A personal Unified Theory of Fitness and Fun
On setting goals for running, cycling and other outdoor sports
I’ve been running, cycling, skiing and practicing other outdoor sports every day for about six years now. It’s always been a loose, informal project. Really the only rule has been to get out everyday for at least 15 minutes and move around a bit.
Now, for no reason whatsoever, I feel a bit of ambition tugging at my yearning soul. I feel the pull to “maximize” my abilities, to become fitter and faster. I want to build up my endurance. Gad, but that’s annoying, eh?
I’m guessing that I’m influenced by a couple of people who I really admire want to emulate. I’ve done stories in my day job about them.
Ernie St. Germaine
The first is Ernie St. Germaine. The 76-year-old from Hayward, Wisconsin, is the only person in world to have skied every single American Birkebeiner racer since it started 50 years ago.
Two years ago I asked Ernie for Nordic ski lessons, under the guise of doing a story. I took away three lasting lessons.
- Get into an “athletic stance.” I had never heard of this concept before. Ernie demonstrated it for me. “It’s like a boxer, or a shortstop,” he said, standing with a slight flex in his knees. “That way you are ready to move any way you need to.” I’ve found that the stance is useful even in running, which doesn’t often require quick jumps to the side.
- “Relax your upper body,” Ernie said when we on our skis and out on the trail. “You’re too tight.” Oh man, if he only knew how much of life I’ve spent with my body like an old-school wristwatch wound too tight. Half the time I wouldn’t be surprise if I just burst into pieces.
- Time on skis. “You just need time on skis. It’ll come to you do it more,” he told me. “You just get more comfortable the more time you spend on skis.”
This was an A-HA! moment for me. I call it TOS, and have extrapolated it to so many things beyond cross-country skiing or any other sporting activity, for that matter. The TOS concept has essentially led me to do more of this kind of writing. The more I do it, I figure, the better I will become at it. Or even if I don’t become “better,” the more I do it, the more I’ll want to do it. And writing or doing anything like it, makes me happy.
My conclusion from thinking about Ernie and our short time together is that I need to bring a level of discipline to my activities in order for me to become better at them. The better I am, the more I’ll want to do. And the more I do, the happier I become.
Mary Beth Kuester
The second person I can blame for this influx of ambition is Mary Beth Kuester of Antigo, Wisconsin. She is 85 years old, and just over the last year has started to become a competitive Alpine ski race. Now, I don’t enjoy downhill skiing, but I can relate to the sport and what drives Mary Beth.
Mary Beth has been a downhiller for years and years, but always on the recreational side of things. But when last year she decided she wanted to get into racing, she went all in.
She bought new equipment. She hired a coach. She started doing exercises that specifically strengthens the muscles of her leg and which improve balance. Mary Beth puts in the work.
Mary Beth almost approaches the sport like a professional, which is not something that would work for me. But she does this with a sense of joy and fun. THAT’s what I want to develop.
So I don’t exactly know where my Unified Theory of Fitness and Fun will take me. I guess I should set some goals, eh?
I think essentially I would like to join more running races this summer, and tune my 10k and 5k performances. I would like to ride 50 miles in four to five hours. We’ll see where it goes, eh?
I’ll be writing about it here, too. Because writing more is part of this.
