A few lessons from one dumb idea

PLOD Plot Here

Well, I made it. It wasn’t always fun, and it wasn’t always pretty, but I worked out at least three hours a day for ten days. I’ve got the PLOD Plot updated above, and will talk some more a little later on about what I did over the last two days below, but in case you’re short on time I think I can sum up the whole experience pretty well in one sentence:

That was a dumb idea.

And that’s great. Most of my adult life can be described fairly accurately by connecting the dots from dumb idea to dumb idea, and at each point the execution gets a little bit smoother.

There’s been no shortage of dumb ideas. There was that time that I spent a week in the Tetons with two inexperienced climbing partners and we flogged our way to the top of a couple of mellow summits, escaping with our lives, if not our dignity:

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Or that other time I stayed up drinking until 4am the night before I was supposed to ride my bike alone the 70 miles to Polson along one of the most dangerous highways in America. In December. I was still drunk until at least St. Ignatious and got lost on the way, which, while adding about an hour to the ride was actually a blessing because I found a truck stop where I could buy extra wool socks.

pig
I don’t have a photo of the Polson Ride, but here’s another one. This is opening the recently unearthed Luau style pig before 100 hungry dinner guests. It was not cooked.

Or then there was that other time that I was caught offguard by a manic episode and accidentally offered to cook a twelve course dinner for fifteen people in a different down while in the middle of a house remodel that was already behind schedule. That one actually came out pretty tasty.

The ideas never really seem to get any better. I’m still waiting to have a good one. But I’ve noticed that my execution of bad ideas is steadily improving, which I think is a great sign. Like my cousin sometimes says, “Ideas are bullshit. Everone’s got ideas. Look, I want a jetpack. That’s a great idea. Everyone wants a jetpack. But it turns out they’re really hard to make. Ideas are bullshit, execution is what counts. If you figure out how to execute, eventually a good idea will come to you.”

And so while I try to take a lot of the things that that cousin says with a heavy grain of salt, I also try to sift through the derelict for a bit of lagan. Every terrible idea that I’ve slogged through has brought me to the other side with a lesson or two that I can put toward my next terrible idea. We almost died in the Tetons, sure, but then I was merely very cold and uncomfortable on the ride to Polson. Every once in a while I even pull something off.

Without getting all pedantic, I’ll try to lay out a few of gems that I picked up through this silly ten day challenge.

1) 3 hours is much to much to run in one day

If you have to ask yourself, “can I physically run for three hours?” then the answer is moot. Regardless of whether or not you can, you shouldn’t. There are a lot of people out there who stand to gain from going on a three hour run, and they know who they are. If there’s any doubt in your mind, maybe just go for a shorter run.

My ankles hurt. My knees hurt. My IT is blowing up. And that was from a single three hour jog. Ride a bike or something.

2) Don’t procrastinate

This is one that you might think I would have learned in 4th or 5th grade, or whenever you start getting legitimate homework assignments. But I didn’t. Almost every of the last seven days of this stupid challenge I found myself leaving work at about 5pm and staring at the business end of a three hour workout. Usually it was getting toward being too dark to ride a bike, and skiing has a Futz Constant* just high enough to make it not ideal for weeknights, which conspired to conceive some long runs, and we’ve established that those are ill advised. The days in which I split the workouts into a morning hour, a lunch hour, and an evening hour were much more pleasant.

Some nights, such as Night 9, I found myself hiking vigorously for three hours in the dark and just getting hungry.

3) Accountability can get you where regular willpower won’t

I said I’d avoid pedantics and so in an effort to keep it informal I’ll use an example here. On Day 10, the last one, I had an elegant plan to leave work, head to Snowbowl, and hike a lap on Point 6 with a quick detour down Whipped Cream. That’d get me about three hours and almost 4,000 vert, and seemed like a beautiful way to top the whole experiment off.

That was the plan.

Instead I had to ride my bike across town after work and pick up the car and drive home to change before heading up the hill. This put me almost an hour behind schedule already.

On the way up Snowbowl Road I began to smell something sweet and boozy, and wondered if some ancient and long forgotten half-bottle of schnapps and broken open or something. A few minutes later the check engine light came on, followed by my engine’s insistence that I not exceed 1,900 rpm, and, finally, as I was parking, steam billowing from under the hood. A quick glance at the engine compartment revealed a blown radiator hose and a sheen of that sickly sweet green fluid covering everything.

So I went skiing for a while, but curtailed the grand scheme of that morning. A while later Girlfriend met me in the parking lot and followed me back to town after we put everything back together and topped off the radiator.

This put me at home at 9:30pm and only having exercised, all said, about 90 minutes for the day. I wanted to go to bed. I was tired, and it was cold outside. If it wasn’t the last day of this stupid challenge thing I definitely would have. But instead I ventured outside and briskly went to collect my bike (still far on the other side of town) and cruise back, still making it into bed before midnight. Without knowing that as many as six people would be waiting to read about the end of the challenge on this blog right here, I certainly would not have finished it.

There’s a TED Talk by Derek Sivers that refers to an old study to assert that by making our goals public we begin to identify with them just enough that it becomes much less likely that we achieve them.

I can’t say that I agree.

 

*Futz Constant – The amount of time associated with an activity that is necessary for the completion of that activity, but that is not that activity. e.g. driving to a trailhead, putting on skins, running a shuttle, etc. A hierarchical ranking of sports based on the Futz Constant is probably deserving of its own post.

PLODding Along: Day 8

PLOD Plot Here

steepsJunuary in western Montana is in full swing, bringing with it bike rides and trail runs in shorts. It’s also heaping wood on the ski stoke fire, all while killing the skiing.

These warm, sunny days remind me of one of the most magical times of year, when the days are long, the temps are warm, and the steep snow is stable. This time last year we had another bout of high pressure with warm daytime highs and clear, cold nights that settled down the snowpack and saw many ambitious, save-it-for-May type objectives be sent in January. These unseasonably pleasant spells help to scratch a couloir itch and regenerate excitement for the powder skiing and meadow hopping that has a knack for coming back in February and March.

IMAG0081[1]
Warm temps and dry(ish) trails mid-winter.
Except right now it’s not. With nighttime lows throughout the region in the low 40s even above 7,000 feet, the freeze/thaw cycle that builds stability has been replaced with a thaw/thaw cycle that does not. Reports indicate that skiers all over the Bitterroot pulled the plug early last weekend, and that the Snowbowl bar sold many more pizzas and pitchers than one-day lift tickets.

But complaining about the weather never changed it, so I guess it’s time to dust off the road bike or something. I hear it’s cold in Cooke City.

Day 7:
2hr 17min – Trail run
46min – Town run (this was too much running)

Day 8:
1hr 10min – Momentum
52min – Run
54min – Hockey

The updated PLOD Plot is available at the top of the page. Eight days in and I’m getting very tired again. The legs are heavy but spirits are high, as long as I can sleep enough.

PLODding Along: Day 6

I was chatting with a friend a few days ago about adventuring, racing, fitness and this silly 10 day “challenge.” The conversation went something like this:

F: Can you average it to three hours a day? Four hours one day, two the next?
B: Nope. At least three hours every day. More if I want.
F: Well, how hard do you have to go?
B: Oh not hard at all. I draw the line at flat walking. Flat running is fine. Brisk, hilly walking is fine. Flat walking doesn’t count. But there’s no minimum heart rate threshold or anything like that to constitute “exercise.”
F: Slow and steady, then.
B: Exactly.

And “slow and steady” really is a great way to describe it. See, “slow and steady wins the race” is one of the most misguided expressions in English, and I bet whoever came up with it didn’t win very many races. Slow and steady does not win the race. Fast and steady wins the race. That’s why it’s so hard. Slow and steady is for when you have no business lining up on the front row in the first place, and are just trying to get out alive.

Day 4:
1hr 6min – Hockey
1hr – Momentum (circuit training)
1hr 14min – Bike ride

Day 5:
3hr 17min – Backcountry ski

Day 6:
3hr 6min – Hike on/around Sentinel

All in all, I think I’m starting to hit a stride a little bit. Day 4 was brutal. Day 5 was sleepy. Day 6 was just sort of numb. I think that’s a good sign?

I’m still working on the nuances of the new blog platform, but showing progress. Stay tuned for an actual plot of PLOD over time.

PLODding Along: Day 3

Two days in, now, to the ten day challenge, and aside from almost falling asleep at dinner on night one, morale is high.

Day 1:
1hr 6min – Lunch Run
1hr 14min – Run home the long way
54min – Hockey Game

Two separate one hour runs is a lot for this old dog. I almost fell asleep on the couch before hockey. Logistically, the easiest workout is a run. I can just leave from home and be on trails in ten minutes. The problem with that is that if I try to run three hours a day for any more than two days in a row I’ll be in physical therapy until my IRA matures. So for Day 1 I counted a hockey game, and for Day 2 I mixed in some hiking.

Day 2:
1hr 2min – Lunch Run
2hr 23min – Brisk hike on and around Sentinel

Day 3:
18min – Lunch Run
1hr 40min – Ski
1hr 3min – Run

I am tired. The plan was to run for a while at lunch and then skin on/around Snowbowl for a couple of hours after dark. Life got in the way of first run, so I cut it way short and then planned on just spending a little extra time on skis. My habit of not carrying a watch bit me, though, and perceived elapsed time surpassed actual elapsed time and left me back at the car with 62 minutes of exercise left to do.

When I got home the conversation with my roommate, the indefatigable cheerleader Emily, went something like this just before 9pm.

E: How’d the ski go?
B: Pretty well. Except that I lost track of time and came back too early. I have to run an hour still.
E: Ho man I’m so glad I’m not you right now.
B: I get that a lot.
E: Welp. I’m going to bed. Good night!

So I went for the stupid run.  I think I’ll keep running off the docket at least through the weekend.

So That I Might Not Die Just Yet

I am a lazy person. So lazy that were I Independently wealthy and left to my own devices I would probably spend most of my time holed up with a huge bowl of rigatoni and watching The Wire for like the fourth time. That I’m not independently wealthy would really only offset the couch-sitting and Wire-watching to the evening hours, though, if there wasn’t a yang to my lazy yin. See, in addition to being lazy, I also have a lot of anxiety about the fact that I’m lazy. And that tends to keep me pretty busy.

There’s nothing quite like a good adventure to keep the lazies at bay, and TomRob and I have got one cooked up for this spring that we think sounds pretty neat. It involves skis, bikes and a week or two in May, and I, for one, can’t wait. We’ve got a couple of magazines interested and have managed to scrape together a little bit of support here and there, and it’s always humbling/invigorating to have others take a material interest in your follies. It’s also sort of terrifying.

Obviously a sponsor or editor understands that itineraries sometimes change, or that you might have to call an audible here or there in the interest of safety, but they’d be understandably upset to find out that you played the lazy card and just rode Uber around Portland to drink at different breweries for two weeks (unless you were writing for VICE, I suppose). And obviously we wouldn’t have pitched the trip if that was even an option in our minds, but the other night I woke up at around 3am with the thought: This might be really hard. And not just regular old, eat-a-lot-and-crash-out, Type-2-fun hard, but the kind of difficult that blows deadlines or curtails itself into what amounts to bait and switch.

What if I can’t do it?

Now, the bar for what counts as physical fitness in this town has been set pretty high. It feels sometimes like you can’t swing a cat without hitting a pro runner or cyclist. Another byproduct of being a lazy person is that I am not one of these professional athletes, even by a long shot. Any time I race I strive only for adequacy. sauced

Exercise in Missoula is as much a social pursuit as it is about fitness. If you’re going to spend time with a friend, more often than not you’re going to be running, riding, or skiing. But while the baseline for fitness here is probably above national average, a brutal trip is a brutal trip, and it’s been years since I worked out hard ten days in a row.

In fact, my exercise regimen over the last few years has been based almost entirely on the following three pillars:

griz1) Avoid diabetes

2) Still fit in that American Flag Speedo (it was kind of expensive)

3) Survive adventures

We’ve got plenty of time before we take off, and with the fear of failure in mind it seems like as good a time as any to check in on the ‘ol fitness. I’ve picked the nice, arbitrary, Fibonacci number of 3 as the number of hours that I’ll exercise every day for the next ten days. This is, certainly, meant to serve as training, but more so to help me figure out whether or not this trip will kill me by the end.

Because no study (even a wildly unscientific one) is worth the paper it’s printed on without some way to measure results, I’ve developed a metric for this one. I like to call it the Perceived Likelihood Of Death, or PLOD Index. So over the next ten days, while I exercise for at least three hours a day, I will record on hourly intervals how likely I think it is that this trip kills me, and chart them on the PLOD Plot. The scale is 1-100, as in percentage of certainty of death.

I’ll also make an effort to give nightly occasional updates here.