Volunteering is Badass!
I have so much fun volunteering at races. Here's some of the antics from helping out at the Trail Nerds Psycho Psummer.
And here’s a short tribute song about volunteering from Gary Henry.
Shape of My Potawatomi 200 DNF
Full size PDF of graphic to better see the details.
This is my greatest DNF, Did Not Finish, yet. I was in high spirits throughout, I ran farther than I've ever run before, and I was surrounded by awesome, supportive friends. I had four downward movements:
- 90-100 miles: I was tired and the trails were getting very slick, but my legs and body felt the strongest they ever have at this distance.
- 100-110 miles: I started this lap feeling super strong, then ran out of energy around mile 7. A bowl of potato soup with extra salt put me back on track.
- 120-130 miles: that's when the knee pain came. Sudden and intense.
- 130-140 miles: dealing with the reality that I couldn't finish at the pace I was going, and the knee pain meant I was compensating in such a way that my back and ankle started to hurt.
I had a ton of upward movements:
- Starting was exciting.
- I ran 10 out 14 laps with a pacer - four great guys and I loved every mile with them.
- Fixing my sloshy stomach by drinking less and eating more real food.
- Peter delaying his race by 30 minutes to run with me.
- The FOOD! An awesome bacon, egg and potato quesadilla; breakfast casserole; pizza rolls; pizza; and meatballs!
- The music! I had two new playlists gift me by my friends.
- Naps. Sleeping worked really well. In fact, hindsight, I would have slept some Thursday night after 40 miles.
- Miles 110-120! I felt like a million bucks!
Overall, I'm proud of the new distance and the learning that came with it. I'm at the beginning of this journey for 200.
Insufficiently Early
The dialogue In Wes Anderson’s movies is crisp, clever and often contains imaginative insight. In The French Dispatch, Roebuck Wright arrived for a dinner party “insufficiently early.” He showed up at Police Headquarters early, but because the building was so large and confusing, he was late for his meal in The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner.
The word combination of insufficiently with early prompted two new thoughts with me. The first is it ever necessary to be more than sufficiently early - say extra early?
A case for being extra early was made in an illustration from the old Franklin Covey training. The facilitator would ask, “If I promised you a $1M tax free, and all you had to do was be at a specific location by 2 pm next Tuesday, would you be there on time? How early would you leave? How would you ensure you were there on time?”
It was a hypothetical exercise to construct the mindset to take ownership for being early. It drove home the point, you could be on time if it was important enough to you. The problem with this exercise is that implies you should be extra early for everything. To ensure you were there on time, you’d arrive hours ahead and patiently wait for $1M. I’m not sure that’s the best use of our time.
The second thought prompted by the two word phrase is the agency it implies. Roebuck Wright didn’t blame his tardiness on external circumstances. It wasn’t the building’s confusing layout that caused him to be late, it was because he didn’t plan for that and was insufficiently early enough to overcome that obstacle. He owned it.
Being exactly on time is a narrow needle to thread. The real choice in life is are you going to be early or late and by how much.
SPECTRUM OF ARRIVING ON TIME
Extra Early - Leave early enough to overcome MAJOR obstacles that appear on your journey.
Sufficiently Early - Leave early enough to overcome MINOR obstacles
Insufficiently Early - Leave to arrive on time, but with no room for obstacles. Everything must go right to arrive on time.
Late - No chance to arrive on time.
I prefer to be early. I find it stressful to be late, and I don’t like to make others wait on me. On the other side of the spectrum, I know people who appear to be proud of always being late. It seems that they like to broadcast that they are so important that every minute of their schedule is filled with extremely essential activities.