The Waiting Game

Two weeks after my collarbone break, I find my health status and daily routine mostly the same.

I visited an orthopedic on Friday with hope of better-than-expected news: hope that the bone was healing faster than forecasted, that I would be running in a few days, and that the sling was no longer needed.

That was not the case. The break had not yet reattached and if anything it had displaced a little further. I was relieved that this is typical during the first two weeks, and the displacement was still not significant enough to require surgery. No surgery required yet, at least, but I have to keep resting. I still require the sling, at least for a few more weeks. I am “nowhere near running.”

So, I find myself playing a waiting game. Removed from most physical activity, I’m spending more time reading and writing. I’m trying to focus on the silver lining of the situation: I’m sleeping better, relaxing, and healing. I’m trying to do what I can do well without too much worry over what I can’t do. I’ve been down this road before. Last year ended in the exact same fashion for me.

Though I had initial thoughts that my cycling days might be over, I found myself spending the weekend watching videos of bikepacking trips through mountains and forests. The videos left me envious, motivated, and inspired. Of course I’ll be back on the bike. Falling is a natural part of the process. I’ve had some great adventures and don’t want those to end. There’s something I get by being out in the wild that I cannot find anywhere else. As most bikepackers will tell you, there’s often a search for some deeper meaning at the start of the journey. Whether or not it’s found is pretty irrelevant. Something is found regardless.

There is another silver lining: I am more immersed in my own thought. I’m more attuned to what I want and where I see myself going. I’ll have more vigor when I am finally moving around like my old self. I’ve gained some intentionalism.

As I wait for the bone to heal, I also remind myself that we tend to have short-term memories when it comes to pain. What can seem unbearable in the moment is quickly a distant memory. We can try to recapture the agony, but it’s as though our minds usher the feeling out of our neurons completely.

Eventually this collarbone injury will be a memory too. I’ll be back on a bicycle with recollection that breaking it hurt, but the extent of how badly it hurt will be lost. And maybe that’s for the best. We’d never take another risk again if our minds kept acute memories of every bump and bruise.

Running, and the Long Game

I’ve had a long and gradual running progression that began in late January and ended with a 10k event, the Summer Sizzler, last week. This phase lasted as long as it did partly out of a hellbent intent to overcome a foot injury from a year ago. I had one ambition this year: to not only heal my foot, but to run faster than I ever had before.

That’s about 7 straight months of running volume buildup. I decided the 10k race would be as good an event to end this “phase” of running as any. As July acceded to August, I realized that it was time to rest the running muscles.

The Summer Sizzler 10k took place at Forest Park in Saint Louis on a cool and balmy Saturday morning. My legs felt reasonably fresh, though I had raced a 3200 meter timed event just a few days before.

The runners gathered near the start as the announcer counted down to takeoff. The course directions seemed barely marked, with only a smattering of signs pointing which way; I hoped that I wouldn’t get lost. I settled near the front of the starting line, only allowing some younger runners (I later discovered both were under age 20) to start ahead of me.

The race started and I felt the exhilaration of being part of a large group embarking on a quest, an army of feet smacking against earth, bodies darting up and down park hills. There is an initial adrenaline rush that makes speed feel easy for the first kilometer or so.

About two miles in, I passed one of the two young males ahead of me. I sensed some of his fatigue and decided to take advantage by accelerating to a higher place. I had no real “race” goals, but knew quickly that I was already in second place, that a hundred people were behind me, and that the leader was 18 years my minor.

I kept the leader in my field of vision as my hamstrings and quads pushed me up a long hill that spanned the entire third mile. Eventually I noticed the leader slowing and I realized that he wasn’t running a 10k; he was only running a 5k and finishing for the day. I still had half of my race remaining. This also meant that I was firmly in the lead for the 10k.

I held my pace steady for the second half, only fading on the final uphill mile of the course, to claim a victory and pose proudly for the camera at the finish. I had something to be proud of: a year ago, I was not sure if I’d ever run again. Crazier yet, in college, my 10k timed run was about 56 minutes, and that was almost 20 years ago. On this day at Forest Park, one year after tearing several ligaments in my right foot, I clocked 39 minutes and won. I felt the closure from my foot injury that I desperately needed.

I am 17 minutes faster in a 10k than I was 20 years ago. Time is an illusion. That excites me more than any finish. I believe that I still have ample room for improvement. Regardless of how much improvement is in store, even if there is actually none left, I intend to keep running for many years into the future.

I remind myself that I am not striving to maximize my performance. I am in what I call “the long game.” The long game, for me, supersedes any “short-term outcomes.”

The “long game” goal has nothing to do with place, rank, or time. The aim is to continue having active adventures well into my 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I’d rather be the first centenarian to bike across Europe than a winner of any near-term race. I plan on signing up for plenty of events and having fun with all of them, but the long-game is where I set my sights.

Playing the long game helps put my exercise into perspective. So many people frown while they run, eyes glued to GPS watches, their banter mostly about boring adult things such as stride length and cadence.

All those things are relevant to running, certainly, but a soul tethered to a watch will inevitably miss the joy of gliding through summer air on two feet, for miles on end, possessing the ability to outlast every other animal on this earth with human endurance. It is the closest we can get to our ancestors as they persistence hunted their prey, running until their targets collapsed and their bodies crashed to the earth.

If affixed to a watch, how can one have the courage to accelerate madly downhill with a smile on the face and a childlike reckless mentality? Steady pace is the way of the watch. Steady pace can be boring, though it does have value in allowing for time to connect and chat with other people. There is no gambling, however, in steady pace. I think we need to gamble every so often. Still yet, the eyes that only see clocks will miss the wildlife that envelopes the environment.

In playing the long game one can appreciate longevity. I do not necessarily mean life longevity. How much exercise can actually extend lifespan is debatable (probably not as significant a factor on lifespan as our genetics). However, I do believe that the quality of our years spent on this planet can be extended. I’d rather be a 60-year-old still running like a 20-year-old than a 60-year-old struggling to mount a flight of stairs.

So the 10k was exciting. It was fun, it put me in a great mood, and it left me planning the next run. It brought back the adrenaline rush I always felt from competition. Winning and breaking 40 minutes were welcome surprises. To quote Ozzy Osborne, “I don’t wanna stop.”

But now that 10k is in the past. The medal I was awarded is a bit of history. Life moves on to the next event and the next adventure.

Right now, I’m resting the running legs for my birthday month and focusing on cycling. Running will pick up again in September.

Next week, to combat mortality and 37 years on planet earth, I will bike up the Eastern United States, from Virginia to Pittsburgh. It will take several days and hundreds of miles.

It’s the next adventure, and a relevant stage in the long game.

Along Mountain Roads: Bikepacking Trip 1

First bikepacking trip complete! It was grueling, but worth it. The only lingering injury was a pinched nerve in my left hand, which I got on day 1 from gripping the handlebars too tight while riding uphill for long periods of time.

Mimetic Desires and the Art of Being Scrappy

For most of my life, I have been what I consider “scrappy.” I did have one relatively brief flirtation with the pursuit of material things. It lasted about a year and a half, and was born from a number of events that are another story entirely. For the most part, however, I have not followed the normal trajectory of pursuing “stuff”. Stuff does not usually interest me unless it enhances the things I can do. Experiences therefore reign supreme.

“We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling ourselves off.” - Eric Weiner

The chase for more is born from mimetic desires. We form our desires by studying the desires of other people. It is only natural because we are social creatures. It is what salesmen and influencers prey on.

On a materialistic level, we pursue the homes, cars, clothes, shoes, gadgets, devices, and screens that everyone is in a chase to own. The race makes us frenzied dogs foaming at the mouth for more. We believe we need “it”, whatever “it” is. A model flaunts it in a chic location, under a perfect lighting scheme. It sheens on a corporate VP’s wrist, and the diamonds tantalize! It is everywhere, omnipresent, hovering around us like God, whispering to us that we lack it, but that perhaps if we swipe our credit cards it will bring us salvation. Salvation, of course, is constantly just out of our grasp.

I try to remember: there are some races that are impossible to win.

I have never felt much mimetic desire for things. Only when mistakenly engaging myself in a social competition do they arise. Only for one brief period did I give in to the race. For the most part, however, I was never even on the track.

I lived in a garage during my last year in Los Angeles. I followed that with three years of living with my parents, in my old bedroom, while I worked full time.

For my first major foray into work, I bought one pair of twenty dollar shoes at Wal-Mart and wore them until the soles were completely removed from the uppers.

I drove the first college vehicle I bought until I moved to China, and owning one vehicle felt like owning one too many. I sold it when I knew I was China-bound.

I lived in the cheapest apartment in Chapel Hill with a roommate shortly after moving out of my parents’ house, with approximately 700 total square feet of space to share. I rented it because it was the cheapest apartment I’d ever heard of.

I moved to China for two years. Most of my first year was spent in a dormitory with little heating and no A/C. I spent the summers sweating and the winters sleeping in my winter gloves, jacket, and scarf. I spent most of my second year in an apartment bedroom smaller than most closets. It had a severe roach infestation that I battled until my return to the United States.

My homes, my clothes, my shoes, my cars, were often the worst, and I never cared. I never cared because it meant avoiding debt.

Harsh conditions do not trouble me, nor do people with nice things.

I returned to America at age 33 and it is probably no surprise that scrappiness is now engrained in me. My current apartment is 800 square feet and that feels like way too much. I bought a car fully with cash in 2019 and it also felt like too much, so I sold it in 2020.

I am scrappy by nature. I prefer to sweat. I enjoy wiping dead bugs off my brow and legs after a long summer bike ride.

My mind goes to day 2 of my recent bikepacking adventure. I’m somewhere outside the north entrance to Skyline Drive, at a camp site pretty far removed from what most would call “civilization.”

Next to our tent is a trailer, and outside the trailer is a shirtless man, living alone, drinking a beer and watching the sunset. He’s smiling, but it isn’t the simple urban smile of someone posing for a selfie in front of a cappuccino. Out by the Blue Ridge Mountains, he has nothing he needs to buy. He’s smiling because the mountains are enough.

Remove exposure to those who desire things, and you remove the desires for those same things.

This means removing the people who pursue “more” from your close proximity, but it also means removing exposure to the gadgets that bring them within close proximity.

This is no easy task. How badly do you want to leave behind your longing for more?