This pudding has no theme

Winston Churchill once famously rejected a desert saying, as he pushed it away, "This pudding has no theme." Much like Sir Churchill, who I’m sure ate his fair share of pudding over the years (along with a few other vices), I find that the longer I’ve been in sport, the more important it is for me to create themes for myself at and around races, or I tend to push them away.

In order to end up with a tasty pudding that Churchill would gladly eat, the chef has to have a vision of the end taste, texture and presentation in mind. To do do this, he has to know what ingredients he needs, know how to source those ingredients, how to combine them in their proper doses, how to prepare them and ultimately, how and when to serve the end desert.

I get great pleasure from running and racing, but like pudding, it can be bland, or get a bit stale at times, so I have to look for ways to add colour and flavour to the process to keep myself motivated and enjoying it. If the race, starting with my preparation, lacks an overarching theme, then I either tend to not race, or end up with a result that I'm not satisfied with.

Whenever you hear tales of a great sports team, a successful businessperson, like Steve Jobs, or a great leader like Churchill, much of the discussion centres around the culture that they create. It is this culture that people rally around, it’s what helps them to deal with adversity and tough times and pushes them to greatness. In endurance sport, unless you are training in a major hub, or are part of a club, or a team, it’s harder to create a culture. Because I prepare largely by myself, I have to replace culture with themes. It’s a process that works for anyone, or any group, ready to undertake a big challenge.

I’ve talked before about the importance for me of creating a narrative for myself as I’m preparing for a race, but taking a step back from that, I select races that motivate me. I have a look at the race menu and pick one that looks appetizing, or I search one out with certain characteristics. This is where the theme starts. Sometimes it’s the competition, other times it’s the venue and, occasionally, it’s both that whet my competitive pallet. Once I know what the race is going to be and what my motivation for doing it is, I pick my theme and I base my preparation around that theme. It’s not really a conscious process, but it’s one that I find myself repeating.

If the race is flat and fast, then that’s what my theme is and I try to focus my attention on those aspects of my training. I spend more time trying to think and act like a fast runner. I venture to the track, I read blog posts about Kenyans, I wear track pants and tights and watch famous track races. In my mind, I become fast. I'm sourcing, preparing and combining the ingredients

If the race is more mountainous and grueling, then that becomes my theme and I focus more on spending time on my legs and toughening up. I think about what I'll need to have an enjoyable end product and go from there. I head to the hills on my runs, the more rugged the better. I also gravitate towards images and tales of mountains and find myself reading mountaineering and adventure books. Since I'm on the topic, I even go so far as to start eating foods from the country, or place, that I’ll be racing, like cheese from the Savoie region, or Himalayan/Tibetan meals. I try to become a mountain man, respectful of my surroundings, but ready to face the elements.

If this all sounds a lot like play, you are correct. This is how I add flavour and colour to the pudding that the race represents. Without the themes, the training and ultimately, the race, is bland and unoriginal and the final pudding is easy to forget, or reject. With themes, it comes alive with aromas and taste and, ultimately, is much more palatable and enjoyable

To carry this analogy one step further, don’t forget the main principle that this is all based around "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!" from Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall. The meat in this case is the day in and day out training and the pudding is the race. The pudding always comes after the meat. Add flavour all you want to the pudding, but it is the meat that ultimately sustains you (vegans/vegetarians may disagree, but I thought the lyric was appropriate).

Fiction Friday, from the BC Ferry

The boy stomped his way along the beach, kicking shells as he went. He could hear the sand crunching under his feet. Combined with the crashing of waves, he found it to be a jarring timber. His stride was stiff and forced and he could feel his anger welling up inside of him, when he noticed a pile of driftwood to his left.

He reached into the pile and grabbed the biggest stick that he could find. It was almost two thumb widths wide and came up to his chest. It had a curve to it at one end. Looking at it, he got the impression that it used to be straight, but time had forced its spine forward. The bark looked coarse, almost flaky in spots, but it felt soft and subtle against the flesh of his hand. Despite its brittle exterior, he could tell that it was a hardwood, with a solid core. Its musty smell was a strange, but pleasant combination of forest floor and the ocean. The tips of the stick were rounded and a wisp of moss adorned one end. He knew that it was a good stick.

His mind suddenly flashed back and the anger grabbed hold of him again. Ignoring the stick, he felt a sudden urge to lash out, so he arched his body and brought the stick up behind him with both arms. He let out a violent breath, more like a scream than a sustaining force and swung the stick forward with all his mite. It pendulumed around his torquing body, cutting sharply through the air.

At that exact moment, his bare feet, which he had planted firmly in the sand to improve his purchase, slipped on a piece of slimy kelp and he felt himself falling forward. As his feet and torso fought against gravity, the stick changed its course and planted itself firmly in the wet ground, allowing him to stabilize himself.

He stood there stunned for a moment, his pulse was racing and he looked at the stick, now firmly planted in sand, which had saved him from his fall. The bits of moss at the end were flowing in the gentle breeze. He didn’t understand how it had ended up there, the trajectory didn’t really make sense, but he was thankful that it had and he cracked a small smile.

His emotions didn’t allow him to dwell on the strange happening for too long though, he still needed to vent. He felt the wood against the palm of his right hand and he began to apply downward pressure on the stick. He used so much force that he could feel the bark leaving a striated mark in the flesh of his hand and he started to move the stick. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t draw the stick across his body; instead, he found himself pulling it towards him. The stick left a trailing imprint in the sand, parallel to his feet. He didn’t understand what had happened, it was as if the stick didn’t want to go where he was telling to go. He moved his feet and tried a few more times, but each time, the stick wouldn’t move across the front of his feet and each time, he found himself straddling the line.

He pulled the stick out of the sand, lifted it closer to his face and twirled it around, inspecting it closely. Each of the lines along the stick seemed to tell a story. Although he didn’t know what they said, he got a sense that he understood them. Despite knowing better, he got the impression that the stick was wise and had been held by many hands. After looking at it closely for a few minutes, he realized that he had forgotten his previous anger and instead, he was enveloped in a sense of calm.

He walked up to the water’s edge and placed the stick down gently and took a step back. A seagull perched itself on a stump beside him and watched him with great curiosity. It let out an approving caw. He could see a small, rolling wave moving slowly from out in the ocean towards the shore. It broke about four feet away from him and reached out with its white water. As it receded, it grabbed at the stick and pulled it back, reclaiming it. He strained to his neck, trying to follow it, but the stick was gone. He stood there for a few minutes, admiring the view and then slowly turned and continued to make his way lightly along the beach.

It's not all night running

Lunch break truth in fiction--

I've been a bit slammed this week and feeling on edge, the writing has not been flowing, so here's my 15 minutes of fiction, written as I waited for my pulled pork salad to arrive (oh yeah, this is not my office-we don't have cubicles, nor do we have managers, I was picturing the "Office" when I wrote it, with a slightly more tense setting).

“It’s 3:47 for crying out loud” she shrieked
“Quiet, you’ll send everyone into a panic” the more rational voice responded.
“Did you get a paycheck slip today?” the shrieking voice responded, apparently forgetting her previous sense of panic about the time.
“Yeah, I actually got four” she answered calmly. “The holiday backlog is finally catching up.”
At that moment, the manager walked into the hall and the floating voices over the cubicles quieted.
“Did I hear a complaint?” He threatened sarcastically. “If anyone of you has something to say about the time, why don’t you come to my office and we can discuss it.” With his authority stamped, he power walked his way down the row of desks.
He had the look of someone who considered themselves naturally athletic, but who was more likely to pull his hamstring, or hurt his back if he were to move swiftly. His dirty blonde hair was well maintained, but was starting to thin and his suit was obviously expensive, but someone with a sartorial eye would notice that he didn’t wear it well. His white, tie less, shirt was loose at the top, but pulled tight around his slightly expanding belly. The shoulder pads of his jacket were a half inch too wide and he moved stiffly in it, his reach restricted by an ambitious fit. His brown, polished, shoes had bright red shoelaces, a desperate plea to draw the eyes to them.
When he was out of sight, a voice commented “Douche Bag!” audibly enough for everyone to hear, but in a tonne that suggested she felt an element of risk of him overhearing her. It was an irrational fear, since he was long gone, but it’s one that overcomes anyone who says something publicly that they probably shouldn’t.
A few of the girls laughed and snickered. They had all suffered under his glare and wandering eyes and felt the same way.
“Crap it’s 4:00 o’clock” the shreiker noted with more panic in her voice.
“I can’t wait for this day to be done and to go home and get drunk” she sounded desperate this time.
“Yeah, I hear ya” a third voice responded.
Okay, let’s just put our heads down and plug away at this so we can get out of here by 5” the rational girl interjected, with a hint of superiority in her voice.
“Man, I hate Fridays” he thought to himself, as he sat there overhearing all this, daydreaming about the adventures that he’d get up to that weekend.

Night run up & down the mountain-(where you can find me after work)

15 min of fiction #3

Attempt number 3 at some creative writing. I'm trying to let it flow a bit more and venture off into something less predictable than running. So voila:


“Did he have a shaved head? I mean like completely shaved, or just short?”

“Short” the average looking girl answered.

He couldn’t help himself, he had planned to use these few hours working, but he kept getting drawn in by the conversation behind him. The girls were speaking at a level which begged to be heard by strangers, so he obliged.
“Eavesdropping is a perverse pleasure that we all indulge in” he reasoned. “It’s probably biological”, he continued. It’s always easier to rationalize our choices with pseudo-science.

“Was he the one who wasn’t all that hot? I’ve never slept with someone who wasn’t hot. Well, there was that one guy, the chef, but he wasn't actually that bad looking.” the girl with the green shirt covered with a short grey sweater and multi-coloured scarf answered and commented almost simultaneously.

He knew the sort of girl she was, insecure and selfish. She was afraid of silence and her talk was more like a stream of consciousnesses than a conversation with a friend. It's why she was hanging out with an average looking girl he realized.
She wasn't unattractive, but she went up one point on his ranking scale by virtue of being beside an average girl and he knew that she knew it. It's what his high school friends called a 'hotness optical illusion.' "It's a classic move" he thought. It's also why you always have to separate a girl from the herd of her friends. It provides the proper context to assess her true looks.

Despite knowing nothing about her, apart from the snippet of conversation that he’d overheard the past fifteen minutes, he felt sorry for her, but he also couldn’t stand her.

“The one guy that I dated who was hideous, was so nice, but he was hideous” She continued, contradicting herself. She then segued into an almost incoherent monologue.

“Do you know the Merritt festival?” she asked to her friend, but it was thrown out there to anyone willing to listen. “I went with my two step sisters, my real sister, my step mom and my step aunt about two years ago. The last night I stayed in their motor home. The next morning, I’m waiting for some guys to drive me down the hill because there was a mud slide and I’m standing there, and this big green monster truck drove up."

He couldn't believe the crap she was spewing. But he missed something, so his attention shot back to the girls.

"...and he had a beautiful face—I mean, think back and he was just beautiful. I think about it now and he was just…so beautiful…”she repeated. “I was wearing green shorts that said “Bad Girl” on the back. He stopped and asked if I needed a hand, or a ride. I totally wanted to, because I wanted to be with him for a few minutes. So I told him ‘Let me just call someone with your license plates’, because I don’t want to get into a strangers' truck and get raped. So I’m about to get into the back and I see some guy. I’m totally surprised, but the hot guy tells me: “He’s just a Frenchmen, he’s harmless.” I’ve been partying all night, I was totally hung over, I think I puked the night before; I was just a total mess. All I could think was “they are going to rape me, they’re going to rape.” But I got in and the guy was being all creepy, but then the hot guy told him to back the fuck off. He was so hot.”

He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to reach around and grab her and tell her to take a breath, or tell her that no one cared. But he didn’t. He kept sipping his stale, by now lukewarm coffee, which he masked with two sugars and a creamo. He wanted to hear how the story ended. His work could wait.

2011, the year of the running video

2011 was definitely the year when the trail running video came of age. Salomon Running has continued to put out great clips, like this year end video:


Joel Wolpert at Running Times did nice videos of Geoff Roes and Anton Krupicka and Arc'teryx put one out of me running earlier this year. Apparently, and luckily, they haven't stopped coming. I just saw this most recent clip by Asics of Emmanuel Gault who beat me at the CCC, which he won convincingly. I had a chance to talk with him briefly after the race and, unsurprisingly, he was all class. He was a tough competitor on the trail and a gracious, yet proud winner of the event. It's been a recurring theme with most of the runners I've been fortunate to meet and compete against on the trails.
It was great to see a clip of him going after it in a beautiful setting. It inspired me to go for a run in treacherous conditions tonight, which is about as much as you can ask of any running video, so big kudos to them for putting it out. The variety and quality of the videos this year have been top notch and it's a great step forward for the sport. I haven't seen Unbreakable yet, but enthusiasm and the online comments that I've read have all been positive-clearly people in the sport were hungry for and appreciate all of the efforts of the filmmakers & those involved in their production-so thanks to them for their hard work. I look forward to more in 2012.



In non-running, I also just saw these two amazing videos. Water and mountain sport/adventure videos have inspired me for years and the art form is thriving. Lightweight gear, skilled talent and unique global settings combine to show off the culture of the sport and of the places these modern day adventurers trek to. Since my evening run combined the ocean (where I started), a summit (where I ventured), heavy rain, river crossings, ice, snow and howling winds, these two clips are highly appropriate:

Water:

Antandroy from Band-Originale on Vimeo.

Snow & Ice:

Argentina: A Skier's Journey EP3 [Season 2] from Jordan Manley Photography on Vimeo.