David Goggins Ultramarathoner

I found this video on facebook of all places: Titled marathon videos.

David, who is also a Navy Sealcompleted the Mcnaughton 150 mile ultra-marathon in 33 hours.

In this motivational video he says quite a bit about the drive to finish things, to keep trying, and to perservere. For me this is the essence of why I run, kayak, or do anything. He says, “you have to be able to visualize yourself succeeding.” This really is why most people stay on the couch, they cannot picture the steps in between taking action and success. Whether it is running, kayaking, or biking, I’ve always had to have a mental picture of what my line is. In surf kayaking nothing can be more true. You have to be able to picture the greenwater ride before take-off otherwise you end up munched. The same holds true for running. I had to be able to visualize what 26.2 miles would feel like and picture myself finishing in order for it to happen. If anything that moment will stand with me for the rest of my life, because I had worked so hard to get there, and perhaps performed even better than I expected, it was one of the best days of my life.

Granted failure often teaches us more. All of my ugly swims before nailing a good roll were demonstrably more effective than successes in the pool. Yet I have to mentally picture the kayak sitting calmly upside down, setting up, the sweep and the layback to be able to roll up when it is really chaotic in the surf zone.

This video of David is pretty great, as is his cause. Being able to complete so many ultra-marathons with so many injuries defies conception even for people who have completed marathons. While I am not typically a flag-waver, these are the sort of people I want fighting for, and representing my country.

The Kal-Haven Trail Link up to Downtown Kalamazoo

Runners and cyclists rejoice, a new low traffic route is available from downtown Kalamazoo. Right near Westnedge ave, the trailhead can be picked up and taken all the way to 10th avenue.

I ran the portion to Nichols this Sunday. Here is my route, (approximately).

The qualified state of bliss from Running

Any runner will tell you that if you get moving, putting one foot in front of the other in rapid succession, your brain will release its firm grasp on things like depression, anxiety, and good things start to come.

Our world is filled with things, or for better or worse people that make us crazy. As autumn starts to roll in, the temperatures drop, and the body begins to crave distance. For now my body is letting me put in a run of over an hour run once a week. That hour is savored like whiskey as the world dumps its black misery upon me. Once out on the road, with my shoes on, the tunes going, I may as well be floating on air, because nothing can touch me for that hour.

Any runner will tell you that their best ideas come when running distance. Your body and mind shift from can’t do, to can do. And this is where the benefits come in. Our lives are full of restraints, responsibilities, and limitations. When you run, it is all about what you can do, what is possible.

Of course for those who do not love running, they will read this and think I am crazy, but if you want to try alternative therapy for depression. By a pair of running shoes and find out. Running is about setting goals, small and large, and then achieving them. Depression is the mind’s biochemical way of setting limitations, of saying what you can’t do, what won’t work, what is not possible. When you courageously put one foot in front of the other, a big hill becomes many small steps that lead to the summit.

Photo courtesy of Frech

Running For Beer

My friend and neighbor Bill, had an ingenious idea Friday evening. The Runner’s Pub Crawl in Kalamazoo. We suited up Friday after work and plotted our course. We decided on a rough course of running from home, (Westnedge Hill) to Bell’s for a pint, then from Bell’s to Harvey’s for a quick pint/drink, then from Harvey’s to O’Duffy’s. As it turned out we added Martini’s Pizzeria around the corner due to the waiting list. All told it was around 5.5 miles.

The run took place on a cloudless breezy temperate day in August. As we will inevitably be submerged into 4 and a half months of darkness, one has to take advantage of the blissful sunlight while one can. There is really no better time or way to take advantage of the dense propagation of fine drinking establishments in downtown Kalamazoo than by running to each of them. I’ve done a cyclocross race in the Kiss Cross series called cycling for beer. But I’ve never heard of running for beer. Now was our chance to make that happen.

Stop One

Bill and I set an easy pace down to Bell’s, I had a business call while running, and was trying not to sound out of breath while heading downtown. We had a blissful pint out in the beer garden out at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe. Our wives biked down with the kids to meet us. We finished up and used the restroom to head over to O’Duffy’s.

Stop Two

We sort of got sidetracked while on the walking Mall and ran into Harvey’s to have a quick shot with some of my friends from Biggs-Gilmore. All I can say is that a shot of Jaeger and Monster is fortifying while running short distances.

Stop Three

O’Duffy’s was hopping. We even ran into local celebrity and author Bryan Charles who wrote Grab on to me Tightly As If I Knew The Way. I pumped him for information on his next book. No information was forthcoming other than, it is being edited. We downed a pint of Guinness and were planning dinner when it became apparent that being served at Cosmo’s was going to take a while due to the wait. So we decided to add one more stop for kicks and giggles.

Stop Four

Martini’s Pizzeria. We were seated immediately and ordered some salads and calzones. I was dreading the run back up Westnedge Hill. It has an infamous pitch and there is no way around it to get home. As it stood we made it back in style with no unplanned dinner refunds.

First Four Mile Run after hernia repair

I tore my tendon 5 weeks after my hernia repair surgery at my first Ultimate Frisbee game of the season. I was able to keep cycling even with the torn tendon. The doctor said the flexion and extension would bother it. The stabilizing needs of running however were painful and out of the question anyway. I began to feel some imaginary weight and some real weight dragging me down each day I wasn’t running.

Cycling, though I love it, is not the same as running. Cycling is a different type of awareness and fitness. I love them both. I’m not sure I could live without either. But I know I would be in the looney bin without running. I suited up after work, feeling confident that I would take it easy and turn around if the tendon hurt. I followed my normal after work route across the north end of Kalamazoo. I was literally weeping with happiness by the time I hit mile one out of four. It’s safe tp say I place way too much value on this activity. But it’s my life.

Running is not like cycling, or kayaking, it is a safety net, a place to vent, it is the padded room where all my anxiety and fear are pounded out with no intermediary. A place where schemes are hatched, plans made, thoughts held dear, memories rebounded, grief reconciled, love and redemption found, and it is entirely independent of weather, equipment, or external forces. I can run in a rainstorm, a whiteout, 10 degree weather with 3 feet of snow, or ninety nine degree heat. I do not need a running partner, or encouragement, I do not need praise or reward, it is not to impress or show off for anyone, it is entirely between me and the road.

At times I feel like my body has failed me, but in my heart I know it has not. Sometimes things are taken away to teach compassion. Now that perhaps I can continue for some time, I don’t know how long, I will be more thankful for each mile, for each step my body gives back.

I have to offer thanks also to Laura for enduring my confinement. Certainly it must feel like she lives with a lunatic in the tower when I am not running.

As additional food for thought, check out the copy from this new Pearl Izumi ad campaign. I’ve been reading online how most people hate it. Personally I identify with it. I guess if they wanted to sway people over who are not runners, maybe this wasn’t the way to do it. But if they were trying to create a brand impression for the runners that are already out there, they got my attention. I think the copy is genius.

WMCKA Sea Kayak Symposium 2008 My Home is the Sea

Every year I attend the WMCKA Sea Kayaking Symposium it takes me a few days to absorb the impact of what it means to me. It is easy to say this happened and that happened. It is also easy to say this is the one thing that it meant, to go for the grand recit. What is infinitely harder is to say what it meant in smaller terms that make up the big picture. For my part WMCKA means a lot to me, as it is a culmination of planning efforts and coordination with the Symposium Committee, the WMCKA governing board, and a governing of my own desires for a great symposium.

I’d been trying to get Shawna Franklin and Leon Somme to come to our symposium since about 2005. Finally this year it worked out for both parties. This alone made me very happy in my heart. We decided to plan an instructor update prior to Symposium. This event was very well attended by our instructor group.

Shawna and Leon suited up and got us all out on the water asking us to paddle across Duck Lake and turning upwind. Their approach was to allow us to find our own way. They asked us to find five ways to turn upwind and simply let us paddle. We all came back with about seven ways to paddle upwind. The objective here it seems was to give us an objective, and allow us to interact with our environment, and then come up with our own conclusions. Based on the level of skill and experience each person has, they will come up with a variety of ways to deal with the environment. Only after we had tried a few things did Shawna and Leon call us in to have us give our ideas about what worked and what didn’t. Then after we had told them what we thought, they finally gave us their input. It was a really interesting way to teach a class. They barely spoke and allowed all of us to teach ourselves, each other, and finally when all that was done they gave us some pointers.

Derrick and a lot of the instructors were very juiced up about the bracing and rolling progression Shawna and Leon were sharing. This progression starts in a low brace, then high brace, and finally rolling. It focuses on starting the paddler on their back. Shawna and Leon have been using it with a high success rate in Washington. I would love to see a video of this progression a couple more times.

One of the more interesting points of the instruction for me was a paddle power demonstration. Shawna and Leon had us pair up with another paddler and link in tail to tail with another paddler on a contact tow. One paddler would use a euro paddle, the other would use a wing paddle or a euro paddle. The objective was to see who would tow who with the different paddle. I was paired off with Alec Boyd Peshkin who is my size and of equal power and skill. We started out with my carbon fiber greenland paddle and his werner shuna. Invariably the euro paddle would quickly overpower the Greenland paddle. We switched back and forth with the same results. We then used an epic wing and the Greenland paddle. It was dead even on these two paddles, I was surprised by this. We then switched to the wing and the euro. Again the euro paddle started dragging the paddler with the wing around.

I’ve held a not very scientific or empirical bias that the Euro and the Greenland style paddle were pretty much the same under these conditions. But after this I am not convinced. Doug Van Doren and Steve Bailey experienced the same results. Though Steve Bailey is a very powerful paddler and much bigger than Doug. Food for thought!!

A few of us headed out to Lake Michigan to paddle in the wind and waves afterwards. My inguinal hernia let me know pretty quickly that it was too soon for this type of exertion. I was left in the dust within a few minutes. I managed to take a few pictures regardless.

This was the point of the weekend where my mental state went in the drink. As a person I am competitive, gregarious, and outgoing. I found it very hard to be the slowest man on the water. It was a knife like jab in my belly to be unable to lead the pack when there was wind and waves to be had. My greatest joy in life is to be flying down wave with the wind at my back. To watch others easily out pace me felt like a clumsy root canal from a sadistic dentist with no anesthetic. I find I am a very poor spectator.

Once on sight at the Symposium in my spectator status I observed that the energy and enthusiasm Shawna and Leon exerted was as palpable as the pollen in the air. They were the first to be suited up to paddle and often the very last off the water. They were omnipresent and engaged in a way I have not seen any other instructors behave. You could tell that they loved being on the water, loved kayaking. And this enthusiasm melted over to the instructors, and the participants.

They also participated in the rodeo, and I saw kindred spirits, (I love a rodeo) in their competitive fun loving nature in the races, rolling contest, and passion to be involved, in the thick of things. Leon may have been channeling my wounded spirit when he and two other racers tackled one another into the shallows. What more could one ask for besides a rugby style tackle in a drysuit?

My grand recit for the weekend was observing Shawna and Leon as a couple. They spent every moment happily in each other’s company. I can say with some authority that this is very rare. You rarely saw one without the other. This sort of affection and dedication was so genuine one could hardly not feel it’s contagious gravity. I found myself more calm, more open towards friends, Laura, and the symposium in general. It seems to be the sort of bond you only read about in books, or see in movies. And perhaps this is not unlike kayaking, where you only get out of it what you put into it. And if this is any indication, the relationship and their kayaking seemed to have an effortless grace. Meaning there has probably been a lot of hard work on both ends.

Their slide show presentation on the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwai was fantastic. This expedition took place on the inside and outside of this island group. The outside is right on the edge of the continental shelf. The unbroken Pacific Ocean has no barrier between swell generation and the islands. So the full force of the world’s largest ocean breaks on these islands. Justine Curgenven went with Shawna and Leon and filmed the trip, so look for it in the next installment of This is the Sea.

One of Leon’s opening statements about the trip has been firmly cemented in my mind.
“You will never have enough money, you will never have enough vacation time, you just have to go.” Too bad that is too big to get as a tattoo.

I actually had many many participants and beginner paddlers come up and tell me how great the presentation was. That was a first. It is further proof that the energy you give to something is very real and palpable.

I hope to be able to find someone, or somebody as dedicated, enthusiastic and as skilled as Shawna and Leon for next year. I know there are some folks I would like to ask to visit us on Big Blue Lake. Some small part wonders if this may have been the proverbial summit of our little symposium.

I will leave you with a song by Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) that probably explains the energy we all feel about kayaking, instruction, and a life full of adventure, either small or big.

My Home Is the Sea-Bonnie Prince Billy Lyrics

I have often said
that I would like to be dead
in shark’s mouth

a woman swimming under
her warm breath sendin’ a thunder
on two parts south

and love is stripped and frayed
and duty is delayed
until next life

someone has my mind
holding yes so kind
it is my wife

and my home is the sea
my home is the sea
look not for me

my home is the sea
disaster flies upon me
and i sleep
we can see the house lights
colored from a distance
for a party as a dream

my tongue will into me
my arms unfold these seeds
cause im a strong man

and do not love my tummy
is round and firm and funny
and thats what i am

my home is the sea
my home is the sea

i am under your spell
you will have me i reckon
and the drowning this town
as a drowning i welcome

i know nothing and im over joyed
i know nothing and im over joyed
i know nothing and im over joyed

god gave you life and thought
now its ours to waste
i have the finest love
and the finest taste

see her when im home
i am home

you are home

Is there a Road Bike in My Future

Road Cycling in My future? Is road cycling too scientific for a low-tech runner and kayaker? Road cycling is reknown for over complicating a very simple sport.

I am beginning to do some thinking about Road Bikes. Since my introduction to cycling was really through cyclocross, I had a moderate disdain for roadies. Road cyclists seem to be overly scientific with everything. My perception is that road cyclists are uber-anal about training and equipment. My eyes glaze over when I begin to hear about saving 20 grams of weight when switching to a carbon bottle cage, or about increasing V02 max, or lactate threshold. A discussion of Polar Heart rate monitors actually make me want to strangle someone.

I sort of had an inkling that eventually a road bike might be in my future. But this really has more to do with my body revolting at running. I am essentially starting over with my running after April 30th when I have surgery for my inguenal hernia. I am considering trying to put more effort into distance cycling as my body doesn’t seem to revolt quite as much to the cycling.

Despite my body crying yes, my soul is crying no to all of the leg shaving, heart rate monitors, and the carbon bottle cages. Certainly I could go with some sort of cheapie steel bike, not where spandex and pedal my heart out, but I am after all somewhat of a gear head, and not a complete Luddite. I want to be able to compete a little, but not go overboard.

Kayaking has some of the same issues. The GPS carbon fiber everything, racing boat guys who have no interest in the beauty of the sport, and only care about going fast. I like going fast too, I like surf-skis and wing paddles, but I also like skin on frame kayaks, greenland paddles, and the beauty of a really traditional kayak. I admire the guys who can go 8 miles an hour in an epic kayak all day. But can they carve a sweet bottom turn on a wave? Can they elegantly bow-rudder into the wind? Probably not.

I don’t want to be that guy who has a complete carbon bicycle, but who can’t even jump a stump, or hit the sand at full speed and climb over muddy hills on a cross bike.

Simply put, I am drawn to cycling for the fun of it, but the price is a killer.

This Carbon Soloist from Cervelo has caught my eye:

But I may be living in a tent if I even whisper the thought of buying one to the wife!

Four weeks after my initial physician visit, I went in for another consulation with my family doctor. My family doctor, another runner, performed a hernia examination. His immediate conclusion was to see a surgeon about an Inguenal Hernia. While this may sound like bad news to most people. To me it is the solution to a complex anatomical algebraic equation with the variable x.

The prognosis seems to be see the surgeon, get surgery, have a teflon belt inserted in the abdominal wall, heal for two-three weeks, back on the road.

At the beginning of February my marathon training program was going really well. My miles had been creeping up steadily and I hadn’t been injured. My hamstrings were taught as a kettle drum, but I thought this was something I could manage. My long runs were getting longer and my right knee wasn’t bothering me. Then a number of convergent coincidences all transpired simultaneously. I started having lower back pain about 2 weeks after we switched to a new mattress. This was also the same week that I began upping my miles past 8 on my long runs. I also had a couple of goofy falls some on my bike, some on alpine skis, and one in my own driveway on ice. All of this basically led up to me going to the chiropractor and into physical therapy. I didn’t hurt my back from my falls, but I think from hamstring inflexibility.

My marathon plan for Bayshore is on hold already!

But I am undaunted. After my last injury, I am more familiar with the time frame for the healing process. It will most likely be a few months before I am well enough to run at the level I was at before my injury.

Part of this is also keeping a positive attitude.

When you’re in junior high you’re afraid to tell your friends you like a girl because… well you’re in junior high. They may not like her, it may not work out, she might dump you. At the end of the day you have to live with yourself, and you have to make a commitment with what you believe is right.

Now that I am a grown up, I don’t care what my friends think about my girlfriend, otherwise they wouldn’t be friends. So I have to set a goal and make the summit approach.

This long winded analogy is a way of saying I have been holding off from telling folks that I intend on running another marathon. Most likely Bayshore (again barring injury) on Memorial day weekend. I came in at about 3:40 for Chicago in 2004. I am shooting for about 3:30 if my body will let me do it. My training has ramped up since October and I have been running 25-30 miles a week since then. I need to ramp up to about 35-45 miles if not higher in the end. It’s the long runs that do you in, but that are ultimately what count. They are also the edge of the world in terms of physical endurance, your sanity. You see what you are made of out there. And like fox holes, there are no atheists at the 24 mile marker…

The thing about running is that unless you are superhuman, you know you won’t win. My son once asked me why I ran any of these races if I knew I wouldn’t win. I told him you have to race to see how fast you can go, to see what you’re made of. I hope to find I am made of sterner stuff than I think. Even if I come in at the same or worse than Chicago, it is still the attempt that means everything. If I don’t try, I will never forgive myself.