Zen and the Art of Speedskating

At the beginning of the amazingly (insert your own descriptive here) movie “Conan The Barbarian” there is a moment at the start of the film that sticks in the minds of many who have seen it. A gaggle of war-captured children are shackled to a massive wheel, the “Wheel of Pain” (a grain grinder, actually). They pass through puberty pushing this monstrosity, wearing grooves into the ground with their feet. One by one, they die from the effort, till finally, only one of them is left, turning this massive wheel. And now he is adult with biceps like cannonballs, legs like howitzers, and very thirsty for revenge, its Conan!

This cinematic image came into my mind during dryland earlier this week. We were doing repeated skate position jumps, with running/minimal recovery between the jumps (that’s me & Eric Krann doing them on the right). We are finishing up a hard training cycle, and the fatigue has really built up in me. 2 hours into the 3 hour workout (and I did 5 hard hours the day before), after hitting my maximum heart rate over and over, after endless efforts at 100%, my brain shut off completely. I had no idea what set we were on, what rep, I could not count, speak, think, I completely had submerged into suffering and effort. There was no moment but now, nothing but the mechanical motions and trying to make each jump big and technically correct. Kirk was worried about me, I was working so hard, I was COMPLETELY SILENT & GRIM for most of the workout…. Imagine that! Andrew quiet!

Weirdly enough, I was still able to fly pretty far each jump. During a brief break, as I was vacantly staring at the ground, with my heart thudding along like a jackhammer, Boris put his arm around my shoulders and said “Yes, its hard, I know, but your muscles are strong enough to do this, they are strong enough to do anything, keep the mind focused, and it will be ok, it’s the mind.” Some spark ignited in the flammable debris of my brain, and I think my last set was even better than my first, as I began to relax into bigger and bigger jumps (max HR for the last set was waaay over 200+ in case you care). This is when that memory from the Conan movie occurred to me.

Lest Mom worry (and she reads this blog) dear Mom, let me clarify that what I am experiencing is common, and actually is probably an essential part of breaking into another level of fitness. Masters cycling world champion Glenn Swan once said “Yeah, you can get to about 90% of your potential with 2 years of hard work, its that last 10% you just have to break your heart to get”. I think he was talking about the wheel of pain, that last 10%. Glenn has been there.

Football players talk in awe and horror about their fall 2-a-day practices, Cadel Evans, during a recent Tour De France breakaway, said he had a moment when he simply could not recall his middle name, no matter how hard he tried, Sprinter Robert Förster even said that he simply blacked out the last 100k of a tough mountain stage, had no memory of it whatsoever. It’s all that last 10%

Everyone builds their own wheel, their own chains of sacrifice, and that is the crucial difference between myself, football players, Tour de France bicycle racers and the mythical Conan (who had no choice). Modern athletes create ourselves anew -wearing grooves into ground of our own choosing; how hard we work combined with that careful equipment choice of picking our parents right (I did! genetically and otherwise) creates who we are. If reaching that last 10% of your ability was not so hard, it would not be worth so much, or be as fulfilling as when you feel that whoosh of sweet velocity & move faster than you have ever gone before.

Of course, this is all just Friday afternoon philosophizing; I exhausted because of this 10% obsession that I have, and I think I will turn my computer off now, and go sleep for most of next week (a rest week!! yay!). oh, wait, I need to go lift weights tonight! and I am already fried from 3 hours today! soooooo…. back to the wheel!!

Filed under: sweat, from home