The Wild Dog Blog

Tag: endurance

  • Steady Like a Boat

    Be steady like a boat. Even though it doesn’t know its destination or how long it will have to endure each passing storm – it doesn’t waver. For the boat, the only choice is onward – with faith in the horizon that awaits.

  • Choose Your Perspective

    At the start of the year, I pivoted from owning a gym and coaching strength and endurance in person to moving my business, Wild Dog Athletics, entirely online and only providing coaching and programming remotely. Even though I was 100% confident in my decision, I found myself feeling a little fear and uncertainty around losing what I had always considered to be one of my coaching “superpowers” – my ability to connect and relate to others. 

    Putting effort into cultivating a personal relationship with each athlete I work with has long been foundational to my coaching philosophy. While this wouldn’t change as I moved online, I was concerned about the organic opportunities for connection and bonding that would be lost when I was no longer seeing an athlete in person on a weekly basis.

    As I moved forward, I realized that not only was this fear unfounded as I came up with new ways to stay connected from afar – but that I could also replace my fear with curiosity. How would my “superpower(s)” evolve in the next iteration of Wild Dog Athletics? What new potential would I discover? How would I be able to serve others in completely new ways? 

    I didn’t have to deny that things were changing to escape my fear – I had to embrace that things were changing because it’s precisely through change and uncertainty that new possibilities make themselves known. That’s not something to be afraid of, that’s something to celebrate. 

    When things change, you can either take the perspective of everything you stand to lose or take the perspective of everything you have to gain. Which perspective will you choose as we enter the second quarter of the year?

  • Suffering is Optional

    “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

    Is it the ultramarathon that creates suffering or the mind?

    In the ultramarathon community, it’s a common preaching that athletes need to learn how to “love” or “embrace” the suffering. And while this isn’t completely off-base, the more ultramarathons I run the more I realize that what’s most important is choosing whether or not I’m going to label what I’m experiencing as “suffering” in the first place. 

    I can teach my mind to not suffer needlessly by being aware of the stories I’m creating around my experience. When I’m throwing up on the side of the trail I can choose to perceive that experience as neutral, something that just is, rather than labeling it as good or bad or writing a story about what it means for the rest of the day. When labels and stories are removed or carefully chosen, you’d be surprised at how quickly the “suffering” dissipates.  

    Ultramarathons themselves don’t create suffering. How I perceive what I experience during an ultramarathon is what creates suffering. 

    The question then changes from “What can I endure?” to “How will I choose to endure it?”