out of sight.

Implicit Connections, Necessary Journeys

Dawn shows signs of an eventual takeover by rendering the streets and adjacent buildings in a gaunt gray. I pedal out of my apartment at 6:00 am with my sunglasses hanging from my long sleeve tee. Both my front and rear bike lights blink. I hear the occasional motor in the distance as I maneuver west, where the horizon is darkest, where a few remaining stars still wink. For the most part I am the only person on the road.

Another cyclist pedals furiously the opposite direction. Like me, he wears a backpack and tee. We give each other a faint wave. There is an unspoken and implicit connection between us, one that many cyclists have, and because of this connection, a simple wave speaks a thousand words.

He’s also bike commuting. Our directions have a 180 degree difference and yet the endpoint is the same.

Two days before, I biked along Gravois Greenway. A cyclist behind me pedaled up and rode beside me, directly to my left.

“Where are you commuting from?” He asked. I told him where I was biking from and where I was heading toward. We chatted for a bit as we rode. We talked about our commutes to work, the exhilaration of arriving at an office with beads of sweat hanging from one’s brow, of pedaling up to the front entrance of the office building, of moving a distance through exercise that everyone else would rather sit for.

We road a few more miles and then parted ways. We didn’t need to say what specifically our connection was. It was implicit. The hobby of cycling can run much deeper than simple exercise.

I’m packing my belongings and preparing myself mentally for my most intense bikepacking trip yet. It will take days. My sleeping bag, food, and tent are ready. I’ll pick up my rented bike in Virginia and head north, towards Pittsburgh.

More than 300 miles of cycling and camping is not everyone’s idea of a good time, especially in the summer. But it’s my idea of a good time.

What if you get lost?

All the better.

Away from offices and screens: that’s where I need to be.

On a gravel road, one mile at a time, northbound.

Chasing the Personal Best

I had a pretty nasty bike crash last week. I was zipping through downtown and encountered a construction zone near the Convention Center Plaza. I made a left turn for a detour, thinking the detour road would be mostly smooth pavement, only to have my front tire hit a jagged crevice in the tarmac. My bike went over sideways and I crashed on my right side.

Lesson learned: never assume the road ahead will provide a smooth ride.

I slid over the pavement and felt the road peel away the skin on my right leg. My elbow and hip collided against the street with a thud. I knew immediately it wasn’t a light crash. I wished that I had been watching the road more carefully.

I looked around and realized that I was alone on that street. It was the cusp of dawn and the sun’s climb toward the horizon had rendered the streets in shades of lavender and indigo. I levered myself up and attempted to limp back home while carrying my bike. My apartment was only three blocks away. The bike derailleur broke, as did the hanger and chain. The handlebar tape tore up. The bike and I broke together.

I limped home and showered off the blood, then bandaged myself up. I had no anger or regret: the crash already happened and there’s no rewind button on time.

As the hours ticked by, my right elbow went numb and I realized that it was sprained. The sprain was not as severe as the foot injury I suffered a year ago, but I also knew that it would take several weeks to heal. By nightfall, there was almost no mobility in the elbow.

I joked that because the higher powers couldn’t injure my feet while I ran, they decided to hand me the occasional bike crash. We all need setbacks, after all.

Because of the elbow injury, I was unable to bike the rest of the week. So, I ran while maintaining my right arm in a position that was awkward yet comfortable. Each day, a little mobility returned to the arm.

This week was supposed to be my “season ending” running week. I had scheduled a 1600 meter timed run and a 10k run. I wanted to see what progress I had made over the last year, since healing my ankle injury from 2021. It was not ideal to be nursing a bunch of scrapes and bruises, as well as a sprained elbow, this week.

I believe that the body and mind treat all stresses the same: as a gravitational push downward on performance. Whether these stresses are from injury, emotions, or heavy exercise, stresses are essentially quicksand. Stresses are what age us.

My 1600 meter run was Wednesday night and when I showed up at the track to warm up, I felt surprisingly light. I still felt elbow pain but also accepted it as a part of life. Shit happens. Things break and sprain. Sometimes you fully heal, sometimes you mostly heal, and unfortunately, sometimes you just don’t heal at all.

I decided to look for someone in the race that seemed fast and just try to hang with them. I noted a young college-aged male in my group and overheard him saying that he was aiming for some fast times. So, I decided to try and run behind him for as long as I could.

I crossed the first 1600 meters (about a mile) and saw that I ran it in 5 minutes and 20 seconds. That was faster than the fastest 1600 meter run of my life, and I still had another half of the run to go! By my own standards I was flying. I felt fresh and limber. The college guy was just one stride ahead of me. I was keeping up. Everyone else was far behind us.

It wasn’t until the final lap of the 3200 meter run that the college guy pulled ahead by a few seconds. However, I finished the run in 10 minutes and 50 seconds. It was by far the fastest run of my life. A “personal best.”

I shook the college guy’s hand (he went for a fist bump and I awkwardly went for a handshake, being the old fart that I am). I was thankful because it is competition that brings out the best in us. I never would have broken 11 minutes had he not set a good pace for me.

I’m nearing age 37 and appreciate now, more than ever, any sort of personal best time in an athletic event.

The elbow is healing. Maybe when I was 21 I’d feel anger and resentment about my crash. That is the advantage of the late 30’s. Whereas earlier in life there might be a certain paranoia over outcome and control, I’ve finally gotten to a point where I can say, “to hell with it, let’s just roll with the punches.”

My 10k is tomorrow and I think it’ll be fun. I did a 10k in college and my time was 56 minutes. I know I’ll be significantly faster than that. I’ll hit a personal best time, smile, and celebrate with some coffee.

And that’s life. You hit some crashes, you do your best to recover, and you gear up for the next race.

Let’s hope there’s a next race tomorrow.

Party Like It’s ‘99

On Wednesday I finally saw Rob Zombie live for the first time. He was my favorite solo artist in high school and I still listen to his hits from time to time.

Rob Zombie is immortal. He possesses more energy and vitality than lead singers half his age. He’s highly mobile throughout his show and rocks the dance moves of a lithe professional dancer. He’s a perennial headliner for a reason. Viewing the elaborate stage setup at his show is like glimpsing into another gothic world. His bandmates are also perfectionists. John 5, the lead guitarist, is possibly the most skilled soloist I’ve ever watched. The guy can flat-out shred.

Zombie is currently 57 years old and looks as lean and fit as ever. He’s also vegan and has been vegetarian since childhood. This is noteworthy to me because most long-lived cultures I read about eat a relatively large portion of natural carbohydrates and a relatively lower amount of meat (not all, but most). I am not vegan, but I often consider this.

What was my takeaway from watching my teenage idol perform at a crowded amphitheater in front of thousands of fans? Love what you do.

Do I love what I do? I find myself yearning for my hours when I’m free. I love cycling and have gained an appreciation for running. I love connecting with other runners and cyclists who share similar goals, who find themselves aging, yet are eager to accomplish physical feats that they never have before. But that’s not what I do.

An aspiring marathoner told me on our jog last week that he’s training to “give his son a story of something that he accomplished.” That’s what I enjoy learning about: people on their journeys, and how those journeys parallel my own. What can I learn from them? How many miles can we actually crank out together? What is our true limit on this planet?

“Love what you do.” Watching Zombie was a reminder that I need to write more and create more content.

The Need for a “What If”

I find myself needing a hypothetical “what if” in order to look forward to the future. That “what if” scenario is simple:

“What if my important accomplishment or action, which I was placed on this planet to fulfill, has not yet occurred?”

I find the need to posit this scenario because as a former elite athlete, it was easy to assume for the better part of a decade that my greatest accomplishment already transpired. This is a debilitating state of mind that ensnares many athletes because their athletic careers typically end well before the halfway marker of life.

I freed myself of this mental prison with a hypothetical question, and whether or not it’s true is inconsequential: “What if there is still a greater adventure ahead?”

I think of Bilbo Baggins and his reluctance to leave the safety of the Shire. After all, Gandalf reminds him, there is no guarantee of a safe return, or a return at all.

Yet something catalyzes Bilbo to embark on his greatest adventure and to eventually slay a dragon. He is about 50 years old when he leaves the Shire, which in theory would mark him well past his physical prime.

I am turning 37 soon. I spent the first quarter of age 36 learning to walk, and then run, again. As I embark on longer runs and longer bike rides I have no delusions of winning any sort of championships, nor do I care to.

There is, though, a unique excitement in knowing that I just ran or biked farther than I ever had in my life.

About a week ago I managed a long Sunday run of 15 miles (24 km). That was the longest run of my life, and I finished it feeling fresh. Today I biked a little more than 50 miles (80 km) without stopping. My “injured” foot remains in good health and I find myself feeling physically “lighter” than I have in the past.

Why do I feel lighter? Maybe the burden of expectations has finally been lifted from my spirit. Without it I’m free to experiment and fail.

I suspect that I have a lot of miles to run, and plenty of engine to run them. That’s why I signed up for my first full marathon, which will take place in April 2023. There’s plenty of time to build to it. I have a dream of running several. I’m in it for the long haul.

I don’t obsess over any sort of victory anymore, but I do feel a compulsion in my soul to finish my first marathon without stopping. Maybe it’s yet another form of my battle with my own mortality. Maybe I finally found the metaphorical dragon to slay, as Bilbo did. Or maybe the marathon is simply my “Gandalf”, my catalyst to introduce me to even better adventures ahead.

After all, why run roads when mountains are an option?

What if the best is yet to come?

The Bicycle and My Health

I sat in a plush chair that stood in the center of a sterile and immaculate patient room at my company’s wellness center. I faced a television but did not register what was playing on its screen. I waited for the results of my recent health examination.

It had been three years since my last health check at our wellness center. That last check was in 2019, just two months after I returned from China and less than one year before COVID became a thing. I thought about the peaks and valley’s I’d been through in that timespan. What did that journey mean for my health?

The practitioner walked in with a clipboard and greeted me.

“We hadn’t seen you in a long time,” she said. “And to make a long story short… your health is perfect, and it improved considerably. That’s pretty rare for someone over the past few years.”

She then listed off my metrics and how much they improved since 2019.

“Your LDL cholesterol, which is your bad cholesterol, improved from 110 mg/dL, which is not terrible but not great, to 52 mg/dL, which is outstanding.”

“Your blood pressure went from 130/87, a little higher than what we prefer, to 118/73, which is in perfect range.”

“You dropped 15 pounds, though you were not overweight by any standards.”

“I have to ask because I encounter so many patients going through struggles right now: what did you change?”

I told her that I basically only changed one thing: I bought a bicycle and found myself enjoying it. It was supposed to be a new hobby to “get me through the boredom of work from home.” I bought it because I was frustrated by my inertia, frustrated by the new normal of virtual meetings, and frustrated that I wasn’t enjoying life. I told her that I felt my stress increasing over those first few months of the pandemic, and I wondered if a new way of moving could be a cure. Hatred can accumulate with a snowball effect, and I didn’t want to die a hateful person. I knew almost nothing about bicycles or cycling at the time.

And as it turned out, the bicycle cured me. My metabolic age is now 13 years younger than my actual age. By each measure, I am the healthiest I’ve been in my life. My health problems vanquished. I smashed them with my bicycle tires, one by one.

That’s not to say that my health was poor when I returned from China, but that it wasn’t nearly as good as I had assumed at the time. It’s to say that it could have been so much better, and cycling helped me understand just how good health can be.

In a sense, the bicycle gave me a second life. It’s a meditation, an exercise, a hobby, and a thrill ride all in one. And in a sense I do feel reborn. I don’t feel as angry as I used. I feel content to just “have a good time,” which is all I really want. Cycling is my time to just be me and enjoy the day.

So for me, it seems, a lot of it was about the bike.

Some Life Reflections

I learned that my uncle passed away earlier this week. It was something of a shock to me because the possibility of his passing wasn’t remotely on my mind. Unlike when my grandfather passed away last year, I had no dreams of a final communication. He was 67.

My first thought is that life is short and precious. He lived a very full life. Longevity in terms of years should never be assumed under any circumstance. I hope for longevity and yet if my own span is 67 years, I’m past the halfway marker. If my own span is less than 67 years, what the hell is the point of planning for retirement?

I find myself constantly moving these days. The realization of my own mortality is part of the reason for that. I suspect that somewhere behind me, Death approaches, scythe in hand. I don’t know how many miles of headway I have. Continuous movement may bide more time. But then again, nothing is guaranteed.

I always had good encounters with my uncle Bill. I didn’t get to know him well enough. I suspect we often feel that way upon the death of a relative.

I remember when he and his daughter drove to Minnesota to watch me compete at the NCAA Swimming Championships. It was my freshman year, which was about seventeen years ago. I remember looking up in the stands when I was preparing to swim and seeing him wearing my college team’s apparel. He was cheering loudly and it meant the world to me. He didn’t know me all that well and certainly had no obligation to attend. His being there really warmed my heart. He struck me as someone with an intense sense of loyalty to family.

He never knew this—in fact my own family never knew this—but he became something of a legend between me and my roommate in college. We always talked about “being tough like Bill.” When culture seemed to weaken, it needed to “toughen up like Bill.” “Bill’s out in weather thirty degrees below zero, working on a construction site to help feed his family, and these college wusses can’t get out of bed for class!” It’s true that he was a construction worker in North Dakota under some of the harshest weather imaginable. He was blue collar to the core, tough as nails, and due to that toughness one would wonder if anything could ever eventually take him down. He also had a warm smile and a wicked sense of humor that I appreciated.

I wish that I made the effort to tell Bill about those stories. I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time, though I wish I had. As I get older and I experience more family members passing away, I sense that we often think of the things we wish we had said, not the things we said. I hope Bill knew that I really appreciated him though, however brief our encounters.

I’ll close this blog with the thought that tomorrow is a new day—hopefully a day devoid of getting caught up in the everyday petty bs concerns—and hopefully the new day brings a new adventure. I’ll think of Bill as I do my best to “just have a good time.” I‘ll make plans, but not retirement plans. There are no plans for my 67th year, or my 66th! My plans involve gravel roads, a desert sky, granite mountains, a bicycle, and a menagerie of wildlife.