Post-COVID

Apparently COVID affects everyone uniquely. For me, there were about three days that felt like hell, followed by a rapid recovery. My symptoms peaked from last Saturday to Monday, then eased through Tuesday and Wednesday. I tested negative on Thursday.

Getting the virus was a harsh reminder of life priorities. At the apex of my symptoms, most of my material possessions ceased to matter again. That, at least, was refreshing.

I guess we often fool ourselves into thinking that we can purchase our way into permanence. Maybe that’s part of the lure or a “high quality purchase.” If the item lasts forever, we’re more apt to feel like we will as well. A shirt that disintegrates in three washes is oddly a reminder of ones own vulnerability.

It just takes one brutal virus to eliminate the hope of eternal life. If we’re dust in the wind, then we’re truly on borrowed time, and our possessions should be considered rentals at best. What price it is to pay for a house full of nice things that eventually end up in a dumpster.

My phone often shows me photo memories of times spent in China. I poured through some of these old photos more closely today and realized that I really liked that version of myself. He was less willing to give a damn about the quality of clothes, for example, and more apt to focus on having memorable experiences. He didn’t give a damn about “fit”. Clothes kept you warm, or shielded you from the sun. That was it, and it was freeing.

I don’t think it’s too late to go back to that version of myself. It doesn’t mean going back to China, but rather rejecting the materialism inherent in corporate America. It means accepting that your time on earth is brief, so you might as well enjoy it rather than constantly seeking false means of insurance against its end.

Minimalist Thoughts

A few days ago, someone asked me about minimalism. I had done a few local podcasts with a friend about minimalism and as a consequence I am sometimes viewed as a “minimalist.” Hopefully this website URL nixes that idea.

That said, this person asked me if I thought folding phones would be good for minimalism. “After all,” he said, “they take up less space.”

This very question underscores a deep flaw in a lot of minimalists: that ironically, they are still obsessed with things. The obsession with possessions has just switched to a preference for things with a “minimalist aesthetic.” The inner materialist is not destroyed, but rather transferred to new yearnings. Thoughts are still dominated by acquisition, but isn’t the purpose of minimalism supposed to be free oneself of consumerism?

I replied that if you want a phone that helps you to not give a damn about “things,” your best bet would be to have a phone that you don’t give a damn about. Get a cheap Motorola (if you actually need a new phone) or something that that is so low on the status totem pole, it’s unlikely to encompass any amount of time or thought at all. Don’t get a thousand dollar “folding phone.” After all, the whole idea of “minimalism” is to not place one’s focus on material possessions. I don’t think Seneca or any stoic would care about how big or small his phone was. Seeking more compact models that take up less space has the same end result as seeking iPhone upgrades: you’re still constantly looking for the next best thing.

This flaw in minimalism can also be seen in the pursuit of clothes. I know minimalists who are constantly seeking “more minimalist pants.” In most cases these are pants that serve multiple functions: pants you can bike, hike, travel, or go to the office in. They are pricier and tend to be made of more premium materials. And therein lies the issue: the pursuit of minimalist pants is a materialist pursuit. Whatever space you save in “wardrobe space” is negated by the time you lose thinking about pants.

If one was really seeking minimalist clothes, I think a more effective approach would be to shop for basic and affordable things and then forget about “how many things are in a wardrobe.” The whole idea is to not think about your wardrobe at all.

Live with imperfection. That’s the only way to really free yourself of consumerism.

I state this to emphasize the obvious: there is a maximalist lurking inside most minimalists.

Revisiting a Stream

Yesterday evening I found myself revisiting a random assemblage of childhood memories. They arrived with no real theme or anything to tie them together. They had no reason to present themselves at all, really. I must have unwittingly removed a filter that hid them.

One such memory was of lounging at a neighborhood swimming pool on a peak summer day and eating pizza (I was about 12), while swatting away the North Carolina horseflies. Another was of a final high school trip to a comedy club with my classmates after graduation. It was the last time I ever saw many of them.

I often think that as years pass, there becomes less and less to tie me to my own memories. Cells change, die, and are replaced. I am less of who I was yesterday than who I was ten minutes ago, never mind ten years ago. And the person 20 years ago who experienced these events now seems to exist only in these fragmented scenes that sometimes play, in kaleidoscopic fashion, in my mind.

I think that as nostalgic as I can be for the naivety of adolescence, even returning to these places I once lived would not elicit the same feelings. Rick Rubin describes it in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being like this: you cannot really cross the same stream twice because the water is always different. Similarly, the place is different, the people are different, and I am different.

These thoughts lead me to believe that it would be nice if our minds could absorb every minute of every scene we experience, and maintain that memory permanently. But the mind has limited RAM; it lets go of things that it arguably shouldn’t. As the mind ages, it does the opposite of what we wish: it loses much of the past when we wish to maintain all of it. And the older the memory, the weaker the circuitry in the program that is the self. We need photos or videos to evoke the feelings we had, and even then we can only experience some diluted version of the memory.

It is tragic, and yet it also heightens the importance of fully absorbing the present moment. Now can only be experienced once.

Swimming: Beginnings and Endings

I found myself reflecting today on how my swimming career began and ended with largely similar feelings.

1996. I was eleven and lost in a crowd of spectators at the US Southern Zone Swimming Championships. I was at the pool that hosted the Atlanta Olympics, watching the finals of a meet that I barely qualified for. I wasn’t fast enough to make the finals and was largely an afterthought on the North Carolina zone team. I felt so neglected that I’m sure most of the coaching staff forgot I was on that team as well. There were too many point scorers for me to be noticeable.

I was lost in thought watching the finals, thinking about how I wanted to compete and admittedly how I wanted to be adored, as the champions on the pool deck seemed to be. Winning felt like something far off in the distance, about as intangible as high school. Everyone was cheering for the swimmers in the finals, as was I, but my mind was yearning to be something more than a spectator. My ego wanted me to be one of those swimmers being cheered for.

I stood next to a coach for a club team in North Carolina who introduced himself as “Coach Hunt.” I remember him telling me that I’d be in the finals one day. “Your time will come,” he said. I was surprised he even knew I was a North Carolina swimmer.

I won my share of Southern Zone Swimming titles in the five years since that conversation. Admittedly none of those victories satisfied my ego like I expected them to; I just kept chasing higher, and my ascension in sport continued for years. Every victory just led to a meet with still-faster athletes.

In that moment at that 1996 meet, however, I couldn’t think of anything beyond “not being one of the slow people.” It was an experience that left me resentful; it felt like I was at a meet that I didn’t belong in, swimming a few races that no one cared about. I hated that feeling.

2008. Omaha, Nebraska. The US Olympic Swimming Trials were sold out in a stadium that could host an NBA game. My last important race was in a pool as large-scale and magnificent as that 1996 pool.

I finished my final race at the US Olympic Swimming Trials, a semifinals 50 meter freestyle, and knew immediately that I didn’t advance to the finals. My swimming career was over.

The 50 meter freestyle was more of a bonus swim for me. My best chance at making the Olympic team was in either the 100 or 200 meter freestyle events, and those already transpired. I was knocked out in the semifinals of both races. I didn’t have a legitimate chance at a 50 meter freestyle Olympic birth, but I raced it anyways since I had an Olympic Trials qualifying time. It was sort of a “last hurrah,” a final gallop before saying my goodbyes to some longtime friends. It was a cyclist’s equivalent of a final stage at a tour, knowing that a top finish is fully out of reach.

I remember the ending being abrupt and followed by a strange silence that engulfed my mind, in spite of the raucous cheering taking place at the Trials. Most of my University of Texas teammates had already gone home. If we didn’t qualify for the Olympics, we had to return to Austin, Texas following our final swim. I was no different.

I skipped a routine warm down swim. There would be no practice the next week, so what was the point? My coach was busy with some of his other swimmers, so I embarked on a long walk back to a hot tub. I sat in that hot tub for awhile, just breathing and relaxing. It had been a very long time since I just “let myself be comfortable.” I had a difficult year leading to the Trials. I broke my right wrist just nine months prior, and my shoulders had slowly deteriorated through the course of my final NCAA season. None of that mattered anymore.

At one point I chatted with another swimmer, an older Olympian, and we exchanged a few jokes. That swimmer had already qualified for the Olympics. We’d both be packing our bags, but heading in opposite directions. The conversation was a brief moment that I only remember because it immediately followed the last race of my life.

I packed my swimming gear and dressed. There were a lot of coaches and swimmers I’d known for many years, some for over half of my life. I said my goodbyes to some of them and eventually found my own coach, Eddie Reese. I shook his hand and told him thanks for everything.

Then I walked to my hotel alone on a cool summer night in Omaha, Nebraska. The sport of swimming would continue, of course, but my time as a swimmer was over. There was no greater meaning that dawned on me upon that final race, nor was there a sense of closure. It just sort of ended.

The journey ended about like it began: alone, while the competition continued past dusk and the spectators kept cheering, regardless of my presence.

I think it’s a fitting life lesson.

Navigation

I was at the bus stop at North Hanley station, where I saw an older blind man navigate a narrow and inclined walkway. The walkway had a sharp 90 degree turn and cement sides. He had nothing but his cane for help.

Yet the blind man somehow managed to navigate this walkway unscathed. At the bottom of the walkway, a woman whom I assumed was his wife waited for him. They hugged, and she led him to their vehicle.

I thought in that moment that regardless of any hardships I’d faced before, they still pale in comparison to the battles that millions of others face. I also thought that life’s too short to engage in these sorts of battles alone.

In the blind man’s walk from the metro station, I saw not only the value of companionship, but also the benefit of continuing on for someone else, and the potential added boost of motivation that provides. This sort of benefit clearly makes navigating something that would be seemingly impossible, possible.

Speaking of navigation, it’s common in the post-COVID era to see cars roar through red lights, swerve into oncoming traffic to bypass a slower car, or drive recklessly in various other ways. It’s easy to be upset by this sort of behavior, and indeed these sorts of drivers reek of anxiety and manic depression, which probably permeates to other drivers on the road.

However, the universe is playing a cruel joke on them. By attempting to cut corners, they save no time. They risk life and limb, sure, but they are still bound to a system of traffic flows and employment start times. They still sit in a car motionless, and they lose life from the anxiety of their haste. Their work begins and ends at the same hour, and the tasks completed will be the same. Worse yet, nothing kills a body quite like stress. Their intense accelerations further waste higher amounts of fuel, which they must pay.

They are not gaining time, they’re losing it.

They are still white rabbits in the end, rushing for a date, and still therefore slaves to the red queen.

One of the ultimately ironies in life is that those who rush tend to waste the largest amounts of life.

Footprints in the Snow

It has snowed twice in Saint Louis over the past ten days.

The first time, five inches were expected, but the clouds only delivered a light powdering over the streets coupled with some ice. I ordered some Yaktrax that were delivered the day before the storm and wore them for a morning run. The Yaktrax allowed good traction and I was never close to slipping.

As I darted back and forth along the Riverfront Greenway, I noted the tracks that my footprints left behind in the snow. These markers signify that someone ran through the inclement weather, though they’ll also melt and disappear in a day’s time.

Time will eventually erase my footprints, as it does all things.

I had abandoned most, if not all, of the athletic footprints I’ve left behind. As an elite level swimmer I won hundreds of medals and trophies, some of them at the NCAA, national, and international level. I also lost most of them, if not all of them. My reasoning for tossing them is that I never felt it’s healthy to cling to something in the past. I want to constantly be forging ahead, and I aim to direct my thoughts more on what’s next than on archived text.

I’m actually keeping some of my latest running medals though. Last weekend I ran a personal best 15k, and within the race I had a personal best 5k and 10k. Improvement is fun at any age; it’s also possible at any age, though not in any activity.

Now that I’m more than 15 years removed from swimming, I see how memories and times steadily fade. I found myself Googling some of my past accomplishments that I had forgotten. How did I forget that I was voted most valuable swimmer after my freshman year of college? I think I forgot about that within a year of finishing school. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s interesting that it happened. I see now that having a visible signifier of some of these things may keep them in my memory longer, and without memory we have no identity.

I recall visiting my old college coach in 2015. My final record (for an 800 yard freestyle relay) had just been broken; it had stood on a wall of my old collegiate swimming pool for more than seven years. At the time it was an American and NCAA record. He had the record in his office, a long strip of cardboard that was previously affixed to the pool record board. He gave the cardboard strip to me. I’ve since lost it and wish I hadn’t.

The cynic in me may say that a medal is nothing but a chunk of material to be ultimately tossed by someone else when I’m permanently gone. Everything that remains after I’m gone, in fact, would be a heap of donations and disposal for those who are left behind. There is some truth to this.

However, the optimist says that a medal is a footprint left in the snow, and by maintaining it the snow may melt a bit slower. It’s true that the footprint will fade, but I might as well cherish it while it remains. One doesn’t need to obsess over something to cherish it. The trash heap can wait a few more decades.

Our footprints in the snow are nice reminders of great adventures.

Poison

In honor of Alice Cooper’s 75th birthday, Powerwolf released a cover of his hit song “Poison.”

I’m glad the track is more uptempo than the 80’s original. It doesn’t add much more than some additional speed, but I still enjoyed it.

“I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison.” Damned if that isn’t my thought every time I smell fresh-baked cookies or pizza.

Another random thought when I listen to “Poison” regards the wellness industry as it exists today. They say there’s an industry born from every problem posed. This is true in any capitalist society, and companies are inventing problems at breakneck speed. To have their industry thrive, they must convince you that something in your everyday life, which you assumed to be benign, is actually poisonous. It might even be your natural body that must be cured.

These companies really thrive when they’re able to convincingly exaggerate the danger of the problem.

I’ve seen recent advertisements tell me that tap water isn’t safe, and therefore I must buy some egregiously expensive purifiers. But that’s not enough because the purifiers strip water of all minerals. So, I also need to buy minerals to put back in the water. Well what is the point of living in a developed nation if decent water is only for the aristocrats, and must be paid for with subscription?

Likewise you need air purifiers and various scents because you are constantly breathing in poison too.

There are admittedly places where this is true. There are certainly countries where I wouldn’t recommend going outside without a well-filtered mask, nor would I recommend drinking the tap water. And it’s also true that tap water often contains fluoride and chlorine, which when consumed in large quantities can be bad for your health. But how bad?

A multitude of skincare companies tell us about how harmful the sun is. Stay inside, they say! Or if you dare to venture out, buy their cream and lather it all over yourself first! It’s a matter of life and death.

It is true that the sun may induce cancer into the sedentary office individual who dwells under fluorescents all day (and all too eager to fry at the beach for a week’s vacation). But we somehow survived for thousands of years with a fraction of the sun cancer we see now, and I suspect it’s because we absorbed sunlight in more reasonable daily amounts.

How did we ever survive beyond adolescence before these companies existed?

My point to all of this is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decipher the real poisons from the fake ones. Then again, at the end of the day everything is poison if overdosed on, and it’s also true that modern society is causing a lot of individuals to suffer horribly, especially in their later years.

But still, isn’t a better solution to modern maladies to shift culture instead of to simply buy more products?

I’m still convinced that one can live well in a modern developed country at a reasonable budget… if one can decipher truth from the BS, and if one can engage in a healthy community.

Ice Cold

The Saint Louis air was frigid and dry on Sunday morning. I exited my apartment just before dawn broke and I exhaled a visible plume. I quickly wrapped my arms around my torso and shivered.

The run was through Simpson park, my first run in the area. I noted a river glinting silver to one side of me. The desiccated and barren trees made it seem like something crucial in the park was missing.

I was on a group run but somehow still lost in thought. My mind traced back to a night terror I had several nights prior.

In the dream I was swimming in a mysterious river’s dark waters, against current. Storm clouds gathered suddenly and my stroke rate accelerated, eager to escape the river. Eventually I made it to some shore, where a group of parents stood vigilant.

“Where are the kids?” One of them asked me.

And suddenly in the dream I was a coach, and I was supposed to be leading a team upstream as part of a workout.

The rain pelted everything. Thunder roared. Shadows stretched. Panicked, I jumped back in the river in search of the athletes. One by one, I started to find them. I woke up wracked with guilt.

I don’t know what the dream meant, if anything, but I find it interesting that I’ve had several memorable dreams about rivers over the past few weeks.

I finished the group run feeling fresh, which was a surprise. The day before was the longest run I’d ever completed: 16.9 miles (27 km). The fresh feeling in my legs was a good signifier that I’m adapting to longer distances.

Looking ahead, I am signed up for a running event on Saturday, a 15k run. I have it in me to run faster than I ever have before if I choose to push myself, and that’s exciting; improvement usually is. I’m not sure, however, that it’s competition that engages me with running. I think I’m running because it has been some sort of act of self-healing. I’m feeling steadily more rejuvenated. Through the act of running I see potential longevity.

There is something about the imperfection of an outdoor run that makes it perfect. It’s always too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, or includes too many hills. I realize through outdoor endurance exercise how little control I have over the universe. My lack of control is somehow freeing. A surfer can’t catch anything good by fighting against the current, but rather has to take what is given, even if it’s almost nothing. Similarly I can’t have a good run by exerting beyond my limits, and I can only fight snow and ice so much. It’s a game of patience. There’s a brief period of time in the day for some runs, and then a whole lot of waiting between the gaps.

Life happens between those gaps.

Random Thoughts: Form and Function

I think for any artist, it is a mistake to think that improving form will automatically improve function.

Consider the career trajectory of a rock musician. The upstart rocker is young, raw, and still developing technical skills on his or her instrument. Sometimes a band will release an album that “takes the world by storm” before its members can read a line of music. What most fans will consider their best album is often an album created from what the band members profess as “little knowledge of what they’re doing.”

An aged rock musician may say, “My skills have improved drastically since my first album.” Though the technical skills may improve, the quality of the music diminishes. The earlier albums had a rawness that lacked sound form, but walloped with effective function. Resonant art requires feeling. A fast solo does nothing without emotion embedding it.

I’m sure the band members of Metallica can play circles around their past selves. They can hit every old solo blindfolded. That does not mean that modern Metallica music is better, however. If anything, the music has objectively staled (almost no one would argue that Death Magnetic is a superior album to Ride the Lightning). Where rock music counterpart Megadeth has an advantage is their continued sense of urgency. Every song is still imbued with feeling. The fifty-year-old has the same attitude as his 18-year-old self. There is still pain, triumph, and loss behind the song structure. The quest continues, and therefore, so does the art.

The issue is similar for a writer. A writer’s prose may improve over the years, but that says nothing of the story he or she may wish to tell. A writer may edit a sentence a hundred times, but each successive edit does not necessarily improve the sentence. The master of syntax is by no means the master storyteller. That first drafted sentence, the impulsive one, may be grammatically worse, but it also may pack more punch. Even if embarrassingly poor in structure, it probably impacts the reader more than the hundredth edit. By the hundredth edit, can it even be said that the writer still maintains the intention of the original sentence? After all, the first sentence was probably written on feeling. The hundredth sentence is often written to impress an audience. Something was lost along the way.

My point is that effective art requires work, but it is a mistake to believe that function requires perfect form. This should be good news to any aspiring artist because it gives him or her permission to be imperfect, so long as they have something to say and a fiery means of saying it. It should also illuminate why a guitar virtuoso is often not the writer of a hit single.

Loss Aversion

We hate what we lose more than we love what we win.

This generalization of the human mind has been proven on a neurological level. Through evolution, our neurotransmitters have become wired so that the hatred of losing outweighs the love of winning. This was pivotal thousands of years ago in preserving our species. If dwelling in a cave, you must protect your very finite resources, which is far more important than risking limbs for another banana.

I find myself spending upwards of one hour each day rehabilitating my broken collarbone. I have physical therapy twice each week. Whatever exercises are assigned to me to complete at home are completed both in the morning and at night. I find myself obsessed with getting something back that I once had. The thought of losing complete mobility is unacceptable.

I do not think it’s the thought of winning anything that motivates me. I think it’s the fear of losing the complete mobility I once had in my right arm. I do feel confident that at some point, the mobility will return.

On my first day of physical therapy, my arm could not rise to a 90 degree angle. Currently it is comfortably rising to 145 degrees. So, it’s getting better. The difference isn’t tangible in days, but it is in weeks.

In truth, “100%” is a constantly changing target, which makes it difficult to gauge in the first place. Regardless of how well things heal, my 100% at age 37 will be different from my 100% at age 16. Biologically, I am different. My 100% at age 60 will likewise be different. It may not be better or worse: it will just yield different results.

A blizzard is creeping towards Saint Louis. With it, the temperature will be 0 F (-17 C). Winds will lash city concrete, brick, mortar, and metal at upwards of 30 mph (48 mph). With the windchill, it will be as cold as -25 F (-32 C).

My logical brain tells me to stay inside and avoid frostbite. My risk appetite makes me want to brave the streets and to take the risk, in order to prevent a loss of running fitness. The solution, maybe, is somewhere in the middle of two extremes.

Losing hurts, and I’ve lost many times in 37 years. I think of those losses still, though I don’t obsess over them. The past is already written after all, whereas the future is a blank page. For example, I almost won the NCAAs in 2008 in the 200 yard freestyle, but I was passed in the final yards. For many it was my defining race, something to cherish; after all, I was faster than American-record pace at the halfway mark. When my mind replays this race, though, it doesn’t think back on it as fondly: it searches for ways that I could have won. Loss aversion even affects memories. The blessing here is that I have always had a motivating memory to keep me moving.

I will continue to lose: it is a part of life. Losing is not dying though, as my continued existence has proven. Maybe it’s just a lesson to value what we still have and enjoy it. Maybe it’s a motivational tool to just keep going after a difficult loss. Losing often propels us forward.

If we don’t finish our first attempt at a marathon, for example, we’ll need something to get back up and reattempt the run. The hatred of having failed must be enough to make us want to try again.

And it’s always worthwhile to get back up.

Too Much, Too Soon

5 am. A steady rain pattered the concrete around me as I embarked on a morning run. A haze crawled through the downtown area and only the street lamps provided halos of illumination.

I was supposed to perform a 12 minute all-out effort after a 15-30 minute warmup. The day before I felt decent, but had a slight ache in my left knee and felt what could be a nascent shin splint in my right leg.

After a mile of warm-up I realized the pain was only worsening. The shin splint stabbed inside my leg. My left knee was visibly swollen and barely bending. I attempted a few 80 yard accelerations, but was unable to gain full-speed on any of them.

As I attempted one final burst of speed in my 12 minute run, I felt an additional twinge of pain in my collarbone (the one that broke). I knew that I was toast for the day. The body had enough.

In short, I reaped the consequences of attempting too much, too soon. I walked about a mile back to my apartment in the rain, completely unable to run.

How did this happen? Well, I was essentially bedridden for a month, and had attempted runs of one hour or more for 5 days a week immediately upon being cleared by an Orthopedic to run again. Obviously, this was not feasible at all.

It was a difficult experience for me; before the collarbone break I ran almost daily for 8 months with almost no issues. Suddenly it felt like my body was crumbling.

In a sense my body was crumbling. A collarbone break affects a wide range of upper body movements; I’m still severely limited in what I can do with my upper body. The lower body, unable to perform strength exercises, lost a lot of whatever adaptation to running I had accumulated.

By attempting too much running too soon, I invited a host of issues into my lower body. I have no choice but to take a step back.

I’d say that this is a lesson learned, but in truth I’m not sure. Time well tell. It has historically been my nature to overdo things. The blog title is “Maximal Matt,” not “Precautionary Matt.”

Sometimes I wonder if the end of me will come from an attempt to overdo an activity. Maybe it will be a 90-year-old attempt at an ultramarathon or a 100-year-old attempt to bike across the United States. This would be one of the more virtuous ways to go out in my opinion. The way I’ve always seen it is that you don’t truly know your limit until you’ve crossed it.

I crossed my limit the last two weeks; it hurts because as much as I want to attain the distances I feel that I’m capable of running, I know that this phase of running will have to be a slow build from a much smaller starting point.

When gloomy, I look for inspiration in runners who know how to always find joy in the experience. Camille Herron, the 100-mile world record holder for women, always seems to be smiling, even 80 miles into a treacherous trail run. Joy is possible, even in the suffering of it all.

Maybe I can’t run one hundred miles tomorrow, but I can still potentially enjoy the one that I can manage.

Secret River

I had a dream in which I knew about a secret river.

It was somewhere near my old house in North Carolina. In the dream I was still living in that house. The forest surrounding it was denser in my dream than in reality. It was practically a jungle and the underbrush left no obvious path.

I walked through this forest, walled by greenery, and a canopy of leaves blocked the sky. Some strands of sunlight filtered through the canopy and dappled the forest floor.

I noted that the river had excellent rapids for rafting. In the dream I pulled a kayak from my house, deep into the forest, to an embankment on the river where the rapids started. I then kayaked down the river alone, screaming with joy as the river pushed me through the rapids, rising and falling, occasionally spinning, white foam washing over me.

No one else had ever discovered this river; when I told people about it they didn’t believe me. People were curious why I dragged a kayak through a forest alone, but they let me continue my routine each day, totally undisturbed. I’d return from the rapids and detail the thrill of my ride, but my stories would fall on deaf ears.

Still, I had the river to myself, and I had the stories… and that was all that I needed.

I wish I knew what the dream meant, if it meant anything at all. I woke up trying to figure out what river it was. Was it the Neuse river? That was near my house and also had rapids, but it had been discovered and was regularly occupied by kayakers.

It took a few minutes for me to realize that this river was imagined. Still, I want to believe that it’s out there somewhere. If it is, though, will I keep it a secret?

Getting Back Up: Returning to Running

I just completed a full week of running. I broke my collarbone on November 6th and completely avoided exercise for the rest of the month; I believe that healing something like a bone break requires as much rest as possible. In that timespan I lost a considerable amount of conditioning and mobility, especially in the arm attached to the broken bone.

I still have a lot of physical therapy to go before I’m “fully active”, but it does feel great to resume running. I notice my collarbone more often than not, but the pain is never more than a dull ache.

I’m beginning a buildup towards a marathon. I was asked by a friend if, considering the collarbone break, I intended to cancel my marathon event. The answer is, “Definitely not.” My marathon isn’t until the beginning of April. I tell myself that people have bounced back from worse. This is true. Hell, Bane broke Batman’s back and he still managed to heal and return for another fight.

There are some issues that I’ll have to deal with over the next few weeks. One is that for the next month or so I’ll need to sacrifice strength training for physical therapy. That’s just how it is. We only have so much time in the day. Strength training can enhance endurance running performance, but the difference is negligible compared to time devoted to actual running. I’m just glad that I can run right now.

My marathon training plan focuses my first few weeks on a specific running duration, with runs held mostly to a “perceived effort” intensity of “5 out of 10” or lower. This is part of a phased approach to training. The purpose of the first phase is to focus the body on adapting to a higher volume. I’m lucky that the first phase of running is mostly at a low intensity: I wouldn’t want to do much sprinting right now anyways, nor do I think it would be a good idea.

On Saturday, I did participate in a Saint Louis running event—a 12k run—in order to work on my pacing. Having been immobile for a month, I tempered my speed expectations and made the goal of this event to pace my run well. I did manage to do this. I negative split the run (the second half of my run was faster than the first half), which is the first time I’ve managed to do this at an event. If there is a “lesson learned” from the event, it’s that I switched to a faster gear of speed a little too soon; the final half mile was absolutely hellish.

I followed that event with a slow-paced one hour and 45 minute run this morning. And wow was it slow. However, it wasn’t as slow as the same run I did the week before. That’s a good sign; it means that I’m progressing, not regressing, and my conditioning is improving.

I’m happy with where I’m at, all things considered. It could always be worse. The collarbone broke, but the bone could have struggled to reattach. It could have required surgery. I could have ruptured a tendon, or suffered long Covid. I still don’t recommend breaking your collarbone—attempting to sleep is absolute hell—but there are worse injuries (though admittedly not that many).

Though bone breaks are never fun, I have no choice but to remain an optimist. Life’s too short not to find a reason to smile. Each injury makes me appreciate health that much more.

Health is a finite thing, a resource far more scarce than oil or gold. Bodily attrition continues gradually and eventually loses to the onslaught of maladies trying to break in. There comes a day when no Trojan Horse is necessary to enter; the gates collapse with the final push of Father Time. Yes, our days are numbered, so I find it purposeful to spend them doing the things that I enjoy.

Running through Pain

One should be keenly aware of the difference between fatigue and injury. Sometimes I walk the fine line between the two. I risked walking that line today.

A dense fog crawled through downtown and veiled the Mississippi River. It blanketed everything with gray, rendering the morning a shapeless purgatory.

Signs of life showed when a single gull glided through this fog, only to eventually have the mist engulf it somewhere over the Mississippi.

Later I saw the fog devour a flock of geese in similar fashion. Eventually the gray devours us all.

I trodded forward. My right foot initially ached and I could not tell whether the issue was bone or ligament. The cause was likely too much running over the weekend.

Again I found myself quickly fatiguing, though I did feel slightly faster and fresher than Sunday. As the miles passed, the pain in my right foot seemed to abate. That’s a sign that the issue is not related to bone.

I completed one hour and eighteen minutes of running, if you’d call it a run. My pace is currently an average of a full minute slower per mile than it was just two months ago at the same relative effort. However, it feels good to just finish.

My right arm ached less than it did on Sunday. That’s a good sign too. I was able to move the arm a little more (you need a little natural swing with your stride, I think). It’s getting there. I’m on the mend.

I have my first session of Physical Therapy today. Six weeks total, two sessions per week, and in theory I’ll be at 100%. That’s a very nice thought.

Declines in fitness can be precipitous. Then it’s a slow and grueling ascend back to where you were. That may initially seem unfair, but would it be worth it if it was easy?

The Expense of the Present

I had a dream last night in which I was on a party boat, somewhere near a far-off Pacific island, along with several coaches and teammates from my adolescence. The boat skidded over the gentle waves of a clear blue Pacific towards an ethereal sunset. The sun washed everything in gold.

One of the coaches on the boat was an assistant swimming coach from when I was eleven years old named Will. I found myself telling him about my current training.

“I’m 37,” I told him, “And I’m wondering if I’ve had enough. I’m broken down, but I can still do it. And yet, what more is there to prove? I’m still performing at a high level at this age, but how much longer should I go?”

In the dream, it seemed, I was still competing as an elite level swimmer.

Yet the coach’s eyes were transfixed on the ocean, and he was barely paying attention. He didn’t care. Competition was a long time ago for him. He had moved on and shifted his priorities. Here, it seemed, the priority was to enjoy the beauty that the world offered.

“Should I compete another year?” I asked. I gazed around at the other coaches and teammates, but none of them paid any mind. They were relaxing and having some alcoholic beverages.

“I think I have another 42 second 100 yard freestyle in me,” I added. Yet no one responded.

“I think I can keep competing, but I’m tired. What am I chasing for? Should I go another year?”

Finally, another coached turned toward me and shrugged.

I looked down and realized that I was wearing competition apparel, whereas everyone else in the boat wore trunks and beach shirts.

Obviously my days as a competitive swimmer ended a long time ago, but currently I find myself building towards a marathon.

Maybe the dream was a reminder that a focus on the future, a focus on plotting and competing, must come at some expense of the present.

As I rehab this collarbone break, I find my mind often thinking of “getting the arm back to where it was.”

And what if it doesn’t? The ocean remains unchanged. The sun maintains its beauty. The coaches of the past do not cast judgment.

An aging athlete should not lose sight of the present.

An Object in Motion…

An object in motion stays in motion. The opposite is also true.

An inert object struggles mightily to move. The longer the object remains still, the more difficult it becomes to get the object moving again. A rusty old train will cough and wheeze smoke before its slow and lurching movement forward.

I’m finding this to be relevant for myself as I rehab my collarbone. Exercise for me has always been reliant on momentum. Because I always exercised, I always found “maintaining motion” to be relatively easy.

After a few weeks of being sidelined while waiting for my collarbone to heal, I’m finding the thought of movement to seem increasingly tiring. Wouldn’t it be easier to just sleep in?

The body and mind hate changing what they’re accustomed to. I can now see how dangerously easy it would be to forfeit exercise altogether. There’s always an excuse, after all. Work, family, appointments, and life stresses are legitimate reasons to not exercise daily.

I feel a sense of urgency to resume exercise. One can revert the habit of daily exercise surprisingly fast. The human mind will always prefer the easier option. I had never told my mind that an easier option exists, but now it knows that comfort exists in the land of avoidance.

The most difficult part of rehabbing a bone break is waiting to be healed. There is little I hate more than waiting. Days spent waiting for something in the future feel like wasted days. I know I’m close to healing though. Basic chores that were excruciatingly difficult to perform during the first weeks are now becoming easy again.

Hopefully, when I visit the orthopedic on Friday, I’ll be given the “ok” to rid my sling. I’ve been tempted to rid it regardless of the doctor’s orders, but I’ll continue to wait.

I think of the movie Snowpiercer, and the train that continuously races across the world for all of eternity, never to stop, forever on sleek tracks that roar forward. If it stops, its inhabitants die. In some ways I want to be that train.

Controlling Chance

There’s a desire in us to want control over a thing called chance. If you have mastery over chance, after all, you control your own fate.

How else can one explain the draw towards gambling, and the feeling of willing the cards into submission. “Luck is on my side,” we often tell ourselves, as though some deity named Fate is either an ally or a foe, and as though we can somehow bend the fabric of time and space in our personal favor.

It’s the desire to conquer chance that also leaves so many fearful of viruses, and so many obsessive with medicine. With the advertisements of a cure we see the means of preventing an arbitrary demise.

I also see signs of the human desire to conquer chance in the exercise industry. Athletes subscribe to every new fad and gadget possible in efforts to control their outcome. Dietary supplements, blood glucose monitors, ice baths, GPS watches, and VO2 Max machines are just some of the tools people use to control their outcome. I’m not criticizing these tools, as each of them can serve a useful purpose. I’ve used some of them personally. But with each of these “hacks” there is a desire to have control over one’s own outcome, to have finished the race before it begins, to watch the movie before the script is written.

It is this same burning desire to conquer fate that leads the modern Protestant-like athlete to overtrain. It is the overtrained athlete that sees success as a mathetmatical formula, as a means of “simply doing more at a faster pace.” The overtrained athlete wills his or her body towards a promised land, negligent of injury and pain perception. The watch shows a pace that must be maintained at any cost, on every day. Success is a matter of abiding by numbers.

It is this mentally that renders these types of athletes little more than the script in a computer program, rather than the programmer. The organic qualities of exercise are lost in an effort to gain power.

What is the solution? In my opinion, the solution is simple fun. It’s random, wild, and selfish fun. Exercise for the sake of joy.

Just watch kids exercise. They aren’t linear like adults. There is little planned because predeterminism is the enemy of a child, not the friend. Kids think little of athletic apparel, heart rate, or qualifying times. These are the dreads of the aged. And kids have something many adults don’t: smiles.

To relinquish control is a scary thing. However, as I’ve learned over the course of 37 years, we cannot control the future. We can make decisions that affect the future, but we never own rights to the final scene of the script.

We might as well enjoy what we have and save ourselves the existential dread.

Maybe luckily, I’ve never been good at gambling

Rehabilitation - Week 1

I started feeling significantly better approximately one week after the collarbone break. Though I cannot lift my bad arm over my shoulder, I am better able to extend the arm when it isn’t in a sling. Simple movements such as standing up and sitting down no longer hurt. Coughs and sneezes no longer send shockwaves of pain shooting through the shoulder and neck.

The key to recovery from injury is simple in summary and complex in execution: rest and sleep as much as humanly possible. I say that it’s complex in execution because adults have obligations. There’s a job to pay the bills, dishes to wash, clothes to launder, and errands to run. This is hustle culture, after all. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is the declaration of the productive. And yet obligations are typically hinged to stress. The body treats stress like it would any physical trauma. Therefore each stressor is a detractor from recovery.

I have to allow life to slow down a little. In order to heal the bone, I have to prioritize myself and my happiness.

Yesterday, meanwhile, I had a Zoom call with my upcoming marathon coach. I ultimately decided to team up with a coach because I have no running background and I’m attempting to cross personal uncharted territory. 26 miles is a long way to go for a swimmer who specialized in the 200 yard freestyle.

There was only one person I had in mind for coaching, and I’m happy with my choice.

Now is not a time for training. It’s a time for reposing, sleeping, and reflection. In the long run this is probably a good thing. I think we Americans overvalue work and undervalue rest. I had a long grind to the half marathons that I ran in October. The legs and feet needed a rest. With the extra rest, I also gain a few extra hours each day to appreciate the simple things.

I feel more comfortable resting at this stage in my life. My current training is a far cry from college athletics, where there’s a definitive ending to everything. Therefore, there is no rush to recovery. As a swimmer in college, I had four years to swim as fast as I could. The final times at the end of year four were final, and there would be no redos. Therefore, any significant injury could ruin everything. Worse, every vacation was equipped with the paranoia of losing a physical edge.

My timeline is stretched comfortably now. I look ahead in decades, not seasons. There is no specific time I have to hit and no deadline to hit it. I move for the sake of movement and joy. All times I strive for are arbitrary, and there is little pressure to hit them.

That in itself is reason to sleep comfortably.

Progression Run and Memories

I embarked on my weekly “long run” this morning a little before 7 am. Tomorrow is July 4th, Independence Day.

The run totaled 12 miles. I kept my pace in a low heart rate zone for the majority of the run; I’m mindful of the human tendency to overdo exercises. I accelerated the final 25 minutes of the run, but felt relatively fresh at the finish.

I prefer having the majority of my long runs in a low heart rate zone because I find myself in a meditative state while running at a prolonged low effort. My mind wanders. There are no thoughts of physical pain or fatigue. This pace is my “forever” zone. It is a pace in which time ceases to exist. My sights are on my environs, not the ground beneath me.

For a brief moment I thought about what I surprisingly miss from living in China (I’m staying in the US, but I did get a lot of value from my time in China). There are several things I admittedly miss, but I’ll only detail one of those things here: the struggle of it all. Through the struggle of figuring out how to persist in China, I found meaning.

The temperature, for example, was almost never ideal. In the summers I baked due to a lack of air conditioning. In the winters I froze due to a lack of adequate heating. And yet somehow I adapted (or attempted to as best I could). It was that adaptation that strengthened me.

In the return to a world utterly obsessed with perfect temperature regulation, I’ve found both comfort and a relative emptiness. The A/C puffs a cool breeze that both soothes my skin and drains my soul.

Every now and then I’ll turn off the air conditioning and let my apartment’s temperature shoot up to around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I try to remind myself that it’s discomfort that spurs growth, not comfort. I’ll let myself sweat it out at night.

I find “discomfort experiments” such as this worthwhile because I am building up to some extreme endurance activities. Endurance running and cycling require the ability to withstand and understand discomfort. So, I try to disrupt the status quo here and there. I think back to my life in China. I try to resist the innate temptation to overcompensate with comfort.

In China, my struggles were also exciting. The struggle to communicate, the struggle to eat adequately, the struggle to adapt. They caused stress and yet they enlivened me. I miss those things and more. I don’t plan to return to China, but these struggles taught me valuable lessons.

My thoughts of China were brief and mixed with several other random reflections.

Another thought I had on my trail run regarded the animals I often cross on my path. I’ve seen a menagerie of wildlife: geese, turkey, robins, crows, squirrels, rabbits, possums, and even a family of beaver. There is something deeply satisfying in crossing paths with these animals. I’ve gained a better understanding of some species-specific behavior. I’ve had a better glimpse of the world as it was meant to exist, outside the vice grip of the city.

Turkey, for example, are much flightier than geese, which will often “stand their ground” defensively. The turkey take off running.

I suspect that distance running is really about connectedness. You can’t find that on a treadmill. It’s about experiencing the earth’s surface, developing a relationship with it, and finding connection with nature. A treadmill is more of a torture device. I can’t run on those things for the life of me. They lack fun in every sense of the word.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. For the sake of memories I’ll post a photo that was taken about 4 years ago. This one still feels like yesterday. I feel like the thrill of it all captures how I think of my time in China, in general: exhilarating, nauseating, unique, and brief enough to feel like a dream.

I rode this in China and then fought to avoid puking for an hour afterward:

2021, Goodbye Forever

It’s time to pull the curtains on 2021. As Seneca is credited as saying, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

I spent the afternoon lounging outside Mike’s Bike Shop in Central West End with some pals who work the store. We shared a beer together; the weather was cool and yet bracing enough to wear just a tee. The atmosphere was jovial, a festive ambience in the air. Randoms sauntered by the shop, hopefully on walks without destinations, and wished us well.

For a change it seemed the world was content to pause. How nice to spend the last afternoon of the year outside, with random conversation about celebrity deaths (Betty White died shortly before her 100th birthday), crappy Hollywood sequels (common consensus is the new Matrix movie sucks), bike tire upgrades, and aging.

The store owner’s dog was adopted; I was told its previous owners brutally beat and starved it, nearly to death. It was nearly dead when found, reduced to being a skeleton wrapped in torn-up skin and containing a host of internal issues.

The dog cannot keep the owner out of his peripheral version. He constantly rested his head on the owner’s lap and gazed into the owner’s eyes, as if thinking, “my love for you will never end, and I’ll show you this devotion for every moment of my being.” The dog has a gentle demeanor. It’s as though because he realizes the full extent of pain’s possibilities and the horrors accompanying true suffering, he aims to make everything and everyone around him as comfortable as possible.

As the owner told me, “I had to build the dog from the bottom up, from a starved heap of bones to a living thing. Now he knows what the alternative feels like, and he loves what he has with every ounce of himself.”

And with that, my last relevant lesson of 2021: the darkest depths of fear and suffering give us the fullest appreciation for love and life. Further, we can’t fully appreciate health unless we’ve fully experienced a lack of it.

I couldn’t help but think of my foot when I think of the dog. “Building from the bottom up” describes what I’ve been doing with an injured foot for the final months of 2021. A new appreciation for walking is what I’m ending the year with.

Every walk is a gift. I was given a glimpse of the alternative to being bipedal. Therefore, I finished 2021 with a blessing: every painless step now feels like magic.

My friend told me, “God realized He couldn’t give you COVID this year, so he decided to hit you with a freakin’ car instead. Because that’s the equivalent challenge for the Manimal.”

And as I think about the reconstruction of my foot, I also think about the countless adventures from this year. Adventures are great, and if you are lucky enough to experience them with someone else, all the better.

A few highlights (many photos captures in Sights section):

• Lots of important weddings, one of them (my brother’s wedding) giving me a trip to Puerto Rico. And what a lovely week that was!

• A bikepacking trip through the Blue Ridge mountains!

• Key West, Florida, and the Hemingway house cats!

• Hiking Turkey Run in Indiana!

• Megadeth show!

• Hiking Elephant Rock and the forest and bluffs around it, and reaching the highest point of elevation in the state of Missouri!

• Trips to Missouri/Illinois wine country and the imbibing that ensued (Hermann, Augusta, St. Genevieve, Grafton, among others)

• Hiking through Shawnee National Forest (and drinking wine along the Shawnee Wine Trail on top of it).

• A trip down memory lane in North Carolina to see places, people, and things that were a relevant part of my life before my China days.

• Befriending Grant’s Farm goats and camels!

• Incredible Christmas light shows in Saint Louis

And now, on to the next adventure. Don’t spend too much time waxing nostalgic, my constant reader, or you’ll miss your next great opportunity. After all, the only constant is change…