Half Past Awesome

Mudders & Beer: a story of survival

Running is, for me, like having an uncle who’s a psychopathic alcoholic but no one in the family is rude enough to discuss it in polite company. I KNOW runners, but I’m not one. I’m DATING a runner but that doesn’t make me one either. I’m involved in a CrossFit Running Group in the sense that they’ve included me in their Facebook discussions. So I don’t really discuss, much less THINK about runners in polite company, either. I think I COULD run if enough cops and rabid dogs were chasing me furiously. And outside of a 5k or two under my belt, I’ve never been able to label myself a runner. Real, actual RUNNERS go long distances, look like starving refugees, wear short shorts and tend to keep something of a superior look on their faces, as though they and they alone are privy to physical pain and future knee surgeries. Frankly their smugness can be a bit intimidating, since those who inflict self-harm on asphalt roads have probably actually earned it. I’ve always felt both incapable of surviving the training it takes to become a distance runner and frankly, too lazy to follow through with effort.

The only running that I’ve felt mildly competent doing is on the trail. I think it’s because my short-attention span is constantly being stimulated by the topographical distraction; I won’t be forced to just look at a sidewalk or an oval loop and go mildly insane at the monotony. It’s the same reason I refuse to set foot on a treadmill. I can’t achieve an alleged high while thundering on a rotating rubber band like a hamster. So, without even the discipline of a bored hamster nor the desire to drink gooey-paste and have raw nipples in the name of long-distance “fun”, I was surprised by my own willingness to sign up for, and fork over a significant chunk of change, the 2012 Missouri Tough Mudder held in Poplar Bluff this past weekend. In a nutshell, it’s 11.2 miles over hills, trails, cow-paths and the like with 25 military-style obstacles scattered throughout with catchy names like “Arctic Enema” (described as “eating ice cream and getting punched in the balls, all at the same time), “Electroshock Therapy“, and “Everest” . It’s a suffer-fest of Biblical proportions (not exaggerated…okay maybe a little; there’s no famine) and the only real award you win for completing the damn thing is an orange headband and survival-bragging rights. It’s brutal, I recommend you follow the links and watch the video clips.

They start the race with your heat having crawled over a wooden wall to separate spectators and begin your descent into physical madness. To add to the insanity, one couple at the start of our group was actually married by a local preacher at the starting line, which of course lead to rampant speculation at the end if it had been annulled. There are no clocks, there are no fancy shoe-timers, no goo-belt wearing exoskeletons to intimidate you with their apparent ability to survive without solid food for 26 miles. You are there to gut out an endurance test with teammates, relying on incapacity for rational thought, ability to tolerate stupid amounts of pain and sheer force of will. The strongest aren’t favored, the fastest gain no glory and it is only those with the stubborn resolve of a mule that will truly enjoy this event. In other words, it’s perfect for a stubborn jackass such as myself. Firefighters working on ladder truck companies are already built for this kind of work, as we are the plow oxen of the fire service, “lift this, swing that, no questions, you’re just big, dumb animals” kind of thinking. As the miles began to rack up and the knees began to swell and the taste of mud was wearing the enamel off my teeth, I felt as though I’d stumbled into my kind of heaven.

So there we were, four firemen and a friend, slogging/jogging/walking/crawling through a monster-truck-style park with woods, creeks and near-vertical hillsides, mud entering all orifices, plunging into ice and getting shocked in the face by 10,000 volts. And somewhere around mile 7 or 8 it hit me: “I’m going to actually finish 11.2 miles.” I’ve never run more than 9 miles in my life. As well, I’ve never been smacked in the face with electric fence, so it was a crazy day of firsts all around. Never before have I been able to embrace the whole “mind-over-matter” thing, always believing that my own body would give out LONG before my ADD-riddled mind. As we rounded another corner and stumbled into yet another long track of submerged-in-mud, ankle-snapping pits and holes, it really got driven home. We WERE going to finish. We weren’t there to encourage someone else racing, content to put medals around our friend’s necks, no we were IN this thing. An orange head band and two free beers is a slight thing to anticipate with such crazy joy; outside of becoming a father and becoming a full-time fireman, this was likely the single coolest, toughest thing in which I’d ever participated. My mind would finally, for one of the rare times in my life, allow my body to be pushed that much further. It gave me permission to succeed. To enter a formidable challenge without failure as an acceptable option. Stumbling through those last few obstacles, only to push through the last round of legal electrocution with a mouth full of sweet, nasty mud I saw the Dos Equis people at the finish line with orange headbands and beer waiting to greet me; they had no way of knowing that under all that dirt, blood and twitchy, bruised muscles was a runner who had finally, at last, won the brutal and lonely race taking place in his own head.

Heathen #1 On The Fly

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”                                                                              – Johnny Cash

Great quote, right? I stole that from a friend’s Facebook feed today, thereby proving that I can actually get LAZIER than just using Wikipedia as my sole research source. Pathetic, really. But, it seemed actually relevant, and here’s why: today was Track & Field Day for the kids in our school district. As a parent, you’re invited to attend, or actually work the event, depending on how much you love your child. I mean, I love mine and all, but since I don’t want to come across all helicopter-y (and, I forgot to sign up), I participated from a spectator’s vantage point.

What that loosely translates into is 4 hours of roasting on shiny metal bleachers while your offspring participate in parachute and rubber-chicken tossing events off in the barely visible distant horizon. Desperately, you search the bleachers for a familiar face so that your descent into mild skin cancer won’t be a solo journey. As a father, it’s imperative that you find another father to chat it up with, so that there can be some common conversational topics (damn liberals. Damn conservatives. Damn weather. Damn people) and so as to stir up the least amount of salacious gossip. Beer is not served at this event, and it’s socially frowned upon to show up to your kids’ track meet at 9:30am with a frosty beer in hand (found THAT out the hard way), so you’re left with an apple, some water and time to passively parent.

So you settle in and wait. And wait. And wait. Wait for the actual Running Of The Second Graders, the only event that will take them past the parents at any point in the day. You idly sit there and marvel at how the long jump mostly consists of kids coming off the asphalt, not jumping at all, but just hauling ass into the sand and landing on their cabooses and grinning like foxes in the henhouse.

Which got me to thinking. A lot.

The friend I was sitting with has gone through a lot with his family. I’m currently waist deep in my own troubles, constantly worried that as it comes to my role as a father, I’m failing, paranoid about so many, about so much. Throw your troubles in the public eye, and there’s never a shortage of your peers who have a lot to say about it. To everyone. And I’ve been guilty of defensively throwing up my own barriers, shutting out the haters, hating being shut out by the judgers. It’s a vicious cycle and you hope that your friends will help see you through it all, all the while knowing it’s a process and journey you must endure on your own. You know who’s problems are the worst in the world? Mine. That’s what we all think, but then I need to stop and truly think: I have my children, they have their health and home and love from their parents, and you can’t quantify that. I need to start being just a little more grateful for what I DO have, not the other way around. It was either getting philosophically deep up there in the nosebleed seats or I was in the beginning stages of heat stroke.

As the little girl in soccer cleats, shin guards and a tutu came around the track bend, destined to finish last in her heat, but pushing through nonetheless, I found myself admiring her grit, the spirit in her face and the chutzpah to dress herself like that for a track meet. Parents were cheering her on, chuckling at her Little Engine That Could mindset, probably thinking the same thing: “C’mon, kiddo. Keep charging. Don’t give up, ever.” If only as adults we treated each other with the same genuine encouragement, given without condition. Many can and do, and I’m grateful for their presence in this world.

Everyone is fighting their own battles. Everyone. We’re all struggling, whether it’s with our kids or how to program our remotes. I watched each of these kids run their races, limbs flailing, the obvious athletes cruising into victories while the majority of them clutched their sides and twitched like ants under the magnifying glass, stumbling and weaving across seemingly impossible distances, but finishing always, sometimes with only one shoe on. They were fighting their own battles, swimming in the sunshine and freedom from the classroom walls.

My own son took last in his own heat, by a long shot. He was crestfallen, kept looking at me with the kind of eyes that get puppies adopted. I couldn’t stop grinning at him through the fence.

“Dad, I came in last. Last.”

“I don’t care, son. You were IN the race. THAT’S what matters to me.”

His face slowly shifted, thoughts careening through an 8yr. old’s restless mind. Then, he saw his buddy, tiny little Andy who finished last in his own heat wearing jeans and cowboy boots, and the two took off to throw water balloons at a coach, laughing all the while and forgetting their troubles.

As the kids loaded back up onto buses and the parents were assessing their own sunburns, I heard my my boy say “Yeah, that’s my dad. He ‘s always at these things. He’s my hockey coach, too.”

I might fail at a lot, but as it stands with my boys, I’m in the race. All the way to the finish line, even if it means crossing it with only one shoe on.

"this IS my downward dog, you morons" (photo by Sarah Sonsthagen)

Sweat raining monsoon-style down my forehead, I’m on my hands and knees, desperate for the mental clarity that will allow me to push forward. Humid claustrophobia slowly chokes me out as my vision blurs and I fear that at some point I may lose control of all muscle function, resulting in what may be me in a pile of my own piss. No house fire should have this kind of sway over me after nearly two decades in the fire service.

But this is no ordinary house fire; in fact it’s not a fire at all, except that my eyeballs are melting from the heat. This, as it turns out, is hot yoga, or as I’ve taken to calling it “hot yogurt”;  I don’t know, somehow that seems less ridiculous sounding. And it turns out that it’s just like exercising in a house fire, minus all the smoke and the random hoarders detritus.

I’ve been drug here by a friend who insists that it’s a nice balance to the workout regimen that is CrossFit. Just as intense as CrossFit, hot yoga encompasses everything I’m not good at: semi-nudity, excessive sweating, flexibility and dignity. I’m told that it’s good for purging all of the toxins that accumulate in your system, and I’m prone to believing it; I taste what I’m sure is a french fry from 1987 working its way through my system. I can’t keep up with all of these flexy, bendable people, and as a result, I look something like a dehydrated walrus on a beach, doing a complex mating dance, minus the seaweed. The friend who’s brought me here is chiseled like a damn Greek God, and by the hostile glares being shot my way from the lady next to me, she’s most agitated that she’s drawn the unenviable spot next to me, a heaving musk ox, as opposed to next to him, all sculpted and shit, cutting manly yoga moves with grace as I slip slide all over my leg hair.

This is supposed to be a spiritual experience, like sitting in the front row of a Shamu show at Sea World, except that instead of sea water, it’s sweat getting flung about, as we think about thrusting our hips out and letting go of all of our worries and having a heat stroke. At once, it’s liberating and emasculating. One moment, I’m folded over in half, attempting to twist my torso into a tourniquet, then next I’m down on my mat, imagining that this is how it feels to get slow roasted in a Crock-Pot, simmering in my own juices and hating myself at levels previously unimaginable. When the teacher, who looks like she bounces quarters off her abs as a sideshow act, opens up the door in a brief moment of mercy, I’m giddy with oxygen-deprived joy at the thought of a rush of air across my disgusting corpse. We’re nearing the end of this little hour and a half exile into slimy zen, and all the while I’m convincing myself that this is a good thing, this is going to help with hockey strength, with flexibility, with focus on the positive in my life.  I’m withering, praying for sweet release, my toes sweating in concert with the drool that is freely leaving my gaping mouth, my body in full revolt as if to say “what the HELL are you doing to us?”

I don’t know, body. I do know that in a half-hour you’re gonna feel a million times better. That long dormant french fry will be purged, our thoughts will focus less on the haters in this life, and we’ll find ourselves at the front desk, willingly signing up for another round of purification at 10,000 degrees.

"Dont Let The Bastards Grind You Down", permanently

“You can’t kill The Rooster” – D. Sedaris

As he got back up, complaining about how he’d been unfairly checked, the player on the opposing team failed to notice that his skate had taken the liberty of slicing up my hand, my own hockey glove long gone. I failed to notice it at first as well, picking up my stick and skating towards my wayward glove, blood streaming down my hand. The ache was replaced by the adrenaline of being knocked on my ass after the aforementioned player and one of my teammates collided. As soon as I noticed the bleeding, I headed to the locker room to try and tape off the flow, more angry than hurt. These guys were bringing a tough game; it was one in which I would continually get knocked down, hit by pucks and otherwise made to look the fool as our fire department hockey team attempted to keep the losing point spread to less than double digits. I came back out onto the rink and promptly took a high-speed shot to the thumb as well as a few more shoves, hits and wayward stick beatings. Into the third period, I wound up for a slap shot and was able to finally score. Shortly thereafter I collided with another player and I’m pretty sure I broke my lower face, as I couldn’t feel my jaw after my head hit the ice.

We lost 7-5.

And it’s exactly what I needed.

My friend Jake is one of the operators of the site LIVXFIT, a place where CrossFit mentality is applied to domains outside of the gym, utilizing positive values to approach life’s continual hurdles. We’ve been mind-bending ideas about his take on adversity, dealing with it, working through it, overcoming it. I recently threw my virtual hands in the air, signing off with the complaint of how I’m not exactly a good sounding board at this point. There is chaos o’plenty in my household, it’s not being helped in any way by the gossiping of people in my world and I’m feeling like a grade-A failure at so much right now; these aren’t exactly ingredients for overcoming your adversity with your head held high.

Then I took a look down at my leg. That’s my tattoo in the picture. It stems from a mock-Latin phrase made popular in World War II by General “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell and translates into “Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down” (I’ll leave you to decipher the red ink). A song by the same name was made popular by ska band The Toasters back in my younger years. I’d always liked that saying, and one day when a good friend closed our correspondence with that phrase, I knew immediately what my next tatt would be.

Funny thing about getting ground down by bastards and adversity in general: we usually don’t get the luxury of determining which adversity we’d like to embrace or which bastards will be attempting to grind us down. Places like CrossFit allow us to define our challenger (weights or times or strands of rope hanging from the rafters), and failure to overcome our self-imposed adversity can be conquered with the repetition, discipline and determination. I’d love to be able to choose which obstacles will be placed in my life’s path so that I could prepare, train and eventually, hopefully, triumph; to do this all while striking manly poses and giving off the scent of cool confidence would be even better, thank you very much. Even house fires and vehicle accidents, while chaotic in nature, can be mitigated with the application of training, knowledge and experience. When we successfully extinguish a fire, it’s not a triumph over adversity; it’s our job.

Unfortunately, our choices, both good and bad, dictate just how hard those bastards will come out swinging. Oftentimes those bastards turn out to be our own selves, and we’re left bloodied and battered and bruised by the struggle. Some turn to spiritual guidance for solace. Others, cynics and agnostics alike, often look down into the well of their own soul, searching for strength from within. Wherever it comes from, the ability to rise to the challenge of adversity boils down to survival. It’s easy to say you’d choose to be strong should the occasion demand it; I’d also like to say I’ll lift a car off of a baby if I have to, in spite of the fact that I wrenched my back trying to lift 315lbs. of non-screaming metal off of the ground a few months ago. Only actual experience will bear out whether we have the sand to make it in this tragic and beautiful life. I can only hope that turning towards whatever adversity that rolls my way gives me a chance to survive the impact and learn from the experience. It’s gotta beat curling up in a ball and screaming at the circumstances.

As we limped off of the ice, I noticed some of my best friends on our team were grinning like foxes in the henhouse. They knew, as did I, that despite getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of us, we brought a tough game right back to them. They were better players and the scoreboard showed that. Our ragtag band of hockey-illiterate firemen had somehow scraped a few points off a well-prepared challenger; at least we got to select the adversity in advance. But the spirit shown is the same that I’m finding necessary to endure the challenging times that lay ahead.

Our paths aren’t well lit, nor pre-determined, in this life. It’s time to take a puck to the face and realize that it won’t, after all, kill you. It’ll hurt like hell and if you’re lucky, the scar will be more of the “life of danger” type than the “I look like a serial killer” variety. But that’s not what matters. The struggle, however, does. Let’s make damn sure we’ve given it all that we’re capable of, even if at the end of the day, the scoreboard doesn’t declare us the victors. The victory lies within the effort.

Team CrossFit Springfield & Co. Photo by Molly White

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

This week, several athletes from our local gym, CrossFit Springfield, will head west to Los Angeles to compete in what is loosely referred to as “The Games”. The Games are, basically, the World Series of CrossFit (take a look here); this is where gyms (or Boxes) will be sending their best athletes to convene, compete and collectively throw up as they put their bodies through incredibly awful workouts designed, most likely, by disgruntled Navy SEAL’s strung out on boxed Chardonnay wine or the blood of their enemies.

To outsiders, this is gonna look like Jonestown, version 2011; people in the world of CrossFit speak their own dialect, spend ungodly amounts of money on supplements, “Paleo” foods (apparently we need to eat like cavemen, despite the lack of wooly mammoth meat), and workout clothing, which we immediately discard to the floor the moment the clock starts ticking down to the actual workout. Shirtless makes you faster AND stronger (why pay $64 for a shirt if you can’t throw it to the floor as soon as the clock starts ticking?). Unfortunately, like most cults and mega-churches, some people just won’t shut up about it, ever, thereby alienating co-workers, family and friends with stories that seemed seasoned with Amway-flavored enthusiastic sales tactics.

And that’s a shame, because CrossFit IS such a good thing.

It IS a community. It IS a family of encouragement and achievement. Most of the competitors representing Springfield are our coaches. To watch them put themselves through the grueling paces of what it takes to compete at this level is inspiration itself. There is a factor of discipline that eludes most of us when you play at that level. There is no room for a casual attitude. No room for excuses. I admire intensely the mental intensity these people have. They move through exercise movements with a fervor and pace that makes you think they’re relying on instinct and natural prowess, but to say that sells them short. Our friends are competing in this arena because they’ve worked countless hours on countless days, trudging through snowbanks in the dark of morning, sweating like the damned on the hot asphalt of a July in the Midwest. They deserve this shot because they’ve earned it.

There’s a part of me that would love to be out there, screaming like a maniac at the ThunderChicken, in exact inverse as to how he’s coached me over the past year. His style is to chew gum slowly, shake his head back and forth and mutter things like “put your hands on the bar, Gooley”. The other part would be driven nuts by the fact that I’ve never been much of a spectator of sports; I’d rather be in there trying to compete. Unfortunately, you need to be really, really athletic to compete, so there’s no threat of that happening any time soon. The last person CrossFit Springfield needs to be represented by is someone who’s only claim to competitiveness at the gym is in the arena of sweat production.

So I’ll wait back here, patiently. Twitter and Facebook and texts will feed and flood my mind as the Games take place. Life in Missouri will continue at the same pace, clogged by gravy and humidity. Several friends from our Box are headed out there to support our team in person, and, to experience that little bit of California heaven known as Compton after hours. I’ve recommended that they keep both red AND blue handkerchiefs on their persons, so that both The Bloods and The Crips will be confused and perhaps focus their hail of drive-by gunfire elsewhere.

So, coaches and friends…I want to wish you luck, but that’s not what you need. You already have what you need – a fierce will, strong bodies, stronger minds and the soul of a winner. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us, and for all you’re doing for us; there is no better leadership than example. Where you place is up to you; no matter the numbers on the board, you’ve shown us all back here in Springfield what it takes to be winners. For a guy who will probably never take his shirt off in the gym, this means a lot. You’ve had our backs as we’ve struggled through each miserable workout; we’ve got yours.

Now, go kick some ass, already.

Out Of The Abyss

My name is Uli.

I’m 37 years old, I have two sons, a bachelor’s degree in agricultural business and an overwhelming desire to fritter away any disposable income on Starbucks, smoothies and sushi.

Rarely content to stand still, I’m a professional firefighter, an amateur writer and cynical about humid weather, people who carry small dogs in purses and the downfall of culture as evidenced by what I see on the E! channel.

I also recently came to terms with another aspect of life:

I’m claustrophobic.

I never had issues with tight spaces until I had to get an MRI a few years back, wherein I recreated a scene from The Incredibles as seen here: Into The Tube, Chunky. I had pretty much the same thing happen, minus the launch into a space capsule part. Once squeezed into there, I realized I couldn’t raise my head and promptly freaked out. It wasn’t pleasant for me, nor the tech running the machine, and a few days later, with the help of some drugs, a towel over my face and earbuds lulling me into a peaceful state via the soothing tones of Bad Religion, we got through it. It was an ordeal, and it set the tone for idiotic anxiety, I suppose.

Flash forward several years: as the member of a ladder truck company for the fire department, I’m expected to assist the rescue companies in various forms of rescues – ropes, trench collapses and, unfortunately, confined space scenarios. Getting stuck in tight places….every firefighters dream gig. I knew our training class was this week, knew how much I’d probably break out into sweats and scream like a little child when wedged in, even made several jokes about who’s job it was going to be to inform my family that I’d died of a panic attack (impossible, really, but several calls we make revolve around people panicking themselves into a stupor). Then the day arrived, and, as I gazed down the 24″ diameter pipes and felt my hands twitch nervously, I buckled down and forced myself to stay calm….right up until I was on my knees in front of the tube and my fertile imagination ran away with me.

Finally, after much coaxing, I convinced myself I was being ridiculous and just crawled in the damn thing. I got tangled up in ropes, finished the task, and set some sort of speed record getting out, based on my desire to be done with the whole thing. I thought I was over the hump. I was wrong.

The next task was to crawl into the same tiny tube, then have your partner crawl in after you, “leap frog” over you, then you over them, to simulate having to crawl over a victim to prepare them for extrication. And that’s where I just gave out. I’d crawl in a foot or two, get near my partner’s legs, feel the pinch and rapidly back out. Two guys, two feet of diameter….this is an unholy exercise in ridiculosity, and I was firmly against it. Why? Because this right here is the view with ONE guy in there:

No thanks. I decided enough was enough.

And then a funny thing happened. Well, two things, really, from one source: that crazy, cultish, thing I love dearly, CrossFit.

1.) I’ve lost weight. Thanks to the vigorous workout schedule of CrossFit Springfield, I’ve dropped several layers of fat and belt loops, all while gaining some weird thing called muscle. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to escape the pipe without getting wedged in, despite the harness and helmet and with the help of nervous sweat greasing the walls. It felt really good to know that what once would have hindered me completely was becoming something less of an issue. Now I just had to scale the mental walls.

2.) I’m not one for coaches cliche’s. From “you can do it” to “you gotta give 110%” to “we leave it all out on the field”, I can never hear these sayings without picturing the coach in tight softball shorts angrily projecting his failed athletic career hopes upon us, the Goleta Valley Little League “Cubs”, who’s record stood at something like 0-16. I appreciate honesty, not politically expedient phrases meant to offend no one. I like curse words in my motivational speeches, lots of them. Speeches that go something like this one (here!), from the Washington Capitals hockey coach. However there is a sign in our gym, large and across an entire wall, that says “Learn To Never Quit”. I joke regularly that I’m gonna sneak into CrossFit in the dead of night and Sawzall off the part that says “never”, but in truth, I’ve taken that philosophy to heart. I wrote in a previous post (here) how our gym has taught me to keep pushing through the mental and physical boundaries I’ve set up for myself, but this thing, this claustrophobia, it is a hangup with no basis in rational thinking.

I thought about the virtues of quitting, of being able to avoid that which I don’t like. I thought of being the only person in the training drill that day who was going to have a big “did not finish” hanging over my head. I thought of how when firehouse kitchen table talk came up later on, and people were discussing who couldn’t pass muster, my name might come up. I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want my crew to look at me with suspicion when shit goes downhill, as it does on emergency scenes. I didn’t want them to doubt me. I didn’t want to doubt me, either.

I was told it’s ok.”You don’t have to finish, everyone has their hangups”. I could see in the eyes of the instructor, my co-workers that no, it wasn’t ok. To be controlled by an irrational fear is to be controlled, something I loathe intensely. So, I grabbed the smallest person there (she’s the one in the first picture) and she obliged me, willing to go back into the tube with a half-crazed mental case, just to prove a point. I’ll spare you the details (screaming, et al) and just say that after some sheer stubborn willpower, it was done.

It was ugly, it took several embarrassing false starts, but, to quote an instructor that day, “you didn’t quit, you weren’t a pussy, you kept at it till you finished, and that’s what counts”.

I may finally have begun to learn what it means to learn to never quit. And while I’m sure being a claustrophobe is a lifelong state of mind, I’m grateful to have a place that’s taught me how to be physically and, more importantly, mentally prepared for adversity, however you may find it. When we have the second half of the drill on Friday, though, and we’re using 18″ diameter tubes, all this talk may be for naught; I can only hope that that same strength is in there somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll keep on cussing at those voices in my head. Quitting is never a good option, especially to the stubborn among us. When backed up against a wall, or wedged in a piece of corrugated plastic, that’s when the triumph of will is put to the test. And, as the little league coach might say, it feels damn good to not back down.

"Guess how many poods I'm hiding in my outfit?"

There is an old Russian proverb which, according to Wikipedia, goes “You never know a man until you have eaten a pood of salt with him.” Like all things Russian, especially the comments in my spam filter, this makes no sense to me. Wanna know why? Because, I don’t weigh things in terms of poods, I don’t don’t speak Russian, and as we all know, salt leads to chins multiplying like rabbits on Viagra, so I try and avoid it if I can.

Technically, a pood is 36.11 pounds. It was a unit in the Imperial Russian Weight measurement system, coming into play around the 12th century and officially abolished by the USSR in 1924, when they realized how ridiculous it seemed. Ridiculous, and probably just a little capitalistic. Either way it was abolished, and for the better, really, except in two arenas of life: obscure bulk grain & potato farmers and the world of weightlifting. This is based on the history of the traditional kettlebell, which was, apparently, cast in denominations of the pood. Great.  You know who uses kettlebells with a scary frequency? Mmm-hmm…Crossfitters.

To be fair, I’m a kool-aid consuming, card-carrying cult member of CrossFit Springfield, and I love it. We’ve gotten healthier because of it, met lots of great people and rediscovered the joys of lower back pain. And, honestly, I’m no xenophobe, but rather, I’m just truly bad at math and conversion tables.

So I think the pood is stupid.

Ounces to quarts to pints to gallons to litres, it’s all fine, but just MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND. We going metric? Then let’s do it. Sticking with ASE? Runes? Cubits? Let’s stick to a common language here so I don’t hurt myself trying to eat an entire pood of salt.

We have kettlebells in pounds and kilograms at the gym, and I can’t tell the difference, and they’re all heavy and I feel the fool swinging them back and forth, between my legs, always aware of the inherent danger to reproductive zones. But you know what we don’t have? Poods, dammit. And I’m proud of our coaches/owners for sticking to their guns. We ain’t living in a Cossack Time Zone, people.

This is not good enough for some elite-ish CrossFitters, my brother being one of them, who scoffs at the notion that I don’t bark out my pood weight when selecting kettlebells for random sessions of sweating kilos, or liters of liquid fat off. This is not that uncommon. It’s in the tone, really and here’s how I imagine it goes down all over CrossFit Affiliates the nation over:

“Well, yeah, that’s a good number of reps, but how many pood was it?”

“Excuse me? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did you say ‘pood’? Cause that sounds like a gross bodily function-noise or something”

“Yeah, you’re not serious about CrossFit, obviously.”

“I’m sorry if my non-use of a long dead Russian unit of measurement is lacking. Clearly, I suck.”

“Yes, you do. Now, take your shirt off and show me you’re serious about elite fitness.”

“What?”

It’s as foolish to me as walking into the lumber yard and ordering framing materials in cubits, as though I was constructing an ark rather than a garden bench. They’d look at me with a vacant stare and hit that button under the counter that orders the cops. Same thing to me with weights. I know how much I weigh in pounds, so I can reference other things weight in comparison. I’m not a cocaine dealer, nor European, so kilos mean very little to me. When they start ordering us to run in terms of “clicks”, right after I’ve finally gotten used to “meters” (I just multiply by 3 and call it good, cause I’m casual like that), I may just lose it.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to revel in my non-elite status, happy to line things out in increments of 5, or 10, or 1. I’ll think up funny-to-me phrases for shirts I’ll never make that say things like “I just pood for a PR”.

And I might seriously consider seeing if Rosetta Stone offers language immersion courses in Ancient Russian, so my amigo Ashley & I can strut around the gym and bark out marching orders as though we were gonna launch the next Sputnik from the rowing machines.

Probably with our shirts on, too.

Rep Number 36 Goes Up / photo courtesy Christi Clark Photography

Three days ago, I participated in the CrossFit Springfield’s 2nd annual Guns & Hoses Team Competition a fund raising endeavor aimed at benefiting the Wistrom Family Foundation, a truly worthwhile cause aimed at helping children with cancer. ALMOST as important, though, was the chance for military service members, cops and firemen to compete against one another, a chaotic stew of testosterone and nerves and borderline projectile vomiting. At age 36 and years of bad choices behind me, the concept of competing in athletic endeavors (outside of ice hockey) holds little appeal; I’m too old, the NHL ain’t calling, I gotta work tomorrow, my kids have beaten the spirit out of me, the list of excuses goes on and on as to why I don’t take up the chance to compete in much of anything anymore, outside of an ongoing chess match with my liver.

So when I was approached by some younger firemen from Station 2 about putting together a team for this competition, my first instinct was to duck and cover and pretend I didn’t hear them. But there’s only so many hiding places in a firehouse. Eventually, I had to give them an answer, and after several rounds of me saying “really? What, you need a John Candy-type on your team?“, I relented and made them promise to give me a decent burial when I inevitably died on the competition floor. As the days ticked down to competition time, my nerves begin to fray and unravel at a record pace. I’m old, man, and there’s really no need to humiliate myself any further in a public forum, especially as I do it on a regular basis just fine.

And then it was time. This was the time where Rocky theme music was supposed to cue up in my mind, shadow boxing in the mirror as I took one final shower before the event, setting my mind right, right? No. Clearly, I’ve watched far too many movies, and the reality of the whole time leading up to the competition was absent of motivational music, save for the screaming torrents of Dropkick Murphy tunes cranking in the bathroom. It’s a quiet desperation of sorts, really. I’m not in the best shape in the gym, knowing that I’m a relatively weak link on the team, and about to risk some real injury, both to my body and what is left of my self esteem. That sets up a morose cloud of doubt lingering over your personal skies, but, then, what are ya gonna do? Backing out at this point is the equivalent of backing out of a house fire: that shit will follow you for the rest of time.

As the events were described and teams assigned heats, I began crawling out of my head with nervous energy. These guys were serious, Marine Corps guys strutting about, cops from different towns all giving the eye to one another, firemen nervously joking about needing an ambulance on standby (okay, that was me), and a general tension that always precedes competitions of strength and stamina. I just needed the thing to start, already. Get me in the game, and this sensation of dizzy nausea may pass. Too soon, the race had begun. I’d describe the various events, but if you’re not familiar with the CrossFit lingo it’s just gonna come across like the cult mumbo-jumbo that it is. The exercises consisted of lifting of heavy weights, swinging of other heavy things, jumping up and down and over, lunging with random heavy objects over your head and tossing heavy sandbags over tall bars. You know, stuff you might never, ever encounter in your life. Ever.

To sum it all up let me just say this: in all my life, in whatever endeavor I’ve ever undertaken, I’ve never been pushed so hard physically to the point of a breakdown. It was set up as a team effort, so to quit or give up was to force three other people into forfeiting all of their efforts. I can insert all types of trite, catchy athletic “dig deep”-style phrases here, and you know what? THEY WOULD ALL BE TRUE. To force yourself to continue when all logic and reason demands you give up defies the physical imperative of the body, and it becomes a war of wills. To confront that wall and slog through the marsh of oxygen deprivation robbing your body of rational thought is a scary, and emotionally draining experience. This competition demanded slamming into this wall repeatedly to the point of sheer exhaustion and near collapse.

It sucked. Plain and simple.

Each time I reached down to grab that bar for another lift, when my back and legs and arms and lungs screamed for sweet release, my teammates, the people who’d come to cheer people on and the sheer force of will were driving forces compelling me to continue. I wish I could say that I was mentally strong enough to conjure up images in my mind of continuing in honor of some hero, or a sick kid or that bully in third grade who pretty much ruined my grade school experience, but I’d be lying. At some point there was no more room for thought, no more room for cliched imagery to motivate. Nothing was left but that most basic of drivers: instinct. The voices in the background were muffled, eyesight was clouded by sweat and chalk, and it was a lonely place to be left. Instinct to finish what I’d started was the only push left. Ridiculous faces and ridiculous amounts of sweat and stupid grunts all in the name of instinct.

Countless hours (or, like, two) later we staggered across the finish line, somewhere in the bottom of the rankings of the ten teams that entered. That didn’t matter. Three friends and I finished. We went to the bottom of our wells of will and extracted every last bit. I’m so proud of them, so proud of us for laying our guts and souls out there on the floor. I’m thankful to the coaches and staff and volunteers from CrossFit Springfield who offered their free time to guide us through the pain. I’m grateful for ThunderChicken who had the dubious honor of being my assigned coach, dutifully counting out the reps, vocally shoving me further and further out of my comfort zone, just like he has since the first day I set foot in the box. These people showed us, showed me, what was possible if you push yourself over the edge.

It’s a hell of a place to find yourself, at the bottom of that tank.

It’s quite another to crawl back out of it.

And I Shall Be Known As "Runs With Poop"

The dog pissed on me.

In full glory, in front of man and beast, the little shit lifted his leg and marked my shoe.

I’ve always hated dachshunds.

So began the Muddy Paws 5k trail run, nothing between breaking my ankles on wet rocks and victory except some little dog taking a leak on me. I’d entered my rotund 5 year old Boxer, MoJay, after my attempts at convincing a co-worker to don a dog collar and fake tail ran into some resistance. We were a team, Mo & I, even though he had no idea what was coming when I loaded him in the truck.

I’m no runner, this is a fact. I made a pact with myself in November of 2010 to run at least one 5k race a month, and outside of nearly crippling myself and missing February, I’ve held to it. My only goals? To not die and to pull in times under 30 minutes. Nothing wild. Nothing crazy. So far, I’ve been successful in narrowly avoiding the grip of the Grim Reaper, and my times have all been sub -30. The best? 28:20. I might add that I beat several children in blue jeans in one of my races, and I consider that to make me a “winner”, even if their parents didn’t appreciate my hockey-style elbowing of their kids towards the front of the pack. Hey, it’s a vicious world out there.

Meanwhile, as I’m registering at the race table for this run, I hear a woman yell loudly “NO, ROCKY! NO!” I assume any dog named “Rocky” is a tiny ankle biter, the name being bestowed as a form of compensation. Short dog, short dog syndrome.  AND THEN THE SMELL HIT ME. I turned around and, as yellow humiliation was dripping off my shoe, the dog cast me a hairy eyeball, as if to say, “Yeah, that’s right, you belong to me.” I was overcome with the urge to punt the little bastard across the park, but felt that might not be the right way to start the day, making friends like that. However ballsy the dog was feeling, the owner had no such compunctions. She was staring up at the treetops, as though she had no idea I just heard her yelling at Rocky before he soiled me. I looked at her and said “you do realize your dog just pissed on me, right?” She couldn’t deny it, yet she finally said something like “oh, really? Did MY dog do that?” Yeah, lady, he’s practically bragging about it to the other dogs at this point, and I smell like rancid urine. I’m also pretty sure I saw my dog laughing at me over the issue as he spent time inspecting the asses of every dog with which he came into contact.

Fine, pissant hounds. Let’s run this thing. Earbuds in, the start is given, and next thing I know, MoJay is dragging me through the woods, following the trails all on his own. We’re bounding past the marker flags, through the water, back up a hill, annnnnnd wait. Let’s stop and take a dump right here. Really, MoJay? Right here? Yup, right here, so all the pretty she-dogs and their owners can catch a peek at my hound copping a squat in a regal fashion. So grateful they provided us bags to pick it up, because what would make this even better would be to tote a bag of shit for a few miles. Thankfully there was a fireman buddy close by, as the race was put on by his wife’s organization, and he was monitoring the whole thing. He was upstanding about taking the sack of poo from me, and we trucked back down into the woods.

And there he was.

The Pisser.

Getting carried up a hill, a smug look of triumph on his stupid little dachshund face, The Pisser was back. Had it not been for the consequences, I may well have punched the dog in the face just to even the score. His owner/servant had a look of resigned despair on her face, probably realizing it would be hard to cross the stream with a dog 8 inches tall. I would’ve gladly drug him through, but refrained from making the offer. No time, though – MoJay was dragging me back down the trail, furiously intent on catching up to the hind end of some glorious female that was driving him plum loco. For a fat bastard, that dog was moving like a wildfire, slobbbery goo flying back and nailing me in the legs.

And then we rounded one last corner, covered in mud, slobber and and exhaustion, both our tongues hanging out. There was the finish line, right there in front of us. Weird. That didn’t seem that bad. Maybe I’ll do better being drug by a dog for miles through the woods as opposed to just elbowing kids out of the way on the pavement. Best of all, there was no Pisser in sight. Maybe he ran into a tree trying to mark it from his owners arms.

My time?

24:11.

Wow. Nice job, MoJay. Good dog.

Just Like That. But Different (Getty Images)

So, in four words, I’m kinda laid up. Nothing bad or critical, nor, much to her chagrin, fatal. Unless, of course, you count aging and stupidity as fatal; if that’s the case, I’m guilty of both and on a collision course with death. Not a glorious cocaine-and-hooker-laden death like Charlie Sheen, more like with the headlines “Man Bends Over To Pick Up Penny And Drops Dead.”

Like all cataclysmic events in the universe, this one came crawling into the room, unnoticed until it was too late. Here’s how I want the history books to record this event of epic proportions: “as Uli was attempting to smash a world record by deadlifting 978lbs. without even warming up, he suffered a neurological anomaly which resulted in a severely crippling injury. Women the world over proceeded to hurl themselves off of cliffs and in front of speeding trains to escape the wrenching agony brought about by his downfall. He’s expected to make a full recovery in three days and will be once again smashing records and breaking hearts.”

The truth is more like this here: “I bent over to pick up a measly 65lbs. worth of weight at CrossFit, and by the x- number of reps, something went “twannnngg”, and I was done. I’ve since been shattered to a whimpering, whiny pile of puny-ass, reduced to looking for Oreo crumbs on the corner of kitchen floor, where I’ve been since Thursday.”

I’ve spent the remainder of the time, when not at the chiropractor or chewing on Ibuprofen like they were Skittles, trying to defend the tragedy within. “I swear, it was really no big deal, I have no idea what the issue was, normally I can bench press school buses” I mumble and attempt pass off, though no one is buying it. There’s also no cache in lame, completely improbable scenarios, either. “Yeah, I turned around to catch an errant dust mote, and BOOM! I was on the floor.”

No.

There was nothing but trying to lift some light weight without responsibly warming up, first.

It’s called getting old.

The chiropractor had a fun and fancy name for whatever the hell my lumbar action is up to, but really, it’s just being old and out of shape.

And as I lay there on the kitchen floor, casting about glances for errant food that may have fallen from the counters, I’m forced to confront this new reality. In the age of the druids, I’d be considered a very senior citizen with one foot in the grave and a rune-script headstone declaring “he lived a long 36 years.”

Hours later with some muscle relaxers on board thanks to the mysterious Brown Sugar, I’ve curled up into a fetal ball on TOP of the kitchen counter, ready to take on the world.

As long as the world weighs less than 65lbs.