Mid-Atlantic Tough Mudder Report - Part One

It's been a fucked up week.

My mother died last Sunday, October 16th, 2011. I am saddened beyond words and the feelings are too intimate at this time to share on the internet. Her funeral was on Wednesday.

On Thursday I paid my first visit to the Tough Mudder Headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. I will give out all the details of my visit and my reason for being there when the time is right. All I will say is that everyone I met at TMHQ was exactly how I hoped they would be. They are kind, generous, quick to smile and are the type of people you wish all the success in life upon. I'm proud to be connected to them in a small way.

The following weekend my friend Ramon and I were planning on running in the Mid-Atlantic Tough Mudder at the Wintergreen Resort in Virginia. Given the recent tragedy in my family the possibility of me dropping out was there, but not seriously considered. Like a true Mudder, perseverance has to be a dominant trait. I sent a text message after my mother's funeral to Ramon letting him know that we were going to Tough Mudder no matter what.

The plan was to drive down to Virginia from eastern Pennsylvania, a five hour drive. Since money is tight we would sleep in Ramon's car on Saturday night and run in the first wave on Sunday morning. The gear we brought was pretty minimal. Kind of like when I pack for vacation, I usually just throw a few things in a couple plastic grocery bags. This drives my wife nuts. During the long ride down Ramon showed me the Facebook photos on his phone of that day's Mudder that were just posted. We grew excited and then we noticed that we didn't see anyone running shirtless. Ramon and I had planned to run bare-chested without really knowing what the weather and temperature would be like. Like I said, we hardly had any gear with us so we were slightly concerned. Not much, just slightly. While I was looking down at the phone a deer ran onto the highway a few car lengths in front of us and had his life ended rather violently. We slowed down and drove past the carnage hoping that it wasn't a sign of things to come.

The sun was setting when we arrived at Wintergreen Resort and tons of cars packed with newly christened Mudders drove passed us in the opposite direction. We laughed as we saw orange headband after orange headband zoom on by. At the base of the mountain was a brewery/restaurant called Devil's Backbone so we decided to stop on in for a few beers and a bite to eat. It was probably around 7pm and we had a bunch of time to kill before we would hit the hay so the long wait for a table was no problem at all. The place was packed with Mudders who were licking their wounds, sharing some drinks and spinning stories about the day's events. Ramon and I joined a few conversations before we were seated at our table.

I was working on my second stout when Ramon and I started talking to an orange headbanded Mudder who was standing by our table. He was a nice guy named Nick who was from the area and had the welcoming accent to prove it. We grilled him about the course he gave up as many details he could remember. Then mid sentence and with that southern twang he says, "Aren't you that guy from the video?" I smiled sheepishly and said yeah. Ramon always gets a kick out of that and yells, "The Mustache Man!". In fact, he will yell that at random times when we run a Mudder just to see other people react and turn their heads and look at me. Sometimes he'll stand next to me and just yell "MUSTACHE!" which always cracks me up and makes me look like an attention grabbing whore. What makes that funny is, if you knew me, you'd know I was the exact opposite. Anyway, we talked with Nick a little longer and he offered us a spare bedroom at a lodge he had rented right at the resort. The lodge was so close to the event site that we could actually walk to the starting line if we chose. He told us his friends who had rented the room had already left and it was ours if we wanted. The offer was generous and very tempting but I knew Ramon felt the same as me and we didn't want to impose. He told us the address and said to stop by anytime the lights were on. Nick excused himself when our food came. I had a veggie burger with sweet potato fries and Ramon had a smoked turkey sandwich. Not sure why you needed to know that.

We left the restaurant at around 9:30 and while crossing the parking lot Ramon noticed a shooting start soaring across the sky. He commented that this was now the good omen that erased the bad omen of the mangled deer on the highway. Soon after we found a nice, dark parking spot and settled in for the night. I simply kicked back in the front passenger seat and covered up with two Mexican blankets. Ramon stretched out in the back of his SUV. We were sleeping soundly within minutes. Unfortunately after about an hour I think we were both awake and drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night. I remember a strange dream of foiling a carjacking and stomping the criminal into an egg yolk (?!).

We were awakened around 5:30am by Mudders pulling into spaces around us hooting and hollering. One car pulled right along side of us totally blasting a song by the Rollins Band, "Low Self Opinion", which happens to be one of my favorite songs by them. All I could do is smile and mouth the words quietly as I rose from a cold night of very little sleep to kick the coming day straight in the ass.

We rolled out of the car and went to the registration area just as the sun was starting to peak over the mountains. We got our wristbands and our foreheads markered up with our bib numbers and returned to the car to get changed for the event. One guy from the group parked next to us that was playing Rollins started talking to us. "Hey, you're that guy from the video, right?" he said. His name was Chris, nice guy. We took a picture together and then his group took off for the start. For this event I decided to wear some cargo shorts with tight, old school Vale Tudo type fight shorts underneath. I figured they were more sturdy than your typical spandex style compression shorts. No shirt up top and down below I wore my trusty pair of Vibram KSOs that have survived many Tough Mudders, and they look it. For the walk to the starting line Ramon and I wore plastic garbage bags to keep us warm until we started running. If you've ever been to any type of marathon in cooler weather I'm sure you've seen that technique.

We stepped up to join the 8:00 wave at the starting gate. The DJ was getting everyone pumped up and going through the usual announcements. Then a recording of the National Anthem was played as we all turned to face the flag. Now look, I'm no Bible pounding Republican. For the most part I'm pretty liberal. I strongly fight for individual rights in this country but when the National Anthem is played you remove your fucking hat. I don't care how long it took you to put on your bunny ears or your funny wig and Viking helmet. I'm no blind patriot but I have the utmost respect for the men and women in the armed forces both past and present. If they can put their lives on the line then I can sacrifice wearing something on my damn head for 79 seconds.

The Tough Mudder pledge was recited and the countdown began. Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" was blasted out of the speakers. If there is one bond that Ramon and I share it's the love of all of the Rocky movies. We constantly quote lines to each other and needless to say, this song had us frothing at the mouth.

The countdown reached zero and the first wave was unleashed on the mountain with a thunderous roar.

Continued in PART TWO...

Weakness.

I'm a Henry Rollins fan. Have been for over 25 years actually. If you are not sure who he is you can Google him if you like, it really doesn't matter for what I'm about to write. Anyway, I saw him live a bunch of times and even saw him with Black Flag in 1985. I got his autograph on his first self published book and I've read tons of his writings and listened to hours of his spoken word. Somewhere during my impressionable teen years I either read an interview or heard some spoken word or poem from Henry where he elaborated on weakness. I've scoured the internet for this "essay" but found nothing but I will clumsily try to sum it up here.

He said that a man takes a drink because he is weak. A man buys a gun because he is weak. A man strikes a woman because he is weak. And so on and so forth, you get the idea. Now I'm sure tons of people read those words from Henry like I did back then and just thought they were tough-guy ramblings from a punk rock poet. For me, the theme of those words stuck in my craw up until this day as I'm hurtling towards my fifth decade of life. Those silly words made me (and still make me) re-examine my life constantly and changed me immeasurably.

I love coffee. The stronger the better. I drank it for years starting in my early teens. By my twenties I would polish off a whole pot myself. Later I was drinking two French presses of hi-octane Colombian a day. I needed it to feel normal. The chemical controlled my moods. I was weak. I became angry that I allowed this goddam drink to control the way I felt and interacted with my family and friends. People that I love. I quit drinking coffee and never went back. Trust me, it wasn't easy, but I don't want to bore you with the struggle of kicking coffee. That's not what this is about.

Why do I eat a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting? Because I'm weak. Why do I lay in front of the TV for hours instead of exercising or reading a book? Because I'm weak. Why did I spend the entire afternoon sitting inside playing video games? Because I'm weak. These are all questions that I have asked myself and changed my life for the better after attacking these issues head on.

Will this type of self-analysis work for you? Maybe. Maybe not. For me, I needed to get angry with myself. Stop compromising and making excuses. Being 45 years old I probably have enough excuses saved up to reason away why I shouldn't be able to do certain physical acts and just slip into the quiet life of channel surfing but I always have those words ringing in my ears. Is it because you are older or is it because you are weak? I refuse to be weak.

That's about it. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for your time.

Push it real good.

After a full week of being bogged down with work I needed a release so I decided to get out for a run. Today in the northeast the temps were in the high nineties so I wasn't sure what to expect. Oftentimes I like to just go and not set a specific goal or distance. I listen to my body. If I feel good I keep going, if I feel crappy I try and push through or just cut it short. Just recently I read a blog post by a fellow message board member and barefoot runner who follows the same mindset and surprised himself and ran 30 miles! (http://www.mindyourheadcoop.org/blog/?p=1179)

Starting out I felt great. The warmth actually made my muscles feel loose and my barefoot form was clicking nicely. The heat didn't start to get to me until around the third mile. I knew right there that I had a perfect excuse to cut it short. I could tell myself, "Oh, it's too hot. I could get heat stroke. I'd better head back." But besides that nagging voice in my head I still felt pretty good. Fast forward to around mile five where the heat started winning, and this is where today's lesson begins...

You see, I knew that if I decided to start walking or take a little break under a shady tree it would be perfectly understandable. I mean, it was crazy of me to even be out running on a day like today, right? But what if I kept going? This is where the mental games began. I would tell myself, "After you get to that street sign you can walk for a block." But then, when I was just about to reach the street sign I would think, "What if I kept going? That would kick ass." And so the inner battle continued with me like that for another half hour. I never did stop and probably ended up running around eight miles or so.

Mentally pushing yourself is something you can train yourself to do in almost all of the menial aspects of your life. I remember when pushing myself physically, even when not working out, first dawned on me. It was many years ago around Christmas time and I was at a tree farm carrying a freshly cut Blue Spruce to mount on the top of my car. It was heavy as hell and my shoulder was humming in pain. I thought, "I should put this down for a minute and give it a rest." Then I thought, "Why not push yourself and carry it all the way to the car? In fact, don't set it down when you get to the car. Toss it through the air and have it land on top of the SUV." And that's what I did.

Today during my run there were two paths to my house I could have taken. One was a soft grassy shortcut and the other was a gravelly hill that added another two minutes to my run. I chose the hill. Even little things like rounding a corner when you are running on the street. You can cut the corner and hop on the curb or you can stay on the street and take the turn wide. At the supermarket you can park in the last spot and carry all the bags you can hold. You can take the stairs at work. You've probably heard all that stuff before but really, it adds up.

So right now as finish up typing this I'm pretty spent physically and I have every right to go lay down on the couch and watch the baseball game. But instead, I'm going to go ask my daughter if she wants to go outside and get some softball practice in. Push yourself and you will enrich your life more than you know.

Thanks for listening.

"Then die."

This is my favorite Bruce Lee story. It tells of an exchange between Bruce and his senior student Taky Kimura. At the time Bruce was a young man in his early twenties and Taky was in his forties like I am now. I used to tell my students this story years ago when I felt they weren't giving it their all. I'd like to thank Tom L. for bringing it to my attention once more. Hope you like it...

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We'd run three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile. (Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile). So this morning he said to me "We're going to go five." He said, "When we get to three we'll shift gears and it's only two more and you'll do it." I said "Okay, hell, I'll go for it." So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I'm okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I'm tired, my heart's pounding, I can't go any more and so I say to him, "Bruce, if I run any more,"-and we're still running- "if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die." He said, "Then die." It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, "Why did you say that?" He said, "Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level."

Who are you?

 When you get older or middle aged like myself you tend to look back on your life a lot and wonder if it really was a life well lived. Well, at least I do. While reading this morning I came across the words of Bruce Lee who once again mirrored my introspective thoughts exactly. His writings move me so often that I thought the only way to pass his sentiment along was to not provide a summary but reprint them word for word. Enjoy...

"I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude."

You CAN'T do anything you put your mind to...

If anyone tells you that you can they are either some type of self help guru looking to part you from your money or they don't have a firm grip on reality. Before you call me a cynic allow me to clear a few things up. First, I'll start with a story from my past...

I was never a great student. Night School and Summer School enrollment was fairly commonplace for me. Although I feel that I'm a somewhat intelligent guy that has a pretty firm grasp on the English language I failed English in my senior year of high school and was not allowed to graduate with my class. I had to finish my schooling that summer and receive my diploma in late July. I did my time in Summer School and refused to pick up my diploma. Now I am friends with at least three high school teachers that still don't know how to use "their", "they're" and "there" or "to", "two" and "too" properly and yet I was too incompetent to graduate with my class. Yeah, after 27 years I guess I'm still bitter. My own damn fault I guess.

My inability to live up to my potential followed me into Junior College where I was a Commercial Art major. All my life I have been blessed with being a pretty decent artist. Anybody that remembers me from school, elementary on up, knows that I was always the kid who was the best artist in school. So, when it came to my college years I never really had to try. I would ace all of my studio art classes without even trying.

One semester I had a Life Drawing class that was two days a week. A three hour class on Mondays and Wednesdays. A good friend of mine got a radio show on a local college station on Wednesday mornings so like a loyal friend I would skip out on most of my Wednesday classes and spin punk rock records for the good folks in the greater Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. The end of the semester was rolling around and one of the class requirements was to keep a sketchbook throughout the year which was to be handed in at your final review. We were each given 20 minute slots in which we were to meet with the instructor and discuss our assignments and present our sketchbooks. The thing was, I never started my sketchbook. We were supposed to have at least 100 drawings of a variety of still life's and I didn't have one. The night before my review I sat down with an assortment of different colored charcols, pencils, pens and brushes in order to make it look like I completed this over a considerable length of time. Within a few hours I banged out the 100 drawings. I'm sure I could have done better but most of the drawings weren't half bad.

The next morning I strode into my final review with a sense of confidence. On all of my assignments I never scored below a high "B" so I assumed an "A" was in order with the addition of this killer sketchbook I had knocked out the night before. My instructor had all of my assignments spread out on a table in front of us. He picked up my sketchbook and flipped through about five pages, closed it, and threw it on top of the pile of my other assignments. I was shocked. Wasn't he going to check out the rest of my awesomeness that I pissed out the night before?

"Y'know, this is really good. It's a shame." What the hell?! Why shame?! No shame! He then proceeded to show me how many days I had missed his class. Then he lectured me about my unused potential. Frankly that was a speech I had heard a million times before. In one ear, out the other. Then he hit me with it, "What kind of grade do you think you deserve?" Now before coming in here I was thinking A or B but I didn't want to seem arrogant so I meekly replied "C?".

"Nah, I was thinking more a D or an F. In fact, it's real close. Are you a gambling man?" I stood silent not knowing how to answer. He pulled a quarter out of his pocket and flipped it in the air. "Call it." I could barely squeak out the word "heads". The coin landed. "Heads it is. You got a D. Get your stuff and get out of here."

As I gathered my assignments in an awkward silence I felt him staring me down as I headed for the door. He then spoke the words that changed me. "Y'know, Carol comes to my class every day and busts her ass and she will never be half the artist you are." Boom. Direct hit. You see, Carol was this 40 something housewife who probably had some free time now that her kids were in school all day and she decided to follow her true passion and do art. She was never very good. In fact, she was horrible. Me and my young punk buddies would catch a peek of her working on her assignments and snicker quietly behind her back. But Carol really tried. She would stay late after class and was always asking questions and seemed to really want to learn. The sad reality of the situation was that she made very little improvement. Yet she still tried. Every day she tried.

To put this into perspective let's say I had a true passion for basketball. Let's say I happen to have a best friend growing up by the name of Michael Jordan. Growing up we were inseparable, going to the same basketball camps, doing the same skills and drills, playing the same games of pick-up. By the time high school rolled around, and with both of us having equal amounts of court time and knowledge of the game, Michael would, with the utmost certainty, be the far better basketball player. There's also a good chance that I might not even make the varsity team.

Why is life that way? I'm not sure. Some may think that we are born with certain talents and abilities and it's up to us to figure them out. Sometimes I'll watch those sad people in line at Walmart and wonder if that person is the World's Greatest Pogo Stick Champion but they have no clue because they've never been on one. Kinda makes you see a little good in everyone. Once again though, I digress.

The gist of my little story is this... The person who is great is not the person who does something a few times and becomes great. The person who is great is the person who does something many times, sees little to no improvement, yet keeps at it day after day. That my friends is TRUE strength. I can only hope that Carol is out there somewhere making masterpieces that put my stuff to shame.

Thanks for listening.

Comments on my Men's Health interview...

First off, if you missed the interview I did, here it is...
http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/train-like-a-badass/2011/04/07

Overall I am extremely pleased with the piece. I have been interviewed several times before about my career in animation and the martial arts and there are times I've been misquoted and things have been taken out of context. After reading this it was obvious to me that the interviewer had recorded our conversation and printed them word for word. I appreciate that.

First thing I want to address... I like "Sienfeld"! I really do. I think it's a funny show and I may think it's in one of my top ten shows of all time. Also, I don't hate TV. How could I? My job for the last 15 years has been working on television cartoons. BUT, I don't think I have to go into the whole "wasting your life in front of the TV" spiel. I'm sure you all get it. TV can suck you in boy. I once heard a comedian do a bit about walking in on his girlfriend one night and he asked her what she did all day. She said there was a 6 hour marathon of "Cupcake Wars" on. And then a slow realization of watching six hours of a show about fucking cupcakes crossed her face.

Secondly, I KNOW whey protein is made from milk, but it's NOT milk is it? It's a powder. Not even recognizable to me as milk. I think milk has to go through some heavy ass processing to look like that. They could say "Oh, well we do that to extract all the important nutrients". Well maybe those nutrients don't want to be extracted. Look, I'm no treehugger but in my old age I'm starting to trust nature in certain ways and mistrust mankind in more ways. I don't think nature is trying to play a cute little game of "hide the nutrients" from us. I mean, how have we survived all these years without ingesting all these hidden nutrients? And now, is my life that much better that I am ingesting these newly extracted gems? I don't think so. If I want vitamin C I'll eat an orange and not drink a gallon of Sunny D or pop a 500mg pill. I have a lot more to say on this but I'll save it for another time.

Lastly, I don't hate wearing a mustache. That last line about Curly made it seem like I do. I have the good fortune (or horrible curse) of being able to grow hair quickly. I'm not a white collar guy so I shave once a week if that. If I feel like shaving I will, if not I won't. I don't want to feel pressure to have to look a certain way, that's all. I have this weird personality disorder that when I feel like I'm forced to do something one way I'll flip my middle finger and do it the opposite way out of spite. Guess I'm just a rebel.

That's all, thanks for listening.