I don't think that's true. Because what if you go into X and figure out its components and then artificially reproduce those elements in such a way so that everything is nearly the same except without Y?
Right? Isn't that a great way to live? We've done it. We've won. We've freed ourselves from taking things as they are and now we live in the grotesque amalgamations of our dreams.
But anyway I had a good day today. It was fun.
I have a link to them and I've started watching them and I really want to watch them but I have this really strong feeling that I'm going to cry if I watch them. Not that I'm sad. I just get too sentimental about them. In a similar way to how I cry watching sports where someone is trying really hard.
But I do want to watch them.
I found this video of my sixteenth birthday and immediately I seem obnoxious. Like an unpleasant person to be around. It's gross. If I could go back in time I'd say 'stop being a butt.'
But I'm going to try to watch this with compassion.
I'm sorry, Erin. I'm so sorry.
I don't know it's so hard to watch because I have this sarcastic attitude like I'm not enjoying any of it but I know I'm embarrassed and uncomfortable with my emotions.
I'm burping. Oh jeez. This is terrible.
I called my sister and apologized.
I also apologize to Maw Maw and Paw Paw.
A heartfelt thanks to my wonderful Mom for recording this moment. In all seriousness. It gives me a lot of empathy and understanding for giving a teenage child space to be a turd and try to figure out all their stuff. It's tough.
I probably would've learned a lot about myself sooner if I'd watched that clip.
there's something kind of sad about seeing an item that you sometimes buy get discontinued.
oh I guess I wasn't enough support
oh I guess no one else likes this but me
oh I guess the food I thought was good was actually a failure
Ha! Those are feelings I would have if I tied my identity to things I buy at the grocery store. My identity is wrapped up in...a lot of stuff.
today we went on a hike to a waterfall and there's a jump to the side of it that's pretty tall and the kids enjoyed jumping into the pool below. On the way back one of the kids was describing the jump relative to Victor Wembanyana's height.
If he jumped off the high jump and went straight down his head wouldn't even go under the water.
I love the idea of this impossibly tall man that's a superstar and defies the limits of what a human being should be able to do. The imagination runs wild thinking of what Wemby would do in the face of any tall height or great distance.
That's all I got. Me being amused by a small child's fascination with an incredibly tall Frenchman.
Starting my new camp tomorrow. I feel ready. I feel excited. I want it to go well.
I want to remind myself that the reason I care about camps so much is that I've seen and felt how important they are to people and it's a gift and a privilege to be part of that. That's why I want to give it my all.
I think the point of all stories about magical wishes is that they're cautionary tales and that magical wishes are bad.
But surely that can't be true. There must be some good magical wishes.
I guess Fairly Oddparents featured non-bad magical wishes.
I'll say this right now. And I bet you've never thought of this. I bet you haven't taken this step like I have before now.
I vow that if I am ever presented with the opportunity to make a magical wish, I'm not gonna do it.
And everyone will be confused like what? why not? Don't you want to? It's a magic wish. This never happens.
And I'll be like, 'Sorry. I made a vow. On June 5th, 2026. Look it up.'
Just like that, I'm immune to the magic now.
at rocky top climbing gym you can climb whatever climbs you want.
you get to choose.
if you want to do a climb, do it! if you don't want to do a climb, don't do it!
that's freedom. that's decision making.
we won't make you climb climbs you don't want to do.
we won't stop you from climbing climbs you want to do.
you're free. free as a bird.
at rocky top climbing gym.
you get to choose.
choice is our top priority.
we've developed the entire gym around your ability to choose.
aren't you grateful? aren't you thankful?
for the power of choice?
isn't that great?
don't you love us?
don't you love rocky top climbing gym get a grip?
because of the freedom we give you.
imagine if we stole your freedom.
imagine if you couldn't climb the climbs you wanted.
wouldn't that be terrible.
wouldn't you hate it.
you freedom loving choice creature. you live to choose.
and here at rocky top climbing gym,
you have to choice.
there's no other way.
if you don't decide
then nothing will happen.
it all depends on your choosing.
your choice is all there is.
your choice is the one thing keeping rocky top climbing from disintegrating into nothingness.
I swear it is.
I wouldn't lie to you.
See for yourself.
Looking back over the past year to see if I've improved at the 3 things I've been training.
Climbing. Overhead Press. Sprinting.
Climbing
On June 1st of last year I picked up 120lbs with my left hand on a 20mm edge and 130lbs with my right hand. At least one time in the past year I've picked up 130lbs with my left hand and 140lbs with my right hand.
I mostly did these lifts as a warm-up and only did a few dedicated workouts if I couldn't climb for some reason. I'm happy I was able to make improvement with both hands. In the next year I'd like to pick up my bodyweight with my right hand and get my left hand up to 140lbs.
I don't think this type of finger strength is a limiting factor in my climbing.
Since August of last year an overwhelming majority of my climbing has been spent moonboarding twice a week. I would warm up by pulling with the tension block and then climb on the moonboard for about an hour while working on completing the benchmarks at the lowest grade available. Through November I completed almost all of the 2016 v4 benchmarks and then when the gym changed over to the 2024 set I did all of the V4 benchmarks and as of today I have 7 6C benchmarks left. That's about 77 benchmark climbs between v4 and v5 since last November.
One feeling I have about the past year is that I think I've topped out my climbing ability with about two hours of structured climbing per week. Training that was essentially moderate to limit bouldering for an hour a session. In running terms, I'm doing the kind of training I was doing in middle school. Low mileage. Short workouts. Racing a lot.
I feel like I can be very strong for one effort or a single move but that ability decreases pretty quickly over the course of a session. I also don't think I use my body as efficiently as I could. I think both could be addressed by climbing more. More training-style climbing instead of working hard moves. More volume.
The thing I liked about the training I did this year was that it was easy and simple to quantify and it didn't make me too tired for things like sprinting. A few years ago I would just climbing whatever I felt until I got tired and the next day I would feel wiped out. I've done a good job at being intentional with my climbing training.
That said, when I look at my off-the-wall strength metrics, I should be climbing harder than I do. And it comes back to not climbing enough.
So! This summer the goal is to CLIMB MORE. When I would train for cross country in the summer it was about accruing mileage. It didn't really matter if it was slow or not. It was about making the number go up. And I saw huge improvements from doing that.
The plan is Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays when we're climbing in the gym with the summer camp to do easy climbing and work on dynamic movement with make-ups. NO PROJECTING! NO TRYING HARD MOVES! NO SPIRALING! Easy, fun climbing that is low stakes so I can still run the summer camp effectively. I'm okay with climbing very little during this time. This time is not about getting fit or even doing anything challenging. It's movement maintenance.
Then on Tuesdays and Fridays I'm going to warm-up on the campus board and then do structured workouts of Wall Crawls where I do climbs on the moonboard and batcave spraywall while holding each position for 5 seconds or a 7 count before moving again. If I could build up to 2 hours per session of this training, 4 hours per week, I think that would move the needle. I can also supplement the time with the batcave traverse wall or the tread wall. We'll see! I think it's going to be really tough but I want to set the bar high and be okay with feeling tired and weak. I'm not going to test my strength or expect any PRs but trust that doing the work on relatively easy climbing will pay off.
Strength
The main lift I focused on this year was barbell Overhead Press. At some point in the Fall I hit 60kg for one and then I kinda lost my momentum due to shoulder injuries and weird things cropping up. I also had a wrist injury in the Spring that made pressing with the barbell uncomfortable. Recently though I hit 12 reps with 95lbs which is also a PR. I made incremental progress towards my goal of pressing my bodyweight but upper body strength training was definitely secondary to climbing and lower body training. I'm okay with that.
Again, my pressing and pulling strength aren't limiting factors to my climbing. They're fun to work on but it wouldn't make sense to prioritize them more than I do. Also injuries are lame. As of right now I'm completely healthy other than some lingering stiffness in my right wrist so I'm going to continue with the strength training I've been doing.
Lately my routine has consisted of holding one arm lock-offs on each arm for as long as possible. Then pressing 95lbs or 100lbs for as many reps as possible. Then using the pulley system by the hangboard to do as many one-arm pull-ups as possible with 15lbs attached to the other end of the pulley. Then I do as many bodyweight pull-ups as possible. I started with 15 one day and every session I try to beat that. I'm currently at 18 and my lifetime best is 22. So far I haven't had to go to failure because I just beat it by one and then stop but I'll have to figure something out once I can't beat it anymore. Maybe I'll just add a little bit of weight and then start again. Anyway that's been working well. I like those exercises and it's not enough to make me super tired.
Sprinting
On June 3rd, 2025 my sprinting PRs were
50m- 6.14 100m- 12.58 200m- 26.89 300m- 43.25
As of June 3rd, 2026, my PRs are:
50m- 5.94 100m- 12.22 200m- 26.41 300m- 42.29
I improved! Yay!
If I could make that some amount of improvement over the next year, I would consider my sprinting goals reached.
I learned a lot about form and changed my training quite a bit from a year ago. My lifts are also completely different. My legs are visibly bigger than they were a year ago.
Keep going.
and then one evening everything was fine
and then one evening everything was good
the words that spilled had been put neatly away
everything was met by the warm dry air
it all settled in a way that was easy to make peace with
what was there was there
it could be looked upon
it was all the same
the mind could deal
the soul was at ease
leaves many layers up
waved fluttering green
It was a picture.
But on June 26th I wrote this long drawn out joke thing and the opening line was
this guy is burn with a rare mutation that causes his skin to be on fire all the time,
I wrote 'burn' instead of 'born'.
BUT! It's a joke about a guy whose skin is constantly on fire.
So 'burn' actually kinda fits.
That's like some James Joyce level stuff.
Finnegan's Wake and all that.
I'm really excited to start this new camp. I made all the plans today and I think it's going to be great.
Maybe I'm making this up or projecting but there's this kid I coach and when we interact I get the feeling that she's thinking to begin to explain to you what's going on in my head would require a tremendous amount of energy and a tremendous amount of faith in you that you're going to listen and try to understand and instead I'm just going to say 'beans'. And then she says 'beans'.
Which sounds kind of pretentious but I don't think there's any like weariness or disillusionment to her. I think it might just be how it is.
Oh. duh.
Charlton Heston said "take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape." in Planet of the Apes.
duh.
But then you look and they clearly have hands
There's a lot of things that were said and done in the past that we in the present have to make amends for.
And a lot of things being done in the present right now that the future will have to make amends for.
your human brain is so incredibly strong.
never forget that.
imagine anything.
point your imagination ray at anything and watch it transform.
a powerful beam of imagination
scattering across the sky
to strike all the butter
and call them forth
to coalesce into a giant sphere
that towers over the skyline
the butter orb
hurtling across the filament
I mean
the firmament
to do cosmic battle
with your greatest sadness
that bubbles up smoking
fumes that take the shape of
balled eagles
"Ew somebody tooted."
And this girl standing next to her goes, cool as anything, "It was probably me. Even though I didn't do it."
And then dropped down to sit on the mats.
I've never in my entire life seen a better way to diffuse that situation before.
"It was probably me. Even though I didn't do it."
With all the confidence in the world.
Unreal.
I was talking to someone recently about political caricature and I brought up the idea that humor and sarcasm and irony are good at exposing truths about institutions and established power but that you can't build something useful out of them. And the person I was talking to said that laughter can still be cathartic and useful to help people manage.
It's hard for me to disagree but I don't feel like laughter is helpful at this point in time. Removed from context, Trump is hilarious. On some level, we've been laughing at him the whole time. But it doesn't stop him in any way.
Patton Oswalt had a joke about the end of the Bush administration where he said people would come up to him and say "Oh man, you comedians are in trouble now that Bush isn't president. You aren't going to have anything to talk about." And he responds
Imagine for the last 8 years there were demons just flying around in the sky and they would randomly swoop down and sodomize people. And I wrote ten killer minutes about the sodomy demons and then the Pope banished them to another dimension and people go 'boy Patton you really miss those sodomy demons'
Much like senseless demons, Trump is formless. He's a void. He doesn't stand for anything. And I feel like the best way to build something is to be sincere.
Not that humor doesn't have a place--I just feel like in my lifetime we've been in a golden age of political humor and things are terrible. If political humor actually did anything, why are things like this?
dude
what
oh
I thought
yeah
no I just
ok
That was a poem about a guy who when he was four met a frog wizard and the frog wizard said in ten years I'm going to sneak up behind you and slap you and if you catch me you get a thousand frog dollars and if you don't you get slapped and tough break kid and the kid tried his hardest to remember but then he forgot and wasn't sure about the day and time anymore and then he got got.
scuttling cruttling
scuttling cruttling
the crab who pinches and snips
scuttling cruttling
scuttling cruttling
the crab who pinched a thousand ships
a crab in a bottle
a crab in the house
a crab full throttle
a crab fights a mouse
scuttling cruttling and doodly duddling
every crab has his day
skitter and scatter and tickety tatter
the crab
the crab
the crab
commander and leader
enchanté
it's a blue evening
the engine in the distance
leaves in the wind
why not take a heaping spoonful of black pepper
straight down the gullet
live a little
time unwinds in a cool blue line
always pointing ahead
to where one never arrives
if only a bracing spoonful of freshly ground black pepper
could shake things up
my my my
what a rush that would be
in a dogwood tree
visible from the window
lies a nest hidden
by musty white flowers
boy oh boy
could I over go for a piping hot spoonful of pepper
send my sinuses into overdrive
send my taste buds to the moon
on a pleasant calm blue evening
I love that for some people the word 'best' can mean 'something they think is very good' and for other people the word 'best' can't even be used at all. Nothing of the world can truly rise to the level of 'best'.
People who never use best think that people who use best for things they like are frivolous agents of chaos. They only live to disrupt the natural order of the universe. You can't just call something 'the best' and not even mean it. Oh is that your 'best friend'? Is that the 'best meal you've ever had'? Yeah and what if money was just worth whatever we felt like. If we have no fixed points of meaning then we're adrift in a sea of nothingness. The 'best' is a standard by which all other things are judged and it's not something we can just toss around in place of 'pretty good'. In short, you shouldn't be trusted with anything and your words are the honks and squawks of madness itself.
People who like using 'best' think that people who never use best are just a quivering husk. If all you do is wait for the perfect opportunity you'll have spent all your time waiting, missed the opportunity, and pass through this life too afraid to touch anything. What good is an ideal to the flesh and the bone? Grab the world. Break things. You'll never hit a dinger if all you fear is the swing and miss. We know there is no 'best'. You're not special for being a strict literalist. What persists in life are moments of feeling and words should serve to describe that.
the first thing to be described as big
an age old mystery
some might say
the biggest mystery of all
the biggystery of all
my vote?
egg
one bite will kill you dead
two bites will bring you back to life
three bites will make you go crazy
four bites will make you a
gnawed on scrap of old dusty
beef leather draped over the
banister of rickety crooked
stairs that lead halfway up
and halfway down to nowhere--
three fiends sloughed off
your sorry withered hide into
abyss but there was no
fall. it was a very short drop to
where you were.
those are the bite rules.
---------------------------
this is a poem about how growing up there would be kids who would just confidently tell you rules to things. I guess because they learned about the concept of rules and like, cause and effect. But, you know me, a sucker for serious nonsense.
one time, I'll never forget this, a kid told me (who was also a kid) with a straight face, completely serious,
"did you know? if you can draw a perfect circle, you're the smartest person in the world. but if you draw the circle backwards, you're the dumbest person in the world."
And I remember hearing that and knowing it probably wasn't true but also thinking, "Hmm yeah I guess that makes sense."
one day we learned about Pope Leo X
who said,
"God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it."
upon hearing this
my friend Chad said,
"God has given us the Chad, let us enjoy it."
doesn't it feel like
there should be reverse rain?
I don't understand how water moves.
we should put all the water in a giant truck.
and drive it around to everyone who needs it.
which is everyone all the time.
and the trucker is incorruptible.
they are our hero.
our hopes and dreams rest on the truck scheme.
one person to bear the burden of all the wetness.
I believe in the water trucker.
spelling and math.
I remember I got an F on a spelling test in like 4th grade once. And I realized I had to study to not fail. And I was bad at math for a lot longer. Until like 10th grade.
It was because I wasn't open to the possibility of being wrong about the answer I got. There was no check in place. I'd spell the word however I thought it should be spelled and wouldn't question it. Or I'd do mental math and get it wrong and not question it.
One of my least favorite qualities in a person is someone who consistently says these with confidence that are factually wrong. Like how I was in spelling and math.
At some point the education system beat it out of me. It said, 'you are fallible. stop believing everything you think. have oversight on this stuff.'
And I think that's a good quality.
what a trip right?
these tasks that give someone else so much purpose and fulfillment and meaning and to you it's toil and tedious.
how's that work?
spell check doesn't think that I can abbreviate "how does" into how's.
Oh I'm sorry Blogger maybe you haven't heard of the popular TV show that started in 2002 called 'How's that Work' that explains how stuff works.
one thing I've become really ardent about is teaching the kids I coach how to properly greet people when you walk into a space. the words themselves don't really matter but it's letting everyone in the space know that you acknowledge them and see them and are entering with good intentions. there's really not a lot of upside to it but you really don't want to deal with the downsides.
and then I enter a space and people greet me and ask me how my day is going and I think ohmygod why are you asking me all these questions I day is going just let me exist please
And actually I think that's great and having those thoughts makes the ritual all the more important. It's like it's banishing the Me-Spiral-Demons.
I think true goodness exists for its own sake. Nietzsche said that goodness and virtue is an overflowing. It's an overabundance of itself. But decency is a response to a darker nature. Maybe. You could make the argument against it.
I was sitting in the chair at the dentist and they had the monitor up where I could see it so I was reading my patient notes and at the bottom it said
"patient is nice."
And I was like "LET'S GO!!"
Right? Because they don't have to say that. I earned it.
And I do think that what matters, like, the thing that continues to persist in a meaningful way, is how you make people feel. Above everything else.
And I got officially secret told by my dentist that I'm nice.
gold star for me.
Have you ever seen a video where someone leaves some candy or food for an ant to discover and the ant gets really excited and goes back to the colony to tell all the other ants about the food and when the ant comes back to it the human has taken the food away? And then usually the voice over is something like "they'll never believe you. hahahaha. they'll never believe you."
Well I have. And I like to think of myself as an ant in relation to the larger world and yesterday I lost my favorite quarter zip that I like for running and working out when it's colder and I looked all over my apartment and then I went to the track with the slightest bit of hope that I could had left it there over a week ago or something. I was not confident that it would still be there. In the corner of the track was a garment that looked just like mine from a distance but up close it wasn't it. So I gave up and went about my business and then I happened to look at the top of the stairs and see another long sleeve shirt looking thing and it was mine! Wow. What a happy ant I was. In both small and large undeniable ways you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control and you gotta celebrate victories when you can.
The other week I was at my friend's softball game and these sisters whose mom was playing were running around and playing chase or tag or whatever. And the other older sister was trying to catch the younger sister and the younger one ran past her and just barely got out of the way at full speed and she did this kind of maniacal laugh like "wahahahaha!"
And I know that laugh. That is the you can't catch me laugh at full speed. I've done that laugh. That's like a universal laugh.
because my sister's husband's sister's husband's sister's husband lives there. and is rich.
I don't like button experiments. Things like 'oh if everyone in the world had to make a private vote and if over 50% of people pressed the blue button then everyone survives but if under 50% of people press the blue button only the people who pressed the red button survive.'
I don't like it. It feels like it tries to get at some sort of truth about human nature or morality by treating people as brains floating in jars. You're not. You're in a body in the world. I don't think it's insignificant to throw that out. It's such a crazy construction that it almost scorns the body and the physical world.
One time when I worked at the therapeutic boarding this kid was really upset and he wanted to talk to the headmaster of the school and go into his office and the support counselor told him 'no. you won't do that. I am bigger than you and I will stop you.' And then he just physically stopped him for like 10 minutes until the kid gave up.
And I'm not saying that reason or logic is inconsequential in the face of physical strength or violence but that your body informs your thinking about yourself and the world.
Imagine. Imagine some Johnny Baskethands trying to tell you about the nature of napkin holders but he never actually put napkins in them.
'Well, if we assume--'
Put the napkins in the napkin holder!
I don't know. And then almost always thinkers and philosophers you had something to say about humanity had a notable relationship with their body.
And I'm also not saying that to have a valid opinion on something you have to have any specific kind of body or meet any standard of health or anything to have something worthwhile to say. I just think the value of any results that assume everyone is virtually a brain in a jar don't amount to much.
God is with us
God can you help me
do good at golf Amen
thank you for family
without leaves there would be no leafblowers
what good is it to cultivate an affect where you watch life as if it was hot sand poured into your eyes
what good is it to scream into a horn while buried in the ground
I could go along as a bird does. Sitting in a tree and chirping and singing, with a wide field of vision and moving my head in jerky robotic motions as if fixated on a tiny bug between blades of grass
would it mean so much to try to live honestly? could I do anything different even if I tried?
there are no secrets. everything is on display always. the speed of a bat's wing. a dance overheard. the swirl and turn and pivot of warm evening air.
I can go on this way as long as I please. As long as this way to go on pleases me.
breaths counted out. languish and bloom languish and bloom languish and bloom.
Fruition is not derived from the word 'fruit'. It's from the Latin fruit to enjoy or use.
Still trying to get my knee better. Today I had better range of motion and I decided to go to the gym even though I can't do too much and I had a minor 'ah HA!' moment when I went over to the stairs to stretch my calves and felt a lot of tightness in my left calf and then after stretching it out I could almost immediately bend my knee more so that was a good discovery. Today was a lot better than the previous days and I should have suspected the calves sooner. I was doing heavy weighted calf raises with a barbell and I jumped the weight up too heavy too soon. It all makes sense.
Dang. I felt like I had about a week or so where I was really firing on all cylinders and doing so much and then got hit with a one-two punch of wrist hurt and knee hurt and I was really in shambles for a few days. Feels like this keeps happening this year. Oh well. Getting back on track now I think. Ever forward.
I've had some bad luck this spring with missing training. Coaching, sickness, and now my knee is swelling up. I don't think I did anything to seriously injure it, it just came on the last few days and seems like it wants to linger for a bit. No pain. It's just swollen and doesn't want to bend all the way. This happened a couple times in high school and college and then it would disappear and I never knew why. Still frustrating though.
All the little red mites are out. They're on every surface. They're everywhere. All the little red mites.
I'm not sure. On the one hand it's like,
Of course the future is determined. The architecture of it is all laid out. Time is an unfolding event based on the start position from the Big Bang. You'd be a daggone fool to think your limited perception of time and reality has any bearing on what will or won't happen. It's an illusion of the ego.
But on the other hand,
Even if the future is determined, that determination is still unknowable. And so the events themselves don't really matter as much as your anticipation of them. The future is undetermined in the sense that you don't know what you're going to think or feel about it.
Which I think speaks to the point that you can also point at larger truths and that can provide useful context but at the end of the day you're you in your body.
From sitting outside drinking coffee:
If any other bug or animal got as close to you as bees and stinging insects did, you'd just swat them away. You wouldn't even think about it. You'd be like 'get away. rude.' But because of that deeply ingrained threat of violence you just kinda freeze up and wait for them to leave. Maybe some people still swat at them. I've seen that. Seems silly to me though. What if they sting you?
There's something there about the threat of violence and closeness that I don't want to explore.
But I'll say this. The bee or yellow jacket or whatever doesn't want to sting you. I don't think. I think they're curious. I think they started from curiosity. And then that aggressive curiosity eventually necessitated a retaliatory threat.
And maybe there's something there too about curiosity and violence.
I don't know. I don't have the answers. I'm a guy trying to be on screens less and sitting in a chair. A guy who scrunched his face up when a yellow jacket gave him a once over.
And then, later, I thought "If you didn't know about wind you would think that trees can move like that on their own and that would be wild."
'Helloooooooooooooo thereeeeeeeeeeee. I'm a treeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Hiiiiiiiiiiiii'
not sure why.
a good day though.
Oh. I had a thought today.
I was walking up the stairs to my apartment and it's like this tunnel that goes through the hillside and at the top of it where the entrance to my apartment is, is this little grassy area and as I was getting to the top of the stairs my head poked out of the stairwell and this little squirrel that was squirreling around in the grass saw me pop out of nowhere and kind of freaked out and scurried away and my immediate thought, my instantaneous reaction was
Oh, what if I was a little kid that saw that I scared the squirrel and got really upset and started crying because I accidentally scared it.
'I'm sorry I scared you squirrel!'
ok ok ok ok ok here's what I learned.
Ever since I started taking video of myself sprinting I've had the question
why do I look like that?
And also when I watch the elite sprinters I ask
why don't I look like that? how do they look like that?
And I thought I had figured it out and had been trying to get there over the past month by focusing on straightening my leg before touching the ground. The only problem was when I would try to sprint like that I'd run really slow. And then when I went back to just doing what feels fast I would run much faster. So we had to readjust.
I had a hypothesis so I took video of myself basically running in place but imagining that I had a small roughly knee-high hurdle in front of me that I had to step over. When I went back to watch the video, all the cues and positions that really fast sprinters get into were there. I was doing it. I was doing the thing. I wasn't going anywhere but I was at least moving my legs the way fast sprinters move their legs.
So that was exciting and encouraging. In future workouts, my warm-up is going to focus on hitting those positions and stepping over that imaginary low hurdle (they're also sometimes called wickets) while gradually increasing the speed. I think what's happening is that as I'm speeding up, I'm not able to maintain the form. So I'll do the right form while basically standing still. Then I'll try to go a little faster. And I'll progress over like 3 or 4 reps until I'm not hitting the form anymore. And then I'll just sprint. But one would hope that over time the form I hold at true top speed and my "consciously trying to have good form" form will become more similar.
Yes yes yes. That is the plan.
it's part of my dwelling initiative. it's called sitting outside in the grass. just do it as much as you can.
people like to bring up the quote attributed to albert einstein "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." and in a lot of cases that's true but I do think there's an important kind of meaning that can only be uncovered through repetition. A repetition that doesn't even show any noticeable differences for a long time.
I've been doing these drills for over two years now. Well, I was taught them over twenty years ago but when I wanted to get better at sprinting again I started doing them with intention and it's been interesting how over time they've become different. They feel different. It's kind of like a chant. You say the same words over and over and eventually they take on different meanings than they used to. With the drills I feel different muscles and the movement feels different.
I would argue some things warrant a little bit of insanity.
felt really strong. picked up some things. did some moves and climbs I've been working on for a while. felt extremely gratifying. I think being at home for the weekend and resting and relaxing helped a lot. yay!
I run with a squishy knee. I bend my leg a lot when I run. I want to fix it. If I do nothing else this year I will fix my bent knee. I will do it.
I saw them in the back of the parking lot near the bus and so I kinda took the long way around to go home and the second I was out of sight I heard a loud sound so I turned around and walked up and said 'hey that's our bus. I just heard a loud noise. What's going on?' Not in an aggressive way. Just trying to be straight forward about it. When I went around the side of the bus to see where they'd smashed the windows they ran off.
Pretty unfortunate. Kids being stupid. It happens. I'm not really mad at them. They threw rocks at other windows and mirrors too but the only ones they managed to break were the passenger door windows. I suppose it could've been worse. I had been nervous about leaving the bus there and in the back of my head I was worried someone would come along and mess with it. I don't know if it's better that it happened and ultimately wasn't that bad or if I'm more nervous that they might come back or that it could happen again. I don't know what I'd feel if it happened again. Defeated, I guess.
I will say though, my friends at the gym helped me clean up the glass and we taped up the windows and parked the bus in the corner so the broken side isn't as much of an issue. And my friend got a picture of the kids. I called the police but I'm not expecting anything to come from it. I don't know. Stuff happens I guess. I think it's better to not read too much into it. You fix it up and keep going.
It means a lot that people were there to help me. I felt supported when I really needed support.
Originally every month began with a 'Fool's'. But over time people began to tire of it and they relegated the Fools to a single day in April when everyone is generally in a good mood on account of spring time.
Terrible. Just terrible. Bring back a Fools day at the beginning of every month!
And! Another thing. It wasn't always about pranks. It was just about being foolish. The prank thing was also a negative PR campaign to make the holiday seem more annoying than it actually is.
Oh what's a fool do? Yeah, they just lie. They just make stuff up to trick you.
No. That's not what a fool does. You see, they took the holiday about being a fool and they made it into one where you unwittingly become the fool. And you hate it because of course you do. One must willingly become the fool.
I'm beginning my campaign to reclaim April Fool's Day.
q-tips bit: delightful. wonderful
shoes off bit: divided the room and divided me. I like how he had fun with it but didn't land with me. I think you should take your shoes off. The ending was strong though. Gotta give him that.
"I ate ants. The insects. Not lady-uncles."
scorpion bit:
"I can't have my last meal be ants!"
13th floor: Not my favorite. I thought the scorpion bit was still going.
phone bit: meh
office bit: OOO was funny
I'm pretty sure he did the dad phone bit when Crab and I saw him live.
Boston bit: good story. I like the Boston fantasy accent
Parent bit: I liked it. funny voice.
Carousel bit: funny
Last words: IT SHOULD BE YOU!
"I kept yelling I'm okay but no one was checking."
closer: fun and sweet in a Pete Holmes way
Overall: I liked it! Very well put together. He's good at what he does.
Me, personally, if I was a god...I would think it's really fun when people try to tempt fate by invoking my name. I would find that humorous. And then yeah maybe if I was in a bad mood one time I would make it come true. Just to let em know. Just to keep them on their toes. But usually I would ignore it and just laugh.
And so I think you should tempt fate. That's cosmically funny.
I still need to watch it. I will. I will watch it. Tomorrow actually. And I will post my thoughts. Here!
And! I'll say this.
What if every night before you went to sleep, like your last moment of consciousness every time, without fail, a little bug would appear in your mind's eye and say 'ben'. And you would call it the Ben Bug. Every time. But only at night, when you're actually going to bed to sleep. Not for a nap. And if you wake up early it doesn't happen again. And sometimes if you're hovering between awake and sleep it can glitch and you'll get this extended 'beeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnn'. Would your life be different in any meaningful way if that was true? For you only?
It'll serve food. And the whole gimmick is that we say "We can eat as much or little as you want!"
And all the portions will be regular portions. It's a regular restaurant in every way. But all the marketing is about how much choice you have.
"You can eat the whole plateaor just eat a couple bites!"
"If your first order isn't filling enough you can order more food and we'll give it you!"
"Heck, you can eat none of your first order and we'll still make you a second order."
We just really want people to appreciate how much freedom they have at this restaurant. We don't make you eat food you don't want to eat that you pay for.
And we also don't tell you what order to eat it in. Guess what! You can drink as much or as little of your drink as you want too!
Your choices matter. And we will do everything to not get in the way of those choices.
The stage is totally dark. The house lights are off. The room is totally dark. The light outside and the neon sign is off. The night is totally dark. The moon is out. The stars are out.
Not "out" in the sense that they're visible but "out" in the sense that you can't see them. Keep up.
The space behind your eyes is dark. Your guts are all completely dark. All you've ever known and come to expect is dark. Your future is dark. Your past is dark. The present? Also dark. Stay with me.
The owl hoots darkly. The frog peeps darkly. The dog howls darkly. The puddle sloshes darkly.
As dark as the inside of your shoe. As dark as the oven when it's off and closed in a dark kitchen with no lightbulbs in it. A clear window pane above the sink that separates darkness from darkness.
Will there be a spark? Will there be a flicker?
The show begins in the dark. The show ends in the dark. Somewhere in the middle it was supposed to happen. Afterwards people are sure they saw it. Or, they're sure they saw it at least one time. Or, they're sure that they know someone who is sure that they saw it a long time ago. They're sure of it. It's definitely happened. Why would we all gather and hope and cheer if it never actually happened? Why would it all be set up this way if it never actually happened even once?
where my mind goes when I think about wanting to write. Remembering watching rented VHS movies that we would get on the way to Timberville. Still seeing the building on the side of the road on Route 42. Remembering the glow of the lamps and the static fuzz of the TV and feeling safe and warm. Remembering eating corn on the cob under the big tree in the green backyard. Asking, 'did I eat all of it?' and Maw Maw saying, 'a bird could clean the corn better than that.' Remembering the smell of the firewood in the basement and the heat of the furnace in the dark corner. The treadmill and the rowing machine and being tall enough to pull the metal cord of the lightbulb. The weight of the door to the basement and the creaking of the steps. The tartness of the cherry trees and climbing on top of the new shed to left of the old metal shed. The smell of oil and gasoline and seeing spiders and wasps. The light coming through the grape vine and learning to throw a frisbee and how to hit a ball with a bat and running laps around the horse. The feeling of not wanting to leave on Sunday afternoon. The taste of ice water from the tap and the heavy blankets that I would always kick off in my sleep. Each memory is precious. Each is a step on the path I have taken.
I think words are like a costume. You say certain words because you want to appear a certain way to the people around you. You want to reinforce that image to them and maybe even yourself. I guess that's what affirmations are.
Some words aren't for me. Some words aren't for me to use. No not that word. I mean words like hyacinth.
Every once in a while in my life I've encountered people who are entitled to the word hyacinth. Usually women. A man who uses the word hyacinth is incredibly dangerous. I should clarify that I mean outside of its strict botanical meaning. I mean a man who uses hyacinth in a figurative sense or to evoke a specific image.
Women who use hyacinth are usually well-read poetry types who probably had a few close friends growing up and had enough emotional intelligence to realize that other kids didn't like them or understand them but they themselves were okay with that and accepted it for what it is.
Today my fake burger meat was like a pink puddle instead of the normal patty shape consistency but I ate it anyway and so far it seems like I got away with it.
yay Erin! I'm so proud of her! She works so hard and is such a great person!!!
a plastic bottle cap is born when it is pooped out of a machine and then mechanically attached to plastic bottle. then it sits in a store for what feels like forever because a plastic bottle cap has no sense of time. but it's also no amount of time and also forever. Then the drink gets purchased by me Andy and I consume the liquid and turn it into me but get rid of most of it where it ends up in the water cycle and probably the carbon cycle a little bit too. And maybe the dirt cycle. Anyway I keep the bottle cap and put it in my junk drawer by my coffee machine to mature and gather energy.
Once it has sat long enough and the weather gets nice then I take it out of the drawer and use a sharpie to inscribe an ancient and future rune on it and put it in a bag with other bottle caps that have undergone a similar process.
Now that bag sits on my shelf until I decide to take it to the rock climbing gym where it sits in the setter's closet and gathers energy there.
I know what you're thinking. How's he going to save the world? How will this save the world?
Guess what, idiot. The world doesn't need saving. Because the world is the world and can't be destroyed in any meaningful way. That's where the bottle caps come in. One bottle cap is special and will be cast forward into time where it will absorb energy from the sinister sun that will appear next to our regular sun out of nowhere ten thousand years in the future. The sinister sun can destroy the Earth in a meaningful way.
But because I've sent the bottle cap forward in time to absorb energy from the sinister sun, it can return back to the present and incubate inside the Earth like a vaccine. And the Earth will develop antibody bottle caps that will sprout out of trees when the sinister sun radiation hits. Those bottle caps will destroy the sinister sun and fulfill the prophecy.\
I don't really know though your guess is as good as mine.
For the past two weeks I've felt like I've been on the verge of getting sick but it never fully hit and today I feel like I'm out of it and more in my body and brain than I have been. So that's good.
good good good.
Definitely my proudest moment in coaching with the comp team. This feels like the first year where I really understood what the Regionals competitions test and was able to apply that directly to the training. The kids work so hard and care so much and they were able to do their best climbing on the day OR they've gotten so good that even having an "off" day still let them reach their goals.
It was a big moment and I think the team is only going to get better while staying true to having fun.
is to wear socks adorned with the likenesses of animals upon them. For everywhere you tread you will signal to all with eyes to see that you are aligned with the beasts of the earth, and the flying things, and the critters of the deep.
I hate crowds. I like people.
I ain't down with the plague but I'm cool with the beetles and bugs.
-Jesse Welles
let's stop acting like we can't believe it when one day it's hot and the next day it's snowing.
I know. It's a big change. It feels sudden.
But surely we can imagine more. Surely anyone over the age of 12 or so has seen enough weather changes in the Spring to know that this type of thing can and does happen.
Let's broaden our imagination a little bit to consider a world without cars perhaps. Or not paving over large swaths of land to create heat islands and useless stupid infrastructure. Or put plants on roofs and stuff.
I don't want to keep playing the tutorial and level one every time. Let's get to level two. Maybe try out level three? I don't know. Could be fun.
thank you, crab!
here's a little amateur zoology lesson for you all, crabs are natural dwellers.
Recently I have devised what I call the 'dwelling index' which is how far a given creature travels from its home. Crabs score very high on the dwelling index because my understanding of most crab species tells me that they like to lurk in a safe spot and then rush out when opportunity comes along.
And that's the way to do it.
Liver propaganda would have you believe that if you want to achieve something you can't just expect it to show up on your doorstep one day.
Um, excuse me, livers. Millions of years of evolution would beg to disagree.
Look at the noble eel, for example.
buffoon comes from the medieval Latin word 'buffo' meaning clown.
A clown is someone who seriously undertakes the act of being foolish. What better thing to set seriousness against than fun and silliness?
hello welcome back to my series on dwelling where I talk about why you shouldn't be focused on living you should be focused on dwelling and what that means.
today's episode is about dwelling like you're from earth. The planet earth. You are the thing the planet earth made. Alan Watts talks about this. Like rocks and oceans and volcanoes and trees, humans are a thing the planet made. You should dwell like you are a part of the planet.
Don't be allergic to things. Whatever it is you're allergic to, stop it. What are you, an alien? What do you mean your immune system reacts to something that won't harm you. Cut that out.
Touch dirt every day. What a gift to touch dirt. The dirt and the sky are the two most important things.
Be thought of as a bum. Today the children I coach told me I look like I could be a hobo. I say, 'yes. this is a sign that I am dwelling correctly.' My appearance and the impression it makes matches my values. Do you think yourself stylish? Do you think yourself well put together? Then you are a slave to images and figments. Aim to appear in all ways to have risen up from the dirt with breath inspired.
When you say words, think of the earth as burping them. Because the earth delights in itself and so should you.
Gosh em golly I could really go for a toothsome meal right now. A toothsome meal to replenish and strengthen my hamstrings for I yearn for powerful hamstrings. The time stealer has once again purloined an hour from the day and now my inside clock is jumbled and I long for a toothsome meal and might haunches.
Yes yes. What a day to be alive. In the 16th century the word 'toothsome' changed from meaning generally attractive to tasty food.
And now it is time I go to purchase grocery store time. The time when I think about how growing up, I was always told by adults describing the past that 'there weren't grocery stores back then'. Which should say something about how much grocery stores have impacted our lives. In a good way? Who can say?!
But I must continue my journey to get powerful legs because in the words of Socrates, "Get jacked, bro."
Look it up. He really said that.
Not really. He met this guy once who was out of shape and was like, 'you should be in good physical condition so you can be useful in war. And also it's pretty neat.'
One time I remember I was taking this Shakespeare class with my favorite professor I had in college and we were reading Othello and this guy Othello ends up lying to his wife, Desdemona, and his life kind of unravels from there. But I remember there was a specific point in the play that our professor pointed to that was the moment Othello distrusts his wife and he talked about all the implications of that moment. I ended up emailing the professor because I found an earlier example in the play, maybe the first moment Othello speaks to Desdemona, that he could be considered lying.
And I gave him the example and he responded with something defending his point and the logic of it and I was like 'yeah okay you win.' But I'll never forget that I saw him in class and he asked about it and I said, 'yeah you made a good point.' and he said, 'you believed that?'
Something to that effect. It never occurred to me until that moment that I could've been right or that I could have challenged his response.
The other thing I loved about that professor is he would give very short quizzes on tiny slips of paper about the assigned reading and he would ask about the tiniest, seemingly trivial, details. Stuff you would never think of as important. And then during the lecture he would show how these tiny details were actually crucial to the themes and messages of the work. I remember it was annoying at first but then I took it as a challenge. He also loved to talk about etymologies and ask about obscure words in the text.
He was a cool guy. Professor Savage. One time a student used the word 'savage' and he immediately interrupted them and said, 'that's an unfortunate choice of words'. Like he was really hurt by hearing it used in its normal context.
One way to approach being a human is thinking about yourself as an apartment with plants inside of it.
The apartment is your outside body and the plants are your inside body aka your spirit, your soul, your internal experience, your organs, your innards, and your viscera.
Isn't it kinda crazy that there's a little electrical current or spark or whatever that keeps your heart pumping and makes your brain work. electricity?? in your body? how'd it get in there? how do we pass it on? Electricity comes from a wall outlet not from your body.
Anyway you gotta arrange your plants to get the proper amount of sun. Too much sun, plants get sunburned and shrivel up. Too little sun, plants don't grow as good.
Are your blinds shut? Has the roof of your apartment been torn off and is completely exposed to the elements? Have you completely blocked off all entrances and exits to your apartment so nothing can get in or out? Do you have the right kind of plants for growing indoors? And let's not even start with watering.
Andy why do you think you make so many analogies to plants and why do plants play such a large role in externalizing your experience?
You'd probably think it's because I take care of them and there's a clear relationship between what I do and how the plants are doing but you'd be wrong because that's not the reason. The reason I do it is because it's correct in an absolute Kantian sense.
But don't you think self-help is a kind of bankrupt genre of writing that is trying to put a band-aid over atomization and the loss of community and shared cultural experience? It's just another example of putting risk and responsibility on the individual. In what world does it make sense that a person born into a world and community without their consent be judged insufficient and denied community and food and water?
Growing up this idea of personal responsibility was very important and I agree that it makes sense in a lot of ways but I have this memory of it being set against the idea of 'you can't just give people things without making them work for it or testing them some way.' Society is a pyramid and the people at the top are at the top because they're the best people. If you tried to make it a square or a rectangle or whatever it wouldn't work. And it's so blatant and undeniable now that the excesses we were warned about are all at the top. We didn't filter power and responsibility to the most deserving. The most powerful hoarded it all for themselves. None of this is new, obviously. I think part of me wanted to be in denial.
One thing I'm trying to process is the difference between personal responsibility as it relates to being a productive part of a system that lets a complete idiot become the richest man in the world and personal responsibility that participates as much as needed to still have a life that is meaningful to me.
And where I come from THAT'S PRETTY GOOD!
A favorite bit I like to do at coaching is saying 'that's pretty good where I come from!'
And they say 'where do you come from?'
And I say, 'Harrisonburg.'
March 2nd: I can fix you. The blog can fix you.
February 26th: I'll check out Caligula's Horse, specifically In Contact!
February 23rd: This guy is still doing BAD.
February 23rd: I think they're cancelling taxes this year on account of the government actively casting off any possible credibility and legitimacy.
Winter: Early winter starts after Thanksgiving and is before Christmas and New Years. Late winter is after and runs until roughly St. Patrick's Day or Daylight Savings starting.
Spring is split by Easter and runs until Memorial Day.
Summer is split by July 4th and runs until Labor Day.
Fall is split by Halloween and runs until Thanksgiving.
For Summer and Winter, the early part is a fun time of transition and change.
As I'm writing this I'm also realizing that the solstices and equinoxes also play similar roles to everything I'm describing but I would argue that those are slightly off and the real noticeable changes happen around the holidays.
Late half of Summer and Winter is where they really go whole hog.
Is this anything? Season commentary? Talking bout how late summer feels?
Here's my new idea. If you've stuck it out this far.
Early Winter- everybody works. We've gotta get ready for the holidays. Commercial activity has to take place. Whatever we can get done from Thanksgiving to New Year's. That's working time.
Late Winter- No working. Work shuts down. It's too cold. The days are too short. You have to rest and recover and sleep.
Early Spring- No working. The weather is too fickle. You've gotta wake up slowly. Maybe a little bit of work. Maybe.
Late Spring- Working. Nature is reviving. Blooming. The world is green again. Full of energy. The sun has returned. Time to be passionate and thriving.
Early Summer- No working. You've gotta have fun. If not now, when? When will you have fun?
Late Summer- No working. It's too hot! Are you kidding? No way. Keep having fun. It's growing season.
Early Fall- Working. Harvest time. It's cooling down just a little bit so you can think again. Be productive.
Late Fall- You could make a strong argument for working here BUT you gotta remember that we already committed to working in early Winter and so if we work in Late Fall that's three working periods in a row and that's crazy. Maybe you can choose if you would prefer to work Late Fall or Early Winter but not both.
Anyway so that's my 8 blocks of the year: 3 of which include working and 5 of which don't. I think if we implemented this system everyone would be more meaningfully productive and happier and everyone but the bloodsucking demons would be better off.
AKA Masked Horse
His origin story is that he was abandoned by his parents and raised by horses. Then, he was abandoned by those horses and raised by a professional wrestler.
And isn't that really the story of everyone's lives? At some point you move out and leave your parents and work and/or live for some thing and then eventually you have to leave that thing and be with some other third thing.
Baker Mosquito: guy who was taken in by mosquitoes and then abandoned and taken in by Baker mosquitoes.
Croc Fisher: Guy who was used as bait for gator fishing gets eaten by gator and ends up fishing for gator bait in gator's stomach.
Whale Salesman: Guy who sells whales ends up being sold to whales to sell guys to other whalesman.
Bird Porch: Guy builds a porch for birds on his regular porch but the birds build a bigger porch on the bird porch and rebrand his porch the man porch.
Italian Werewolf: Guy is bit by an Italian and cast out from society for his transformation and falls in with a werewolf commune who use him to help invade the were-italian base.
but she also wanted to be mad. she would've been mad no matter what state the world was in.
I am sometimes reminded by the world that you can never go 'full bitter'.
I just saw this video of this guy standing in front of a Corvette at a used car lot and pitching it while singing opera
this used corvette
it was a dream to drive
it can be yours
for the small price
come here now
ask for Andrew
It was really good, the guy can actually sing. And it's funny because of the contrast and all. And someone in the comments was like 'Shame that this guy has to sell used cars instead of singing.'
Which is true and I agree BUT, at the same time, it is also absolutely true that if that guy was just straight up singing opera in a opera house, opera-style that same person wouldn't care. Not nearly as many people would care.
It's why T-Pain sang with auto tune even though he can actually sing well. No one cares about another guy who can sing well.
It's why I put paintings on craigslist free stuff.
The juxtaposition is more important than the parts themselves.
Don't be a big fish in a small pond. Or a small fish in a big pond.
Be the right fish in the wrong pond.
you want to run a multi-national corporation? or be in charge of a bank or large sums of money and assets? Is that your aspiration in life? To command respect and power through capital? To exploit the weak and people who have enough sense to know that they have to share this planet with everyone and to take what they need and be grateful for what they have? None of that appeals to you? Your just want to grow and grow like a tumor and have conspicuous wealth and bankrupt the environment and make the world a worse place for everyone who comes after? You want to fill with pus like a festering sore and create the conditions for atrocities to take place on the daily like a well-oiled machine? Constant growth is an aberration. And its fruits are on display for all to see.
I run the climbing league at the gym and the main challenge is taking the data from the climbs people do and converting that into points and then taking those points and crafting a story out of it. You want people to be invested and excited about the outcome. There's not much inherently exciting about it because you don't see the action as its happening. It's like narrating a sporting event where you only ever see the scores instead of the home runs or touchdowns or alley-oops themselves.
And so as part of that narrative I've crafted a persona as a fraught and capricious commissioner who is fast and loose with wielding his authority and intentionally stirs the pot. I try to incite as much drama as possible because the worst thing people can be is bored.
The problem is when people want to participate in the bit and accost me and call into question the validity of the whole operation and do the very same dramatic narrative crafting that I'm trying to do but I get overwhelmed and defensive and, on the whole, too sensitive about it.
But that's okay.
The test of a true rabble-rouser is that even he grows to fear the rabble he hath roused.
I will do my taxes this year. As I have done every year since I was born.
And I will bring you along for the ride.
What new awful things will TurboTax do this year?
Stay tuned and find out.
Vote in the comments for when you think I should do my taxes.
The top comment will be considered unless I don't want to do my taxes that day.
I'll negotiate with the top comment for when I do my taxes. And then ridicule or ignore the lower comments.
BUT stick around until the end and I will pay my electric bill and renew my vehicle registration!
got back on the track today after about a month-long hiatus. took video of myself.
times were not great so I was frustrated in the moment BUT I also got video and upon watching it back a few times and comparing it to older videos I realized that I'm doing a much better job of extending and straightening my leg as it's coming down into the ground. So that's good. Even while being moody and just trying to run 'hard', my form still noticeably improved.
my big goal for the year is to break 12 seconds in the 100 meters and the biggest form change I'm going to focus on is keeping my leg straight while landing. that's going to make me run 'taller' and also my center of mass will pass over a straight leg faster than a bent squishy leg which equals faster running.
Steps to straighten my leg while sprinting: mentally cue it and practice running with exaggerated form. straight leg one legged hops for distance. sprinting while trying to keep my legs straight. doing can-cans. modifying the speed drills I already do to focus on keeping a straight leg.
I'm pretty sure the need to bend my legs comes from having weak hamstrings so I'm going to continue strengthening my hamstrings with deadlifts and hamstring curls. also banded kicks.
I'm confident the strength training and drills I'm doing are helping me improve and it's a matter of continuing that work and getting used to sprinting on the track again which I'm confident will come back fairly quickly.
alright time to pay my electric bill...
done
alright time to renew my vehicle registration...
done
I thought I was going to write more about sprinting but I'll end by emphasizing how gratifying it was to see a noticeable improvement in my form. Sprinting is fun but it does feel like beating your head against a wall sometimes trying to figure out how to get better and so for me to take video of myself and identify something worth changing and then actually finding a way to change it feels really good. If I hadn't taken video today I would've been pretty disappointed with my performance even though I can tell just by feel that I'm running differently and have gotten stronger.
I ran 6.60 for my first flying 50m sprint and I thought to myself 'you're washed up old man. you're done. hang up. it was nice while it lasted but looks like this it.' And I knew that wasn't true but I did think it in the moment.
'drink more water' is like the 'do unto others' of health advice.
you need to be reminded of it because you aren't doing it enough but you get reminded so much that it stops feeling necessary so it just becomes background noise until you remember, 'oh yeah. it actually IS super important.' crazy
I take some amount of pride in thinking that I took good care of myself and then you find out you aren't drinking enough water and it's like 'well shooooooot' that's really like step one isn't it?
people notice something I'm wearing or holding and say, "is that new?"
And then I say,
"HA! New to YOU!"
It's a pretty needlessly rude thing to say to someone who's just trying to make a friendly observation but I like to imagine that I have all sorts of esoteric knowledge and wisdom that I've known for years and is only just now apparent to wide-eyed green-horned first-rodeo individuals.
Maybe don't do this one. It never gets a laugh or a good reaction.
I will keep doing it though.
One piece of running wisdom that I've accepted for a long time but recently started to question is the idea that most of training should be done with a controlled approach. If you watch videos of athletes and their coaches doing workouts you'll often hear the coach saying that the most important thing is that they stay relaxed--"RELAX! RELAX!!" The whole video is them screaming "RELAX!!" They'll say that the only time they want to go 100% is during a race or maybe a few key workouts leading up to a big race.
"RELAX! RELAX!"
The idea is that going too hard too often can fry the nervous system and slow recovery between sessions. It's like there's a continuum between Low Intensity, High Volume that Produces Little Stimulus for Adaptation and High Intensity Low Volume that Produces High Stimulus for Adaptation. And most training plans seem to want to aim for like 80% Intensity. That seems to be where most people can train the longest without breaking down and still get a fruitful response.
It all seems very sound and there's plenty of anecdotal and clinical evidence to support it but something really irks me about coaches preaching RELAX! and DON'T PUSH in workouts. Yesterday I was reading this tweet from Steve Magness about how the way the brain and body perceive discomfort is super subjective. If you tell an athlete to relax and go easy, then you're priming their system to notice any discomfort and it tends to make the reps feel harder. By the same token, races where athletes push as hard as they can can feel relatively easy. You're priming the body to ignore as much as discomfort as possible for the sake of performance.
Caveat: it is absolutely the case that you can assign 4 reps in a workout and an athlete goes way too hard on the first one and can't run the last 3 reps with any quality. But I would argue that thinking about relaxing and staying controlled and patient isn't the only way you can achieve smart pacing. You can try hard and still pace well.
that's a simple joy of my day
if I had to guess the percentage of people who own heated blankets I'd say confidently that it's not enough. you need a heated blanket. those things are good. don't believe me? ask me!
Um, yeah, I'm right about that. Heated blanket best sleep you've ever gotten in your life kid don't even question about thinking it. Regular blanket no heat from the blanket whatsoever heated blanket heat from the blanket makes all the difference.
Things have just felt a little more hectic than usual. I blame the cold and how much school they missed. Everybody's routine is off. I'm proud of myself though for how I've had patience while still maintaining boundaries and structure. I like that working with kids can still be challenging and make me question how I can be better. I know I'm a better coach than I was a year ago and two years ago.
I like having tough times because it reminds me why I do what I do.
this kid I coach was on a slab climb where he didn't have anything to put his hands on and he was balancing on this really slippery piece of textured wood and his foot pops off and as he's sliding down his shin brushes against what he was standing on and takes off a good patch of skin. And immediately on his face I can see he's in so much pain and he's hobbling away from the climb and the judge asks if he wants his score card back and he musters up politeness from deep within himself and very calmly says, "no thank you" and takes the card and goes back to wincing and limping. I was amazed at the composure he was able to summon.
We were running out of time fast in the comp and he had another climb he wanted to try and so to cover his raw shin he takes the band-aid he'd placed on his bloody knuckles at the beginning of the competition and moved it to his shin. Not a sanitary move whatsoever but it demonstrated is drive and determination in a way I have rarely seen.
you can cherish something for being big
wow! I just made a BIG mistake!
you can cherish something for being small
my W2 form came on such a SMALL paper! I feel like they're not normally that small. Why is it so small?! I cherish that!
you can cherish something for being yellow
yellow M&M. you're the dumb one. and the red one is the angry one. but I don't think dumbness is a quality inherent to the color yellow. I cherish you all the same
Sometimes when I feel like using fancy words I like to get in people's faces about it and ask them if they know what the word means because I think they probably don't and then I tell them what it means by using simpler words and then they'll say "WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST USE THAT WORD' and then I smile because they've fallen right into my trap and then I say "Because the human experience is endlessly vast and varied and occurs and infinite detail so why would not want as many colors as possible to paint with?!"
Which is true. If you give all the burden of being understood to the speaker and none to the listener then yes you should be as specific as possible BUT it's just as easy to put the burden on the listener and say 'I like the painting because it's BIG and YELLOW' and as the listener if you dismiss that as trite and banal it's because you didn't take the time to consider how cherishing something for being big and yellow is actually a beautiful thing to do.
"Maybe you should tell on yourself more," he says to me.
"What's that?" I say back.
"Well you keep doing things you're not supposed to do and then someone goes and tells on you and get in a lot of trouble. Why not skip the middle step and tell on yourself instead of waiting around for someone else to do it?"
"Won't I just get in trouble faster that way?"
"No. No. No. It's a brave and honorable thing to admit your own faults. Everyone is doing something wrong all the time so it's very honest to confess."
"I don't think it works that way."
"Sure it does. If you do something wrong because it's convenient for you in that moment and then admit to doing it--all you've done is exert your will without shame. It's much worse to not act at all or to act but then have someone else talk about it--you'll seem a coward."
I rip out the Tree of Life by its roots and throw it into the Sun. The world freezes and burns as it ceases to turn.
To some extent I understand the logic of, I'm going to give people I care about a hard time or challenge them or antagonize them because I want to inoculate them against the people out in the world who are going to do that. But I think the emphasis should overwhelmingly be placed on caring and understanding. I'd put it at ratio of 9 parts understanding and support to 1 part teasing.
Yeah I'm sure if someone only ever received support and never got any push back, they'd probably be overly devastated when some stranger tried to antagonize them. But I think the inverse is way more dangerous. If you teach someone that the people who care about you are supposed to be mean to you, you're gonna end up drawn to horrible people OR you're not going to know how to assess someone who decides to show you support and they could be genuine and you don't trust them or they don't have your best interests and you can't see that because they're telling you things you've always wanted to hear.
Priority number one should be being safe, stable, unequivocally supportive and that's your baseline you can work from. But if you don't have that then all the other stuff gets really screwy.
