The New Year's Day Run

I don't remember exactly when it started.

On some New Year's Day morning several years ago I woke up and decided to run. The distance happened to be 10 miles, which at the time was a stretch for my athletic endurance.  Since that day, every year, on New Year's Day I'm compelled to run 10 miles.

Some years the 10 miles has felt like 20 while other years (typically when I'm in the midst of training for a marathon or Ironman) the 10 miles was a cakewalk. I tend do some pretty deep thinking when I run (like most runners I suspect), so combining the stillness of a holiday morning plus the mindset of starting a new year - the contemplative thoughts get pretty active.

I've tried to figure out why I'm so compelled to run on New Year's Day, even more than my normal desire to run. I think the reasons have changed over the years as my age brings new perspective and depending on what happens to be going on in my life. However, I think the underlying drive though is a desire to shock the system on a day that has such symbolic meaning for new beginnings.

Even if I'm not in a place where I feel like I need to have a "new beginning", I find value in pushing my body out of it's comfort zone for a while. Over the year's I've had moments of such clarity while running that I've come to expect that if I head out for a run with some problem or challenge on my mind, that by the end of the run a solution will have made itself clear to me.

I've read or heard two people I admire very much tell stories of how a run, outside of their comfort zone, brought clarity to their lives in an otherwise challenging time. One was Tony Robbins at an event I heard him speak at, and the other was Dean Karnazes in his book Ultramarathon Man. Early on, this brought some validation to pushing myself on a New Year's Day run. Now, it's so ingrained in my annual routine that I don't give it a second thought no matter what shape I'm in.

By running on New Year's Day, maybe I'm expecting (or hoping) for that clarity of thought that Tony and Dean experienced as I contemplate how I want to craft the upcoming year of my life. Whatever the reason, I always feel better when I get back versus when I left; I've run off any extra calories I might have consumed the night before; and I feel ready to face the new year with optimism.

By the way, this year's run will feel more like 20 miles than a cakewalk.

Cape Cod Marathon Race Report

I'm trying something different with this post - a video post that includes updates from along the course using my Flip video camera.  It's my first time trying to do the video thing and there is plenty of improvements that I'll make for the next one but I hope you find some value in the content, if nothing else than for the pure entertainment value of seeing me get less coherent as the miles tick by!

What started out as a 13 mile relay run turned into a 21 mile effort, with an interesting twist at the end!

Half of 26 is 15, huh?

I'm heading down to Falmouth, MA this afternoon to do the Cape Cad Marathon relay on Sunday morning.  I'm doing the race with my brother who asked me to run it with him several months ago.  I don't get a chance to run with him often so I told him I'd love to.

I think it is reasonable to assume that when you are doing a marathon relay with one other person that each person would run 13.1 miles, right?  While making final plans with my brother this week I asked how his training was coming. He casually said, "it's going OK, but would you mind taking the harder legs?"  I have kept up my running since Ironman Lake Placid this year regularly getting in 10 mile runs on the weekend and feeling pretty fit, so I said sure.

Well, this week I finally go around to checking out the course map to see what exactly I had gotten myself into.  I quickly come to find out that the relay is split up into 5 legs.  The closest we can get to an even split for leg length is 15 and 11 miles!  Guess who is doing the 15.

You become a product of your environment

I met up with Paul and Tony last night for a couple of drinks.  I've known Paul for a couple of years now and first met him through the Granite State Triathlon Club. Since then we've trained for several races together including the Manchester Marathon, Patriot Half Ironman and currently we are both training for Ironman Lake Placid.

We've had some long training sessions including some mutli-hour bike rides and runs.  I can't even count the number of topics you cover when on a three hour run. So, inevitably when we get together outside of training or exchange e-mails the topic of triathlon will come up, whether it is a tough workout, a cool new bike or upcoming race expectations. 

My training has been way off for the past week due to an injury (rib injury that will take 4 weeks to recover from!) and I've gotten frustrated from the lack of activity I'm relegated to. I've felt my motivation slowly going away.  However I think I've become conditioned to think about triathlon when I interact with Paul. After hanging out with Paul and Tony last night (and yes we talked triathlon) I woke up this morning with a much more optimistic outlook on my injury and upcoming training in the next couple of months.

Paul is part of my triathlon environment which led to the title of this post - you become a product of your environment.  I believe this statement is true no matter how you look at it.  

It may seem that there are exceptions to this.  There are story's like Oprah's, Art Berg's and people you meet everyday. You have probably met people yourself who after hearing their story think, "how does this person have such an optimistic outlook on life?" These people "beat the odds" of a tough environment only to become successful, in whatever way you want to define success.  They are incredible examples of being pro-active in creating positive definitions about events in their life, they find the positive in a situation, use it to their advantage and embody one of my favorite phrases - 'no event has any inherent meaning, only the meaning we give it'. 

However, even those people we consider exceptions to the rule: "you become a product of your environment" changed their environment in one way or another.  It may have been their physical environment; maybe they chose to find a new cirlce of friends, move to a different place or find a different job.  However in all cases it was their mental environment they changed first which likely led to a change in their physical environment.

Looking outside these seemingly extreme examples (I think most people have their own version of a challenging environment) I believe everyone can use this belief to their advantage.

What would you change about your life if you believed that you were at least in some part a product of your environment? If you had the choice, why wouldn't you create the best environment possible to reach whatever goals and dreams you had? If you can't immediately change your physical environment, there is no one stopping you from changing your mental environment.

What are you going to do to or what do you now do to change your environment, mental or physical?

Over the next several weeks and months I'll be getting into more details about my fundraising efforts for the Bretton Woods Adaptive ski program.  In those posts I hope you'll find examples of people who have changed their mental environment, no matter how difficult their situation seemed to be.

Sport specific training

The more years I've spent in triathlon the better I've come to understand the importance of sport specific training.  It's critical that you put the hours and mileage into swimming, biking and running in order to perform your best on race day.

Last night I was brutally reminded of the importance of sport specific training.

I played basketball in high school  and would consider myself an average to above average player.  Every year my alma mater has alumni game in which the "old timers" (those who graduate more than 5 years ago - I just had my 20th HS reunion) play the Junior Varsity team.  I've played off and on over the years depending on which of my friends were also in town.

This year's game was last night and even though none of my high school buddies were in town, I decided to go play.  I just did the Green Mountain marathon the beginning of last month and I've been running, biking and swimming pretty regularly since the race.  What I'm saying is that I'm in pretty good shape and figured I would be able to run circles around those 14 and 15 year old JV players.

The harsh reality of my sport specific training up to this point is that I was not prepared for the short sprints and starting/stopping nature of playing basketball.  To say nothing of the fact that I hadn't picked up a basketball in several months (which also showed dramatically!).

If I go to play at next year's game, I'm going to make sure that I get a little sport specific training in before game day!