It's Go Time!

 Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt

Two weeks ago, my body finally told me, It's go time!  The 2012 training season has begun, baby!

I was wondering and longing for when it would happen. For the past three months, I've struggled to wake up to my alarm, put on my running shoes or do anything with any gusto. I've tried to just roll with that, being compassionate and respectful to my body's needs. I still have some injuries I'm diagnosing and nursing, but at long last, it feels like someone threw gasoline on the tiny embers inside of me, and I just exploded with readiness.

From the outside, my rebound appears to have coincided with the new year, but I actually launched my 2012 season back in October by deliberately resting my butt off. You've never seen somebody working so hard to accomplish so little.

The downtime and darkness has especially lent itself to reflection over the past year and setting goals for the coming one. We also had our company retreat this week, so in a comprehensive work+play way, I'm excited to launch 2012 with new visions of an integrated life.

As a four person architecture firm we strategized about how to balance all of our off-the-wall-pie-in-the-sky projects with the day-to-day normalcy and even occasional downright tedium. One outcome of this exercise was to create a more tangible rallying point in the office-- a kind of shrine (aka bulletin board) to our collective psyche and all of our dream-projects.

Due to something called "time compression diseconomies", visits to the shrine, whether consciously or subconsciously, reinforce our intentions with collective focus. They build up mutual trust and support for each others' dreams through small-dose long-term exposure that could never be garnered through a single, intense, large-dose exposure. Think Chinese water drip torture versus electric chair.

In the same way, I've tried to make mini-shrines all over my house and within my subconsious for the many things I hope for from 2012. As Steve Pavlina says, "Some of the best goals will require you to shift your vibe in order to achieve them. It could be said that the vibrational shift is an even greater accomplishment than the external goal. For example, aligning your vibe with abundance can be a greater accomplishment than earning some specific sum of money. Once you’ve integrated the vibe of abundance, your whole life is transformed, not just your finances."

So in no particular order, here's my list of goals for 2012:

1) Visit a national park I've never been to

2) Learn Portuguese and Dvorak

3) Run a 50 mile trail race

4) Qualify for Boston

5) Bike to work 3x/wk

6) Eat a big ass salad with dinner daily

7) Do my vision exercises daily

8) Renew my passport... and use it

10) Build a living hedge

11) Inuslate my house

12) Go to a nudist resort (or become one once my house gets warm from insulation)

13) Build a food forest with my family

14) Learn one magic trick and teach a kid

15) Find a cool organization to volunteer with

16) Write a stand-up comedy routine

17) Donate blood/marrow

18) Read every book recommended to me personally

19) Take nieces and nephews on adventures to new places

20) Convert my anger and anxiety into opportunity and peace

21) Start working on my PhD

22) Learn how to identify the 110 Messier objects

23) Design a zero-energy home

24) Do the American Triple-T

Having the courage to be myself continues to be one of my main challenges in life. It's almost more difficult for me to have shared this list than it is to imagine accomplishing the items. But I feel like if I put these intentions out there, while I may drive some folks away, I am drawing out others who may be able to help me. If 2011 was my "year of soil", 2012 will be my year of "bridges and bonds".

Have a bodacious new year everyone!

Barefoot Snow Running

Before winter is over, I will run barefoot through the snow. I don't mean a run through the front yard to pick up the mail, but a fo' serious run of six or seven miles. I'm not really sure why. I think I just despise winter and need to walk all over it.

In preparation, I've gone on two outdoor runs in my new Vibrams. The first was a frigid night in the high 20's F. It was against my physical therapist's instructions. (Sorry Eric). I didn't feel like doing anything, let alone run in the cold. I was all laced up in my normal running shoes, hopping in place in the kitchen to get warmed up. Every time I planted my left forefoot, it was like lightning bolts through my middle toe. I said to myself, "Screw this. If it hurts playing it safe in my normal running shoes, then I'm going to see how it feels in the Vibrams." As soon as I put them on and started warming up in place, the lightning sensation was gone. Yabba dabba doo! Then I took off, into the night.

For the first two miles my toes were painfully cold. Then, mile two to three my toes had gone numb. There was no lighting bolt sensation like usual, but I wasn't having fun and I decided to end the run and head home. All of a sudden, by mile four, my toes felt fine and were actually warm. My feet felt really friggin happy, actually, like new muscles were getting tickled. I ended up doing six. (We're telling Eric, three).

The next day my feet were sore in strange new ways--on the tops and my achilles.

Tuesday of this week, I was feeling unmotivated again when I got home from work. So, I decided the best thing would be to get what I call "grounded as hell". I put on the Vibrams and took off into the darkness.

I only made it five miles this time before my feet and achilles tendons were really tender. I ran to the studio for some sadistic weights and Tabata to finish off the workout.

My calves have been sore for the last four days now, so today I did my 9-miler in my regular shoes. They were much gentler on the calves, but mid-run I collapsed to the ground with toe pain. I took off my shoe and sock and gave my toes and foot and big True Movement massage. From then on, they were happy again.

Hunkered Down for the Winter

Many years ago, I was a novice in a religious seminary that always seemed to be under construction. The bathrooms had 1950s aluminum windows that wouldn't shut all the way and bricks missing in the wall, open to the frigid New England air. Since I was the main breakfast cook, I had to wake up at 5am and take the first shower in the dark, so as not to wake up the other brothers and fathers. "Dark, cold, silent, early, wet, poverty, chastity, obedience"-- the worst words in the English language and,  coincidentally, concepts loosely associated with winter triathlon training.

Hanging out and meditating with the seminarians.

I last raced in September and now it's almost St. Nick's Day, but I still haven't done a whole lot to speak of blog-ably. It kind of feels like the last few minutes of sleep before the alarm clock goes off-- when your body is revving to wake up, but you can still squeeze in five extra minutes of pure do-nothing rapture. My body is still in off-season mode, but it's juuuust about ready to wake back up and start training again. I can read the signs and I'm excited to be turning the corner on the funk of lo-mo (low motivation).

In the meantime, I've been finishing up some good books and doing body/home repair projects. I thought I took care of the source of the water damage above the fireplace with my brother, Matt, this fall. We rebuilt the chimney, supposedly saving ~$5000. I've earmarked that magically materialized $5000 for a trip to Kona one day, but I'm not quite convinced the water issue is solved, so the house resembles a New England seminary. I just need a dry weekend to finish up more chimney work.

Without fixing the water problem, we can't insulate the walls, so it's pretty cold in the house. The dang bananas just sit there like big green popsicles and the stone-hard persimmons tease me to death. It makes me want to kick Old Man Winter right in his stones. Luckily, we treat our bedroom like a winter fallout shelter.  We pretty much get home late from work/workouts and hunker down in our warm little cave. The walls have poster paper on them and we're busy dream crafting as we do once per year, talking about bucket lists and goals and dreams for the future. So, it's also most wonderful time of the year.

You've heard of breakfast in bed. Well, now there's dinner in bed and compost in bed. Date pits anyone?

I've been using the winter downtime to stay on top of my vision exercises every night.

Unfortunately, in my quest to resurrect elementary school flag football glory over Thanksgiving weekend, I pulled my hamstring while sprinting back for a failed interception attempt. It's close to being healed, but superfluous injuries certainly weren't on my bucket list. And in other bodily misadventures, my physical therapist homeboy, Eric Oliver, finally evaluated my pestering toe problem. He's narrowed it down to nerve damage from last season. Supposedly it's a long and annoying route to recovery. It was all the excuse I needed to go ahead and pamper myself to my latest footwear purchase-- my Vibram naked shoes.

So far, I and black women LOVE them.

I'm not exactly allowed to wear the Vibrams on dates with my wife, but I continue to negotiate what constitutes a "date." Apparently, a trip to the gas station constituted a date the other day. I am allowed to wear them to work (between construction site visits) and around town. They are much cozier than being stuck in stiff dress shoes or steel toed boots. Since I keep my toes wiggly all day, they are prepared to wiggle even harder at night if I feel like going for a run. Otherwise, I am occasionally stopped dead in my tracks by throbbing pain of cartoon-toe-throb-proportions.

As an experiment, I ran two miles on the treadmill with the Vibrams, and quickly took them off to run another two in my favorite (supposedly "minimalist") shoes-- the Saucony Kinvaras. Night and day! The regular running shoes felt clumsy, like running on half-inflated balloons. There's just no way I can believe that long hours of training in one shoe or another won't effect my mechanics. So my goal is to build up my treadmill mileage in the Vibrams and do my pavement runs in the Kinvaras, pending Eric's approval. Hopefully, before the last snow of the winter I can run at least a couple of miles barefoot in the snow. It's not necessarily the ultimate rush, but it will put hair on my chest and it supposedly feels like running through fields of cotton balls. Or maybe piranhas. We shall see.