Friday, January 25, 2013

When You Discover You Love Obstacle Course Racing....

The problem with discovering that you love obstacle course racing (OCR) in your fifties are numerous.  Everyone you know either thinks that you've lost your mind or that you're going thru a midlife crisis AND lost your mind (or is that redundant!).  You can read about how this happened to me in my post from last June about the 2012 Spartan Sprint in Tuxedo NY.  The greatest thing about running my first race in 2011 at Tuxedo was that I found out I could do this!  If I had known how hard it really was, I would never have even tried.  It opened up a whole new world of challenge and that door never closed.  Hence the fact that, just like in The Matrix, The Truth Is...There Is No Box!  Our limitations are almost always self inflicted.  We are all capable of having life changing events.  This race was mine.

Of course, despite this new found dimension of reality, there are some actual restrictions that I have to accept.  First of all, I will never be a competitive racer outside of my age group...possibly not even there (although that is not likely to be an acceptable outcome in the long run...one of the things I learned about myself in real estate is how competitive I really am).  I'm 55 and more importantly, I don't have the interest or drive to put in the hours of work these racers do in order to be the best.  Another potential tripping point is that I can't run.  I mean I can run, just not for very long!  Part of it is childhood asthma, part from smoking for a while years ago and part of it because it just absolutely bores me to death to train for running!  And I do not mean to offend any runners...really!!  I read about how cool they think it is and how they get into these zones...but I have yet to find those.  All I can think about is that I can't fucking breathe!  They talk about a "conversational pace".  To me, a conversational pace is when you still have enough air left to call for help as you lay gasping on the ground.  However, running...and particularly running up hills...is crucial to any sort of decent performance on most of the courses, so I knew I had to do some serious work here.

What I want to do in all of this, and I guess in every aspect of my life, is get better.  I'm sure it's the engineer in me, but I can never just leave something be.  Eventually...and more likely sooner than later...I have to improve it.  Improve it in my eyes anyway.  So the next post will be about training, my 2013 racing goals and hopefully about the Spartan Race demonstration in Times Square this week.  (I tell people I was invited to it...but really it's more like they lifted the restraining order so I can be there and maybe help out...they really are nice people when you agree to stop stalking them!)  Until next time...