Tuesday, September 29, 2009

It's Not the 99.99% That Concern Me...

Let's talk a bit about how to suck at something but still be pretty friggin good at it. It's really a matter of perspective. I've been getting crushed in cyclocross and it makes me feel like I suck, which when you put as much blood, sweat, and pain into something like I do, it gets frustrating and demoralizing. So lets take a closer look at what's going on. This is mostly for me so I can sort some shit out in my own mind, but you're welcome to follow along. I'm blogging it because if there's anybody else out there who's as competitive and mental as I am and is not happy with the way things are going then this might help you sort out your issues as well.

First of all, this is my second season of cyclocross racing with a year off in between. In my first year I was 40 years old and started in the "C" group, raced 3 times all top 10's or top 5's, moved into the "B" masters for cat3 and cat4 masters racers and continued to get top 10's. I was fit, strong, inexperienced, and still kicking ass. I raced a masters race in Vt and won. Small race, but still. I beat about 25 guys, some of them lower level elite masters. I upgraded to the next category and started trying to race with the elite masters at the big races. This is where it gets demoralizing. The elite masters are Cat 1, 2 and 3 but really they're mostly cat 1, 2, and 3's who never bothered to upgrade to 1 or 2. These guys have been racing since their teens and twenties when i was busy drinking myself into a coma. They've had hundreds if not thousands of races. They're national and regional champions. They're legit cyclists. There is one guy who is a cat 3 with 2 seasons of racing experience. Me. I have yet to race in my 20th cross race. So wtf am I doing there with the elite masters? I ask myself the same thing every time i get my ass destroyed in one of these races. The fact that I'm finishing on the lead lap with the elite masters with my level of experience is actually pretty remarkable. Unfortunately for my psyche, that fact doesn't make me feel any better... I could enter "B" masters races now and be in position to win every one of them but would that be satisfying to me? No, because I know there's a better field out there that I want to be competitive with.

Here's my problem. I want to be the best at everything I do. I don't just want to be the best that i can be, i also want to be better than everybody else. That's why I compete. Why would I enter a race if I didn't want to beat everybody? To me, that makes no sense. Note, I didn't say I expect to beat everybody else. I said I want to beat everybody else. I have enough common sense to know that I can't win all the time. I also have enough common sense to know that I will probably never beat Roger Aspholm or Jonny Bold in a cyclocross race for the next 10-15 years (watch out when we're racing over 65's at the National Championships though. By then I will have enough years under my belt to compete with them).

If I look at things from a different perspective I'm probably stronger than 99.99% of people who ride a bike. That's not bad is it? There's fields of Cat 4, Cat 3, "B" masters, full of people that I can crush. Hundreds of them just in this area alone. There's guys that have been riding in the elite masters fields and have been racing forever that I can beat. Those guys don't concern me. As soon as they're in my rearview mirror they're history. I don't spend a second focusing on the ones that are weaker than me. My targets are always ahead of me. I strive to be the best. And until I get there I am going to get my ass handed to me on a regular basis and I'm going to come back for more. Stronger every time.

This past weekend in Vt it was the first weekend of the Verge series. This is the biggest cross series in New England and all the top guys come out for it. The top 20 in the results are always the same guys who have been crushing fields forever. This race has current national champion Roger Aspholm and former national champion, Bold, in it. They show for all the Verge races. The two of them pass the national championship back and forth like it's a hot potato.. "Hey Roger, it's your turn this year.". And then there's me, in the staging area like a bug-eyed kid in a toy store just kind of in awe at the racers around me, feeling like i don't quite belong here (mostly because I don't). My goal is to someday enter the staging area feeling like I belong there and I know that if I continue to bust my ass and stay focused that day will come. All the punishment and embarrassing losses will pay off some day. But damn if it isn't tough sometimes to realize how far away you are from where you want to be.

The race started with the usual mad sprint for position that put me at my limit within about 5 milliseconds. Shit! I hate these guys so much..... But to be honest, I started well and I managed to stay in the top half of the pack for the first lap right into the first set of barriers, which was about 6 minutes into our 7 minute laps.. I got over the barriers and remounted the bike all screwed up, the front wheel jacknifed and I flipped over the bars landing squarely on my forehead. Dazed, I got up, climbed back on the bike and started pedaling frantically to get back in the group before they got away. Oddly, it felt wicked easy to pedal the bike, almost like there was no chain (because there wasn't).. "Hey, I'm not moving!". The damn chain came off and was wedged into the front derailleur. Took me about a minute before I could get going again. Once I was back on track things just didn't feel right. The bike, the helmet, the legs, everything. When I crashed, the internal cage of my helmet which secures the helmet to your head, ripped out of the helmet. So my helmet was just kind of floating crooked on my head, picture the three year old on his training wheels with the way-too-big-hand-me-down helmet from his 8 yr old brother... I was a mess and I wanted to quit.

The group was way gone by now. This is the moment of truth. You know your race is over, there is absolutely no way I am catching the field at this point. One lap in and I'm out of contention, not that I was going to contend for the win, but I was hoping to be somewhere in the middle of the pack when it was all over. This is incredibly demoralizing. What do I do? Call it a day? I couldn't live with myself if I quit. So I got back on my bike and went chasing. I passed one guy in fairly short order, but he was chunky so I took no pleasure in that one.. Then I passed a guy who was really fit, but he was walking his bike, so I couldn't take much pleasure in that one either. At the very least, I was not finishing last :)  In cross races you can see very large sections of the course from anywhere on the course so I could see how far behind I was from the main field, which at this point was pretty strung out. And I was so far behind. I decided that it would be a victory if I could finish the race on the lead lap without getting lapped. With the strength of the field and the difficulty of the course, this would be difficult enough without the crash. I spent 3 laps alone slowly closing the gap on some riders that were about a mile ahead of me when I started the chase. I was suffering like crazy. There was a section of the course where there was an uphill with three logs across it. The top guys rode it, the rest of us ran it with the bike on our shoulders. Every time I would come to this I wanted to collapse, my legs felt like they were loaded with concrete. It was brutal.

Isolated, in agony.

On lap 5 I finally caught one of the guys in front of me and traded places with him a few times. Then the two of us caught another guy. There were a few more racers in view. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to claw my way back into the end of the race. At this point I had one lap to go to make it to the finish line without getting lapped by the leaders. And they were getting close. It was Roger and Kevin Hines, another freak of nature, who at 48 years old can still come top 3 in the pro field at some of these races. They were coming on hard and it was going to be close for me stay out in front of them. I came to the barriers for the last time and cleared them cleanly, got back on the bike and put everything I had into getting to the finish line first. At this point I had gapped the riders I had previously caught by a wide margin. They were getting lapped, but not me. I came into the straightaway to the finish and punched it, I looked over my shoulder and I had maybe 50-70 yards on the leaders. I got across the finish line about 5 seconds ahead of Roger, who won the race. Considering I lost the race by about 7 minutes, it was actually quite an achievement to not get lapped by the guy wearing the national championship jersey, considering my crash and mechanical issues in the first lap.

Now that I look back on the race and put everything into perspective, it's not so bad. I don't really suck, I'm just in over my head and trying to get stronger so I'm less in-over-my-head next time around. It's going to be a while, but I'm not backing off. I'm staying in this field if it kills me. I wonder sometimes if I don't suffer enough. But then when I think about it, I think I probably suffer more than most of the guys that are beating me. I don't think anybody suffered more than I did on Saturday, out for 4 laps alone, trying not to get lapped by guys that are profoundly better racers and so much stronger than I am. It would be impossible to suffer more. In these races I am right at my limit from start to finish, there is no question about it. I can't look at one point in any of my races and say to myself "I could have gone harder then".. So it's not that I don't suffer enough, it's just that I'm not strong enough.. Yet....

My training for today is a trail run and a mountain bike ride.. I did the trail run this morning, I've now turned my 30 minute trail loop into a 24:33 trail loop. I was sprinting up hills gasping for air. This is what will make me stronger. I'm heading out now to tear it up on the Horse Hill trails in Merrimack for a couple hours on the 29'er. Tomorrow night there's a practice cyclocross race that I'm going to. Take it easy on Thu and Fri and then I'm heading to Gloucester for week 2 of the Verge series where I will be on my limit, suffering beyond comprehension, hoping for a finish that I can be proud of. But with the expectations I put on myself, that's a pretty tall order. Maybe I should scale back my expectations... Fuck that! This is what makes me who I am.

All the best,
kevin

Sunday, September 20, 2009

A Sucker for Pain

Today was my first cyclocross race of the season, and it was my first reminder of why I love it so much even though it destroys me like nothing else I've ever done. It is so intense, difficult, painful and agonizing. But when it's all over and the dust settles it gives you an amazing feeling of accomplishment because you have to push yourself ridiculously hard from start to finish. Cyclocross is mostly off-road bike racing with some paved sections (typically at the start and finish). There are fields with chicanes and off-camber sections, there are barriers and run-ups where you need to jump off the bike, clear the obstruction or run up a steep hill (or in the case of today's race, a set of stairs) while carrying the bike and remount without missing a beat. There are fire roads through the woods, sandpits, there could be anything. There was a race yesterday at Waterville Valley where they made a snow pit made of the ice from the zamboni machine that cleans the indoor rink there. These cyclocross races are super challenging, require power for the straightaways and technical ability for all the obstacles, and they require a massive internal engine. The elite masters races are 45 minutes of full gas, lung-busting enjoyment.. haha.. I'm sitting here writing this and my body is buzzing from the effort, I'm still unable to take a full breath without a wheeze or a coughing fit. To talk to me right now you wouldn't know if I just spent 45 minutes destroying myself on a cross track at 100% max heart rate or chain smoking Lucky Strikes.

Today's race was Sucker Brook Cross in Auburn, NH.. With sunny skies and temps in the 70's, it was an incredible day for a hike or for apple picking, not so great for a cross race. There's a reason that the cyclocross season runs into December and that's because temps in the 20's aren't really that uncomfortable when you're working this hard. I knew today would be a killer from the time I arrived at the registration table to get my number. A guy comes up beside me and asks one of the race workers if it was OK if he switched from the Pro-1-2-3 field to the 35+ Master's 1-2-3 field. It was Jonny Bold, who is one of the top 10 masters racers in the country. So there's 1st place, but more importantly, the pace of the race just went from wicked fast to G-force. On a side note, if you could pick a racing name for yourself, Jonny Bold would have to be in your top 5. It's only right that he kicks the shit out of pretty much every elite masters and elite open field that he races against. With a name like Kevin Buckley, I'm very much a middle of the pack kind of racer. Need to think of a new racing name. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

In the staging area everybody was crowding looking for a good starting position in hopes of getting a hole shot when the gun went off. Getting out front at the beginning of a cross race is huge because it's much better to be in with the lead group from the start rather than having to spend extra effort getting around people trying to claw your way to the front. When the whistle blew it was a mad sprint for position. We took the first corner about 12 across and then sprinted into the next corner where a couple riders got tangled up and went down. I got in around that and had an OK position, somewhere in the middle of the field. There are so many twists and turns in these races and the ability to accelerate hard out of the corners for the duration of the race are pivotal in finishing well. My bike handling was really good today, no crashes or wipeouts in any of the hairpin turns. I was red-lined about halfway through the first lap. This isn't unusual. That's what cyclocross is. Maximum effort for 45 minutes. You go red and you stay there. Your body and mind mess with you big time during these races. I went through various points in time where I wanted to quit, cry or puke. But I didn't do any of those things. I kept hammering as hard as I possibly could. During laps 1 through 3 I'm passing some and getting passed by others. The field is pretty strung out from about the end of the first lap on. The pace was frenetic. I settled in with a group of about 5 or 6 other guys where we kept exchanging positions for a while. The course was incredibly dusty from the high heat and hard pack conditions, especially on the dirt fire road. You can't carry water during these races (there's never a chance to drink it) and the dust was making the lack of it even more noticeable.

A few laps in you start to wonder how many laps you'll be doing since you never know at the start. The race lasts 45 minutes and they decide how many laps you'll do based on the time of the first couple laps. As you cross the finish line they show a lap card that tells you how many laps to go. At the end of the third lap, suffering at an extremely high level, I was begging for a "3" to be shown. I knew it wouldn't be less than that and praying that it wouldn't be more. There was no card. Next time around, I'm hoping for a 2, I got a 3.. This is the part where you kind of want to cry. "3 more laps of this is going to kill me", I thought. It's amazing that more people don't drop dead of heart attacks at these races, it is absolutely shocking how high and for how long your heart rate stays elevated. I've worn my HRM at these races before and I am pretty much fixed 95-100% max for the duration. These efforts test just how deep you can dig. My competitiveness, intensity, and desire keeps me pushing. My fitness level allows me to.

In the last couple laps I found that I was racing in with a few guys that I was always at about the same level with a couple years ago when I last raced cross.. I had to take last year off when I was getting the gym going and I was wondering how I would do against these same guys with my extended layoff.. We rode together through the 5th and 6th laps and when we hit the last lap I rode them off my wheel. It was a pretty good feeling to look over my shoulder and see the gap expanding. There was still a group of about 3 or 4 riders that were still on my wheel though, and I knew they wanted nothing more than to pass me. That's the thing about these races. Every position is fought for as if it's 1st place. The sprint finishes for 25th are fought just as hard as the sprints for 1st. This was no different. As we came out of the sandpit I had to put everything I had left into it to keep these three from passing me. It was a mad dash for the end and I ended up holding them off for 27th place.. Haha.. 27th.. How crazy is that? I actually fought for 27th as if it was a fight to the death.. The three that I beat for 27th each came up behind me and patted me on the back and said "great job!" as if I won.

So here I sit with my victorious 27th place finish and a pair of bleeding lungs that won't take a normal breath until Tuesday. I came across 3:30 behind Jonny Bold.. To be 3:30 behind one of the top handful of guys in the country is not too bad. The 35+ elite masters is a vicious field and I'm pretty happy with my first effort back after a very long layoff. I feel I have nowhere to go but up a this point. Next weekend is a really big race weekend in Vermont, first weekend of the Verge series which always gets the top racers around. It will be another excruciating weekend, but I'd have it no other way.

Friday, September 18, 2009

It's Contagious!

A couple weeks ago my buddy George turned 50 years old. George has been one of my best friends for about 15 years now since we started coaching our kids together when they were in the U10's. Over the years we've cycled, skied, coached and partied together.. When I started Dynamic Strength and Conditioning with some outdoor workouts at a local park, George was the first guy to join the group of women that were working out with me. He quickly got addicted to the full body functional conditioning like everybody else. The energy, the mobility, the strength and endurance, his back pains started going away. This is always the most rewarding part of what I do, being a part of the life changing enhancements people realize when they start to really get in shape while training with me. It's like nothing they've ever experienced in their lives. It's addictive, and it's contagious.

Anyways, to commemorate his 50th birthday George decided he wanted to ride a century. My immediate response was "I'm in!"... A 100 mile bike ride is one of those things that most people will never do. When you tell most people you're going to ride your bike 100 miles the usual response is a mixture of shock, awe, and horror. A 100 mile ride is a great test of the body and mind. The challenge to the body is obvious. Riding 100 miles is a hell of a long way. I don't like being in a car for 100 miles never mind on a bicycle seat (as anatomically forgiving as the latest, greatest saddles are, 100 miles on them is still a literal pain in the ass). The challenge to the mind is great as well. It's tough to be 2 hours into a ride and realize you're not even halfway there. With legs burning and lower back whimpering at 70 miles you know there's another 90 minutes, give or take, until you're done. Your brain gets really pissed off at you over the course of the ride. The last 15 miles or so are pretty euphoric though because you know how far you've come and you know how little you have left to go. For most people, their first century is an epic experience that they will never forget. I used to go on group centuries years ago and you could always tell the first timers. They would have 16 energy gels taped to their top tube and pockets bulging with peanut butter sandwiches and bags of trail mix. They'd be carrying about 10,000 calories with them. The only thing missing would be the backpacking stove and the dehydrated meals. George asked me what to bring.. I told him a few energy gels and about $20 :)

George picked a route that went from Newburyport to Ogunquit, the whole route was right up the coast. We headed out at about 7:30. There was nobody on the roads or on the beaches. The sun had just risen about an hour ago and the ocean was absolutely gorgeous. We were cranking along at an average pace of about 20mph which I wasn't sure was too wise considering it was George's first ever century and I didn't want him to blow up early, but he was riding really strong and we just kept it going. We stopped in Portsmouth about 30 miles into the ride and refueled with double espressos. What a cool town Portsmouth is. The first thing that pops out at me is how badly they need a functional conditioning gym :) Hmmmm...... Sufficiently wired we headed back to the ocean and continued up the coast.. Through Rye, Kittery, York, and Ogunquit, each town kind of similar to the last. You get to the beach district of each town and there are art galleries, fried clam shops, Life is Good stores (someday to be replaced by Tragically Fit stores) and lots of people who are really out of shape that throw dissaproving looks at me because my efforts at staying in shape are blocking their path to the ice cream shop. I've found that there are two kinds of people in the world.. People that like to see stuff and people that like to do stuff.. Those of us who do stuff are almost always looked down upon by those who would rather see things. We're a constant reminder to them of how badly they need to get off their asses and do stuff instead of treating life like it's a spectator event.

So George and I pedaled another 40 miles in between our first stop in Portsmouth and our second stop in Portsmouth on the way back.. 70 miles in and it was time for lunch.. Actually, it was time for lunch about 10 or 15 miles ago but we continued on through the hunger, on the verge of a bonk, just getting by on energy gel and water.. We were both kind of suffering between 60 and 70 miles because we really could have used real calories, having burned over 3000 calories at this point in the ride. My HRM said I had burned about 4500 at this point but I don't believe it.. I think it was more reasonable that I was burning less than 800 an hour and we were about 4 hours into the ride, which I have to say, was a much quicker pace than I had originally expected us to be able to keep on such a long ride. George was really kicking ass!

Properly refueled we headed back to Newburyport with the "heavy legs" you get after 70 miles followed by a 30 minute break where you ate a sandwich the size of a baby cow and some really good potato salad.. (Note to self... Never, EVER, eat potato salad again during a break in a long bike ride!).. At about mile 90 we had our first run in with a redneck. Amazing it took this long really.. We were coming through the Hampton area where it's two lanes in one direction.. There was nobody in the second lane and George and I were riding side by side. There was plenty of room to get around us considering there were two lanes to get by, and I was barely even into the first lane. So the angry beeping starts, followed by a pick up truck (why is it always a pick up truck?) that went by me about 12 inches off my handlebars, followed by an exchange of angry fingers, followed by me gesticulating wildly for the dickhead to pullover so I could kick his ass while wearing spandex (it's a dream of mine to kick the shit out of a redneck trucker while wearing spandex.. don't ask me why, it must be the napolean complex most of us short guys are born with).. So the guy keeps going and George and I go back into our conversation as if nothing ever happened. The last 10 miles George started cramping up a little but we were still maintaining a really good pace. Just keep the pedals turning, turning, turning, at this point. We're almost there. We got back to Riverside Cycles in Newburyport with 101 miles completed in about 5hrs 20 mins.. If you consider the times that we were tooling along the beach areas and downtown Portsmouth looking for a food stop, our average riding pace for the 101 miles was close to 19MPH! George didn't just complete his first century, he crushed it. And it showed when we got back to the bike shop. The guy was glowing, walking on a cloud. It was a major achievement at any age, never mind just having turned 50...

And that's why we do what we do at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, so we can get the looks of shock, awe, and horror when we tell them we just rode our bikes 100 miles. So we can go out on any given day and run for an hour in the woods. So we can pick up a football and throw it 25 yards across the backyard without our arm still being attached to it. I could have rode my bike 200 miles that day, not kidding. In just the past week, we've had a couple gym members hike Mt Washington in less than 2.5 hours, we had three others compete in triathlons, we have 4 members running their first 10k this Sunday. Michele is running a 50mile ultramarathon in Vt next weekend. Marc is top 4 in the country in his drag racing series. Steve is a New England Champion track cyclist. Several of our members are active in adult soccer leagues. We have pro MMA fighters and martial artists. I have about 16 cyclocross races planned over the next 3 months. We have a woman playing rugby at the highest level for women in the country. About 6 members have picked up mountain biking in the last couple months. One of our trainers is planning a 100 mile ultramarathon next year, another is going for a PR at Boston in April. George has his sights set on PRs at both the Allen Clark Hillclimb (a TT up the App Gap in Vt) and the General Stark Mt run. The list is endless. This is the major difference between us and the legion of the chrome and fern. Probably less than 20% of them have any real world activities. They run on hamster wheels, strap into machines, and lift weights. They walk around the real world and see things. They don't have real world activities because their training isn't conducive to real world activities. We train as a means of making our activities in the real world more enjoyable. We want to live life to the fullest and that requires true functional strength and conditioning. Close to 100% of the people at Dynamic are active in the real world, they're picking up new activities, creating new goals, setting new PRs, and enjoying every damn minute of it!

All the best,
kevin

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A Guaranteed Return on Investment

There are two investments that you can make in life with guaranteed returns. A 100% guarantee to pay off. Both investments have a 100% success rate, but in opposite directions.. Both of these investments are investments in yourself. The first is a commitment to inadequate exercise and unhealthy habits. The guaranteed return on this is that you will be fat, out of shape, sick and weak.. Hmmm, sounds appealing, no? The second investment in yourself is to get adequate exercise, eat healthy, and make the right choices. This has a guaranteed return of higher energy levels, a stronger, leaner body, and great state of mind.. If I offered you the option of either investment which would you choose? Would it make any sense to choose the first option? Of course not. So why, when we walk around town, through airports, shopping malls, or beaches, are we surrounded by thundering herds of severely deconditioned people who have obviously chosen the first investment? I wish I knew the answer, but I have a couple guesses... And this may seem like a bit of a rant, probably because it is....


First, it's easy to be fat and weak. Too easy. It's easy to buy nutritionless foods in the supermarkets and eat out at places that load their "healthy" meal choices with butter and cream sauces. It's easy to skip the workout because there's a TV show or game that you wanted to watch, or because you wanted to grab a beer with co-workers. We live in a society of luxuries based on instant gratification with a short-sighted approach to living. The attitude is that if you wake up on the right side of the dirt then you must be doing something right. Even if you don't feel great. Eventually this catches up to a person and they will go from not feeling great to feeling awful. Self-esteem plummets, depression sets in, they feel like shit all the time. Sickness and disease follow. If you're reading this thinking I'm trying to use scare tactics on you you're wrong. This is how it works in the real world. How many funerals have you gone to where they're burying somebody who should have been able to live a lot longer and the talk always revolves around "this wouldn't have happened if they only.........."? And then you're driving home making a new commitment to taking care of yourself so the same thing doesn't happen to you, only to have that commitment fade within a few days. I'm not using scare tactics, I'm speaking from experience.


There's lots of excuses out there too. This is because it's actually hard work to get in shape and stay in shape. The rewards are outstanding, but it's hard work to get there. Like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it.. If you don't like to work hard for the results you want, then you better get comfortable in your jeans with the 40 inch waist. And enough about how the economy sucks and it's so expensive to get in shape. Edmunds.com reports that the average car payment in the US is $479 a month with a 5 yr term. The average credit card debt that people carry is $10,600. There's lots of choices what to do with your money out there, and most people choose to invest it in things that don't necessarily help to keep them in shape. Is it more important to drive a $30,000 car and get a new one every three years, or would it make more sense to drive a car into the ground (they can last up to 15-20 years you know) and spend the money you would save on car payments on training to get in ridiculous shape with an expert trainer? What says more about you, the body of the car you drive or your own body? Exercising is free. Motivation is free. If you don't know the right way to exercise or can't provide the motivation on your own then you have to pay a professional to get you there. This is a financial investment that will be the best financial investment you ever make if you pick the right professional. The World Health Organization recently finished a study proving that every $1 invested in physical activity yields reduced medical expenses of $3.20 over time. That's a 320% return on your money. That's just the financial part of it. You can't put a price on the feeling you get from the energy levels, the increased self-esteem, and the strength and overall well-being you achieve. Being fat and weak is not a condition, it's a choice. If being fat and weak is more important to you than being strong and lean, then admit it and don't make excuses as to why you can't start a program to get in shape.


Learned habits are tough to break. There are 25 million obese children in America. 25 Million!!! That is insanity. Who's fault is it? The child? These kids are going to grow up obese thinking that video games, lack of exercise and eating Ding Dongs is a way of life.. What do you think their kids are going to be like? I work with people on their nutrition at the gym. I've had people get phenomenal weight loss and fat loss results when they work with me. Some have asked me what would I recommend for "kid friendly" meals for their kids.. Let's see, how about lean meats, fish, vegetables and fruits? When you buy baby foods from Gerber, you get bananas, peas, beans, carrots, squash, applesauce, etc... So why when they're old enough for solid foods do people start loading them up with sugary cereals, pop tarts, and hot dogs. Why do people feed shit to their kids that they wouldn't eat themselves? Is that what "kid friendly" means? If your kid is obese it's your fault, not theirs.


OK, enough of the rant... I feel a little better now. It's just frustrating to me when I know how important being in shape and feeling great is to so many people but then they don't want to do what it takes to get there or they make up excuses. I've put together a phenomenal 3 month training program that starts on October 5th. Anybody who is involved in this program and makes a commitment to it by showing up at least 3x a week, and complements it with healthy eating habits and an active weekend, (getting up to go to the fridge and bathroom during commercial breaks in the football games does not qualify as "active"), is guaranteed to get phenomenal results. Increased energy. Fat loss. Increased strength and endurance. Better self-esteem. On the "Quality of Life" index, you will make great gains. If this doesn't fit your schedule, then talk to me about semi-private training on a schedule that meets yours. As great as the results are in my group training programs, my semi-private clients get even better results because I customize a program specifically for them and they get more attention than they would in a bigger group. More attention typically yields more motivation which yields higher effort which yields better results. Yes, it's more money, but it's less than an average car payment. Again, decide what's important to you and don't make excuses. If coming to the gym is too far out of the way for you then I can provide a personal training program for you to do on your own. It includes fitness assessments and a customized program that you can do on your own with minimal equipment on your own time. You also get unlimited access to me and I will hold you accountable to the program. If it wasn't that way then it would be a waste of your money and a waste of my time. Neither of which makes any sense.


I have an investment opportunity for you that is 100% guaranteed to pay off. The choice is yours whether to take advantage of it or not.


All the best,

kevin

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I Need to Get in Shape First....

I know hundreds, if not thousands of people from my 18 years of coaching and now the last year of being a gym owner of the top functional conditioning gym in New England. When talking to people, the conversation inevitably turns to fitness and "how are things going at the gym?". Everybody has heard the stories about the gym. How hard the workouts are. The crazy things that people are put through on a daily basis. One of the funnier things I hear from time to time when I ask people when they're going to start working out with us at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning is, "I need to get in shape first". This tells me two things. First, people understand that to REALLY get in shape, they need to be doing what we're doing at Dynamic. They understand that their routines of jogging on the conveyor belt and working one or two muscles at a time on weight benches and machines is doing little more than providing their ego with a false sense that they're actually getting fit. The second thing it tells me is that they really don't want to work as hard as necessary to get in shape. Because if they did, then they would, and they wouldn't spend another second wasting their time "getting in better shape" at Planet Fatness. If you want to get in better shape then you need to do what we're doing. Whether you do it with us, with others, or by yourself doesn't really matter. Whether you use kettlebells, medicine balls, bodyweight exercises, a rowing machine, or some combination of all of it, doesn't really matter. The only thing that will get you in the kind of shape that we're in is to do the type of training that we do. Functional exercise, training full body movements with and without resistance, at high intensity.


In the past week I've realized just how strong my lifestyle has made me. Notice, I'm not calling it a workout routine because it is absolutely not just a workout routine. It is a complete dedication to total health and wellness of the body and mind. It's a lifestyle. The workouts are a subset of the whole package. Anyway, last week I was out on my mountain bike on a loop I created for cyclocross training. Awesome 5 mile loop through single track, fields, fire roads, and some paved section.. Towards the end of the loop, I come out of the woods onto a dirt road with a fast descent. I was coming down the hill at about 30mph and it starts to come into a pretty hard corner with all the big yellow arrows and a sign that "recommends" 15 MPH. But I'm thinking, what the hell, I'm on my MTB with the fat tires, I'm just going to lay into the turn and be fine. So I tried taking the corner at 30 MPH. I laid into the turn and I got my bike to the point where you feel like if you were to turn any tighter your wheels are sure to come out from under you. This point is reached much quicker on a slippery dirt road than it is on paved. Problem was, the road wasn't done turning. I quickly realized I was going to go off the road and immediately started scanning for a safe exit. This all took place in about 10 milliseconds. It was all woods, except the point where I was heading, which was a ditch followed by woods. I started hitting the brakes trying to get as much speed out of the bike as possible before hitting the ditch. I got down to about 20MPH, went straight into the ditch, flipped over the handlebars, landed heavily on my head and hip, had the bike land on my back, did several somersaults for another 10-15 feet and popped right back onto my feet like I did it on purpose. I was standing there and the adrenaline rush felt, and even sounded, like a beehive buzzing in the middle of my head, kind of like where my brain should have been. I immediately realized that I was standing which was a positive. One arm was bleeding from a few places, and my hip was really hurting but other than the quarter sized hole in my shorts that revealed what looked like a piece of cheese pizza with extra tomato sauce, I couldn't really tell how bad the damage was under the shorts. It felt pretty bad. I picked my bike up, checked the wheels, bars, brakes, chain, got back on and rode home which was about a half mile away. The bike was OK thanks to the fact that it landed on me in the crash which did a nice job of cushioning it. When I got home I got off the MTB and jumped on my cyclocross bike for a few laps around the yard. In the yard I've setup some obstacles and chicanes similar to what you find in a 'cross race. This is where I work on my technical skills. I was pretty banged up, but the injury-induced atrophy wasn't going to set in for a day or two so I figured I'd better get the technical work in now while I could. Turned out I was a little too banged up to get anything useful out of it so I gave it up after a few laps. I went inside and got out of my shorts which showed a much bigger piece of cheese pizza with extra tomato sauce on my hip. Got cleaned up, put a healthy dose of neosporin on arms and hips, and ice packs on my my hips and shoulders, sat on the couch and started to dread the fact that I was going to be wrecked for a long time. At 42 years old, it takes what seems like forever to heal from injuries and I figured the impact to my hip and shoulders would be debilitating. This is where the story gets weird....


I know how long injuries used to affect me. I had every expectation to get up Friday morning and not be able to move because I figured my hips would be locked up. But I got up Friday morning and I was OK.. A little tight, but OK. This made no sense. I took the wrapping off my hip and the wound looked half healed. My shoulder had full mobility. The welt on my back from where my bike landed on me was gone and there was hardly a bruise left in its place. I was an X-man. I was healing like Wolverine. It was amazing! I went and ran the morning sessions at the gym. During a break in sessions I did a 20 minute session of 1-arm kettlebell jerks with a 20kg kettlebell where I performed 300 jerks. 13,200 lbs jerked overhead in 20 minutes! I left the gym at 1:00 and did a 75 minute bike ride with a 45 minute tempo interval at 225W. What the hell was going on? I wasn't supposed to be able to move today. Maybe the second day will be worse? The older you get, it almost always takes two days to really feel it, right? Not this time.. The next day I was even better. Shoulder was still a little too unhappy to do more than 10 pushups, but I was able to rip out three sets of 12 pullups pain free.. Took it easy the rest of the day. Sunday I was back on the bike for an absolutely brutal interval session. Wolverine... Except without the really cool foot long swords that come out of his fingers. Those would get in the way of my kettlebell training anyways, so I'm just as happy to only have the healing powers.


Then on Tuesday I was out on the MTB again on a loop that I've done many times in the past. I hit a section a little awkwardly, jammed the front wheel and flipped right straight over the bars again. Jumped up, back on the bike, and finished the loop 4 minutes faster than I've ever done it before. Yesterday I was messing around in the gym on the ropes and a new rope ladder that I just installed...

How many 42 year olds do you suppose can do this? 1 in a 1,000? 10,000? 1 million? Hell, how many 20 year olds do you think can do it?


I'm telling you all of this for one reason, and one reason only. What I have isn't magic and it isn't anything that any of you reading this can't have. It's actually quite simple, which is lucky for me because, really, I'm a simple man who likes simple things. I can do things now that I couldn't ever do before at any age. And it's all because of the choices I make every day and the hard work that I put my body through. It's about eating right and making healthy decisions. It's about working my body hard, and allowing it to recover properly following the hard efforts. These are simple things. There's no pills, no powders, no magic workout secrets that are guaranteed to (insert magic guarantee here) in 30 days!


So let's get back to the person who says "I need to go to the gym to get in shape first, before I start working out with you".. In a word, bullshit. There's no amount of running to nowhere on a conveyor belt, climbing stairs to an imaginary 120th floor, preacher curling, bench pressing, or pec-decking, that is going to get you in shape to do anything useful.. If you want to get in shape, you need to train functionally. Train movements, not muscles. With resistance, without resistance. Get active. Hike, bike, kayak. Climb on things. Crawl around once in a while. Most importantly, have fun. Your training should be a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. I don't do functional strength and conditioning workouts so that I can get better at functional strength and conditioning workouts. I do functional strength and conditioning so I can be better at functioning in my real world activities. It makes my life better. It makes it so that I can go out and push the limits in my real world activities, like mountain biking, and if I crash, then it's OK. My body can handle it. My efforts make it so that I can throw a 50 pound pack on my back on any given day and hike out in the woods to see the most beautiful, most remote areas of the country. That's what my training has done for me. That's why functional strength and conditioning makes my life better.. If bench pressing and preacher curling makes your life better then I would argue that, first, you need to get a life. Second, you need to start working out with me and the rest of us at Dynamic Strength and Condtioning :)


All the best,

kevin

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

A Tale of Two Trips...

These two trips happened on consecutive days during a backpack that Michele and I did over the weekend. The two trips, over the same terrain and in the span of less than 48 hours, had so little in common that they may as well have happened years apart in different parts of the world. One day pristine with views as far as the eye can see, the second day a trudge through a quagmire of rain, mud and howling winds created by the remnants of a passing tropical storm.

We had been trying to figure out a time to do a backpack into the Bondcliff region of the White Mountains for at least a couple years now. The Bondcliff region is one of the most remote areas of the Pemigewasset Wilderness that requires more than 10 miles of hiking from the closest trailhead on a main road. It could be done in a 20+ mile day trip with a light day pack and brisk pace but that kind of defeats the purpose of hiking through one of the most beautiful areas in the world. Why would you want to rush it? So we planned a 3 day backpack that would cross over 9 or 10 of the 4000 footers in the Whites including the 3 peaks in the Bonds.. When we saw the forecast that included a day where the remnants of tropical storm "Bill" would be coming through we decided to cut the trip short by a day and head back in the rain on day 2. Nothing destroys a backpacking trip like rain. Having to break down and setup camp in the rain in the woods would take a lot of fun out of the trip and "fun" was the primary reason for us going. If "suffering" or "misery" were our goals, then we would have welcomed the rain.

Backpacking is one of those things that always seems like a good idea right up until about 1 mile into the trail when the weight on your back starts to remind you why you don't spend a lot of time carrying around 50 pound bags of concrete every day. Bill Bryson had a great analogy for it in "A Walk in the Woods". Think about when you pick up your screaming child who weighs about 25 pounds and put him on your shoulders to make the screaming stop. Everything is fine for about 5 minutes but then the shoulders start to hurt and your chest starts to cave in from the weight and finally you're saying "it's time to put you down for a little while", at which point the screaming starts again.. OK, now take two of those children, place them in a pack and strap them to your back and carry that around, up and over trees and rocks and up and down ridiculously steep inclines for hours on end. I don't care how fit you are, this hurts a lot. But there's a reason for that and it's because your body needs to adapt to it. Like anything you're doing for the first time, the body will take some time to adapt to it. This is not unlike the amount of pain people find themselves in the first week of training at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning before their bodies adapt to the demands you're putting on it.. I'm sure that after about 5 or 6 days lugging the pack around on my shoulders that my body would be perfectly adapted to it and I'd be able to draw a full breath out of my caved in chest whenever I needed to. But I only do this maybe once every couple years and even then I only do it for two or three days. So the pain is part of the price you have to pay to get to areas that most will never see unless they're flying over it in a commercial jet at 35,000 feet.

Day 1 was a picture perfect day for hiking. Temps in the 50's, sunny with endless visibility. We parked at the base of the Zealand Trail, strapped on our packs (which I need to figure out how to distribute the weight properly next time so it doesn't feel like I have an ape hanging off my shoulders pulling me backwards) and headed into the woods. Immediately the songs start going through my head. When you're hiking, whether it's alone or with somebody, you still tend to be very quiet and internalized. You think a lot, you talk very little. When you're not thinking about anything in particular, songs or other things creep into your head. Under the load of the 50 pound encumbrance, my head went into an infinite loop of "Beast of Burden" by the Stones.. I think this lasted until we got to the Zealand Falls Hut about 2.7 miles into our journey. We stopped briefly at the Hut and refilled our water bottles. From here we took the Twinway trail which is part of the Appalachian Trail that runs over 2100 miles from Northern Maine down to Georgia. The trail heads pretty much straight up for about 2000 feet of elevation gain over the next two miles. This was a fun climb up rocks and staircases carved from granite.
It ended at a viewpoint at the Zeacliff. The Zeacliff is an east facing cliff with a good 500 ft drop that overlooks the Presidential Range and Mt Washington to the Northeast and Mt Carrigain to the Southeast. It was a stunning view.. This is also where we came across the first AT hiker of the day. You can always tell when you come across the guys hiking the Appalachian Trail. These are soul searchers on a 2100 mile journey that will take them anywhere from 3 to 6 months carrying what they need on their backs, stopping to reload in small towns along the way. It's not difficult to figure out who the AT hikers are. They always have a half-crazed look in their eye, a wild, disheveled appearance, lots of hair, and the smell of someone who's been in the woods for days. Trust me, they're real easy to pick out. From Zeacliff it was up and over Zealand Mt (a peak in the woods with no view), Mt Guyot, which is at about 4500 ft but not considered an official 4000 footer on the list of "The 48 Official White Mt 4000 Footers" because it doesn't lose enough elevation on the back side of it before climbing up to a higher peak (stupid rule), and then off to the Bonds. But first, we decided we would setup camp at the Guyot campsite while it was daylight, drop our packs, and then head out with a much lighter daypack and try to get in the 3 Bond peaks before it got dark. This turned out to be a great decision. We were 8 miles in at this point and the heavy packs were really slowing us down. The Guyot campsite is 0.2 miles off the Bondcliff Trail but has about 500 ft of descent to get to. It is a very cool campsite with a running stream for drinking water, a half dozen tent platforms cut into the side of the mountain, and a 3 sided shelter that sleeps 12. We set up our tent on one of the platforms, filled a daypack with some trail mix, chocolate, and a bottle of water and scrambled back up the 500ft of granite to the main trail.

When we got to the Bonds we immediately understood why it was rated in a backpacking magazine as one of the top 3 most beautiful areas in the country. As far as the eye could see there was not a hint of human interference. No roads, no buildings, no cell towers. Just mountains, valleys, cliffs, and trees....forever in all directions. It was awesome. On our way
down from Mt Bond as we headed over to Bondcliff I recognized a view that can be seen on the cover of the Appalachian Mt Club's "White Mountain Guide" (you know you're in a beautiful part of the world when the AMC puts a photo of it on their guide cover ;) Here's a recreation of the photo, except with Jake in it instead of some random hiker... The experience from the top of Bondcliff was absolutely amazing. We were standing on the top of a ridge with the most incredible views in every direction. But the really incredible part of it was the 1/4 mile length of ledge with a sheer, vertigo inducing drop of over
1000 feet. When you stand out on a rock where one false move means a 1000 foot plummet into an abyss (as beautiful as that abyss may be) it makes you dizzy with adrenaline. I do handstands at the top of every mountain we summit and this mountain was no different. But in places where if I fall out of the handstand it means I will die, I opt for a pistol. This is a rule that was put in place by Michele.. With a 1000 ft straight down drop on 3 sides of this rock, it was the scariest pistol I've ever done :)


I found a safer place to do my handstand.... You get bonus points if you can find Jake's head peaking out from the rocks up there...

After coming off the incredibly impressive Bondcliff it was off to West Bond and then back to camp. We hit camp at about 7p and had been out hiking for about 11 hours at this point. Michele and I are both in excellent physical condition but we were pretty beat up from the long day. And really hungry. One of the worst parts about backpacking is the food choices you have to bring. You have to bring things that are packed in calories and come in small sizes. Lots of nuts and seeds. Not much fruit because it's too big for the amount of calories it contains. You eat dehydrated meals that you need to add boiling water to. In most circumstances you wouldn't feed these meals to a homeless person. But to a backpacker, these meals are unbelievably delicious. We ate some mish-mash of dehydrated potatoes and chicken rib meat followed by a "Santa Fe" chicken dinner that has pinto beans, rice, corn and bits of chicken and looked kind of like vomit.. It was unbelievable how good this hot meal tasted. We finished the meal with a cup of hot chocolate (sooo good) and went to sleep.

I slept really well for about 2 hours and then went into my "sleep 15 minutes and turn to try to relieve the discomfort of laying on a wooden platform" routine. I did this for the next 6 hours until daylight. If you were to catch this on a video camera and replay it at high speed I would look like a rotisserie chicken on the spit turning slowly over the flame.

The rain started at about midnight, a good 12 hours before the last forecast we saw had called for. Ugh. It wasn't just showering either (like the forecast predicted), it was dumping big heavy drops that seemed to explode off the tent. The wind was howling and we knew we were in for a pretty miserable escape the next morning. We got up, packed as much as we could while inside the tent to stay dry and then got out in the rain to break down the tent and pack everything else up. This is where everything gets kind of soaked and is the reason we decided to cut the trip a day short. Breaking down and setting up in the rain soaks everything and the only thing that fixes that is a full day of sunshine which wasn't in the immediate future. I didn't even bother making coffee because it just wasn't going to be worth the bother in the mud and rain, crouching over a collapsible stove the size of a softball trying to heat up water. This seemed to bother Michele more than it did me, which surprised me because coffee in the morning is easily one of my top 5 favorite things in life and I know she can do without it fairly easily.. It occurred to me later that what bothered Michele was not that she wasn't getting a cup of coffee, but that she was going to have to deal with me not getting a cup of coffee :)

I thought I had prepared myself mentally for this. I knew it was going to suck. I spent 6 hours thrashing in the tent listening to the rain and wind knowing I would get soaked and have to hike for about 7 hours in miserable weather to get out of the woods. I was OK for a while too but eventually it took it's toll and I became really irritable, miserable, and in general, just a real joy to be around. When we left camp, the first thing we had to do was climb up an over Mt Guyot, which was going to be the only really exposed section of our hike for the day. At the top of the mountain it was like a mild hurricane. Rain whipping with sustained winds that were in the vicinity of 50-70mph, gusts that had to be 80+. With heavy packs on our backs we trudged along the trail weaving like drunken sailors as the wind toyed with us knocking us around like rag dolls. I thought Michele was going to fly away a couple times with her backpack acting as a kite to pull her into the sky. To me, this was the most enjoyable part of the day because it was a real challenge to the body and spirit and I like challenges. Once we got up and over Guyot we were sheltered by the woods and it became less of a challenge and more of a major annoyance. My pack was killing me. It was heavier than the day before now that I was lugging around a waterlogged tent, amateurishly secured off the lower back of the pack which made it seem about 3x heavier than it actually was. I couldn't draw in a full breath because of the way it was pulling my shoulders down and caving my chest in. The gloriousness of the previous day quickly vanished into the mud, fog, rain, wind of a new day created by the producers of "A Perfect Storm". Happy songs that went through my head during the hike yesterday were replaced with things like the theme from Gilligan's Island ("The weather started getting rough...." etc.), and the marching chant that the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz used to do in subserviance to the Wicked Witch... Honestly, that chant was in my head for the better part of a half hour.. I spent a couple hours hating the hike big time. I was irritated that all kinds of things out of my control were conspiring against me to make me miserable. It irritated me that I didn't find the conditions challenging, just irritating. It made me think I would never want to do this again because it's just not worth the aggravation and pain. It made me forget, briefly, what an incredible experience the day before was.. Finally we got back to the Zealand Falls Hut. We took off the packs, got some hot water from the caretakers of the hut and made the best cup of coffee I've ever had in my life. Blood started to flow through my chest and shoulders again. I could take a full breath for the first time in what seemed like days. I ate a cinnamon roll the size of a basketball that the caretakers of the hut and had baked just that morning. It was still raining and it was still windy and we still had about 2 hours to go but things were looking considerably better. I apologized to Michele for being a petulant, miserable prick for the last 4 hours. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about which is exactly the type of thing that makes her so special :)

I fixed the loading of my pack a little bit and strapped it back on. 3 miles to go, no big deal. The last few miles are a flat stretch of dirt path, roots, rocks and bog bridges. We cranked and covered it in about an hour and a half. With the misery of the last 7 hours behind us my mind turned back to the positives of the trip. We got to see a part of the country that is easily one of the most beautiful in the entire world, untouched and sublime. We started to talk about options for our next backpacking adventure.....

This is why staying healthy, active and fit is so important to us and why we want it to be important to everybody. Everybody needs to experience the type of trip we experienced this past weekend. This is why we were put here. We weren't put here to abuse our bodies, our environment and each other. When you get out in the mountains and you realize on such a magnificent scale, how really small you and your problems are in the grand scheme of things, it makes you re-think your priorities. It makes you want to leave a positive imprint on everything and everybody you touch. That's why it's worth the trouble, aggravation, and pain of loading 50 pounds of clothes, food, and shelter on your back and hiking up and down unforgiving terrain to get to places like this. Places that make you feel very small and at the same time make you think very big :)