Unleash the Monkey Army

The bugle sounds, the charge begins...we're off. The first couple of days of the burpee ladder are under our collective belt and with our Australian contingent getting us off to an early start, we're all present and correct. For most people the first day (or couple of days) are a bit anticlimactic. We're talking about burpees after all and the 100 day ladder is a big deal...so what's with the damp squib? Well, to quote Egg Chen in Big Trouble in Little China "That was nothing. But that's how it always begins. Very small." Big Trouble in Little China (20th Century Fox Films - tongue in cheek 80s classic) You see, for all that the duration and end point of the challenge puts people off, it builds incrementally. The first few weeks are barely worthy of commentary (the exact point it starts to become more of an effort varies with individual). That's kind of frustrating if you want to shout about it, I mean, it's a bit of a hollow brag to w...

The story so far: Our intrepid couch coach has set out, with turgid prose and malice of forethought to burpee on each day for 100 days. The rules are simple: 1 rep on day one; 2 reps on day two, and so on, climbing to day 100 when we climax with 100 reps. Allowing for a little, ahem, life interfering with the art, if one day is missed, it is acceptable to catch up on the following day by completing all of the reps owed. Miss two days and the exercise is ended - rest up for a few days, consider your failings and start again. Our story so far has paused at the end of day 50, half the total number of days notched up. Soberingly though, we've only chalked up 1,225 of the full scope of 5,050 burpees. The next week and a half passed without incident. Occasionally needing to nudge myself out of my torpor to just start. Because once started, even as the air starts to thin with elevation on the ladder, inside of 10 minutes we are finished. Then the entry for Friday 30th November reads...

I used to know a doctor, a GP to be exact, who when presented with a patient saying "doctor, it hurts when I do x" would respond "well, don't do x then". Now, this was not the sum total of clinical practice but it it seemed to be a frustratingly large piece of her soft tissue/joint injury management. Now, for years, whenever this bubbled to the surface of my mind I would dismiss it with still fresh frustration. As is my wont, I have re-evaluated in recent times, especially during and after the recent POSE running clinic with @PoseRunning (have a look at Naeem's Twitter feed or website at www.runningengineer.com ). My motivation for attending was down to the lack of enjoyment I derive from running, knowing that it can be a bit of a blindspot for me and a thought that there must be a better way of doing it. Couple that with a curiosity and a knowledge that seeing other coaches in action is never a waste of a coach's time and your have the p...

One of the roads to clarity on Monday's mental meander is to think before posting! But possibly more helpful is, in amongst some of the other ideas, is to think about "Dodgeball" (yes, the 2004 movie) for a second. "I found that if you have a goal, that you might not reach it. But if you don't have one, then you are never disappointed. And I got to tell ya...it feels phenomenal" Self-sabotage. In Peter Law Fleur's case it is appears as more explicit in the not setting goals and then not working towards anything. For many more it is a far more insidious authoring of our own demise. Hold on, before you get too upset, let me clarify - few people actively set out to lose (and those who tend to get accused, prosecuted and fined for match-fixing) but nonetheless, we're setting ourselves up for a fall. In terms of missing training defeat is not the objective but by taking the field under-cooked or as a group of individuals you are stacking the deck agai...

In the car this morning I was reflecting on a few conversations I've had of late (so that I could put any actions to one side and clear my mind for the weekend) and it reminded me of something I wrote last year. "The past is a Wagon Wheel" - we swear blind that it was bigger in the past. I'm still comfortable with it as an analogy but I think I missed something in it. While it is true of the good things we reminisce about with fondness, it is also true about the bad things in life. Those mistakes that are not fatal hang around in our mind for years (or can do, I won't assume absolutes). They cast a long shadow. Sometimes it is little more than shade, sometimes it's a cold, dark, sunless valley. I suspect, like the good things in life, the more they are replayed the bigger they seem. We add colour and intensity and more recent things can seem but pale imitations. And these things can be like an invisible hand on the tiller, subtly nudging our heading as w...