the perfect Highland games Workout

rknebel wrote: Josh, My opinion would to be to set that goal up there at 35' and see what happens.  I would rather set a goal that may just be right out of reach that will motivate me to keep working hard than to set a very obtainable goal, reach it, and then get complacent. If you aren't trying to be the best or trying to win then why play?  There can only be one "best" and one "winner" but if you aren't at least working to get there then it seems all for nothing in my mind. Take Pleasanton coming up for an example.  Matt Vincent, Jon O'neil, and some of the other guys have been top amateurs for what seems like forever and I have every intention of going out there and winning.  Is it gonna happen???  The odds are stacked pretty heavily me but if I don't prepare as if I could win then I won't stand a chance.  Could be the difference between coming in 3rd or 13th, who knows!

+1 Well said Robin.

rknebel wrote: If you aren't trying to be the best or trying to win then why play?  There can only be one "best" and one "winner" but if you aren't at least working to get there then it seems all for nothing in my mind.

We think very differently, you and I.  You throw a LOT farther than I do, BTW..

My goal is not to beat you, or Matt Vincent, or Duncan McCallum, or even to beat our local 50's guys that I see at all the Games, Kel Mulrey and Steve Elliott  and so on.  My goal is not to BE THE WINNER BY BEATING THE OTHER GUYS.

My goal is to beat myself. My goal is to do a little bit better today than I did last time.

I'm gonna tell a story, here. This is a true story, you can read it near the end of a book called "The Race" by Tim Hubbard, whom I actually know, a bit.  It's about sailing alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

Tim Hubbard was a Journalism professor at Syracuse University. He had a boat, kind of a slow boat, but strong and stout. It was a Westsail 32, sometimes laughingly called a Wetsnail 32 in hot sailboat racing circles.  Tim decided that he wanted to do the OSTAR, the solo sailing race across the Atlantic Ocean.

Tim sailed his boat, solo from Rhode Island to England. He then prepped the boat for the return trip. He did the race, very much one of the slowest boats on the course, compared to the hot 60 foot  ORMA trimarans and the million-dollar sponsored Open 60's. Those boats finish the race in about 2 weeks. They arrive in port, stay three or four days, and then paid professional delivery crews arrive who take them to the next port to prep for the next race.  None of those boats were even *there* when Tim arrived.

It took Tim a month and a couple of days to finish the OSTAR.  Tim Hubbard sailed his boat, solo, across the freaking Atlantic Ocean. When he got to England, he turned around and sailed his boat, solo BACK across the Atlantic Ocean AGAIN.  Un-freaking believable. Trust me, that is just balls-out...I can't even describe it.

...and when Tim was in Race Headquarters in Newport, some reporter from a magazine called up and wanted to talk to one of the racers. The staff person who was there at the time handed the phone to Tim. The reporter wanted to know when Tim finished....about two days ago.  Ummmm....had Tim won the race?  No, Tim had finished about 56th, overall. He wasn't actually sure, he had to check with the staff guy, and look at the overall roster to see where he had finished.

The reporter paused, and then coughed and finally asked..."Uh, it's nice to talk to you, um...but are there any WINNERS still there?"

And Tim responded....

"No, all the WINNERS are gone, now. There are only LOSERS here."

................and hung up.

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Robin, I mean no insult, but I suspect that you may think that my friend Tim was a failure because he didn't WIN the OSTAR.  But I bet that Josh will understand.

Couple of things...

1.)  I am TOTALLY in agreement with you that it makes sense to set goals that challenge you, and challenge you hard. If I'm throwing HWFD 20 feet today, and I've only been throwing one season, then   it seems kind of silly to me to set a lifetime goal of 22 feet.  I'll get there by middle of next year and then.................what........................ I'm done, forever?

Dumb.  Well, seems dumb to me, anyway.

But goals can change. How about setting that goal at 22 feet for the opening Games next year, and then 24 feet "by the end of the season" next year.  Then, for the year after that, be thinking...."I want 27".  And so on.  Goals aren't set in concrete, eh?  I work that way, well, I used to work that way. Now I have what I call  "towel goals".  My point is just that goals can change.

But hell yeah, what's the point of setting a goal that doesn't challenge you, and then when you achieve it, giving up?   I don't get that, at all.  So I'm 100% with you, there. You bet.

2.) About competing at high levels, athletically....

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs.... In fact, I have done exactly that, and erased them, twice.  Take it from the guy who placed 3rd in his league in HS wrestling....from the less than mediocre discus thrower, from the guy who placed last in every single hurdle race he ran in HS.

Take it from the guy who, as an adult, discovered that he really loved sailing, but that sailing as part of a big crew on a big glamour boat, with all the attitude  and money and team jerseys just didn't do it for him.  That's where the competition that people "see" is.  The America's Cup... the Admirals Cup, the Big Boat series.  Blecch.  Gag me.   Take it from the guy who decided to race his own little boat, alone, almost always alone and out of the spotlight  because that's where my heart was.

Take it from me.  Mister average athlete.

And from the people on the field...dozens of them, who busted ass in college in T&F to be "average" on a Div III team....and from the guys like Ted and Marty, whom I'm helping out right now, who started HG at age 63 and 57 because they saw the athletes on the field and thought "Hell, I'd like to try that".

Trust me. There are LOTS of reasons why people throw, and LOTS of definitions of what it means to succeed.

Your goals are your goals. If you want to win the Claw, if that's your goal, then tear it up, dude!  If you want to throw 140 foot light hammers, then when that day comes I will cheer and pound you on the back and the beers' on me! 

It's funny how things change.

When I was 18, I was an average athlete. The Glory Guys played football and basketball.  Me?  I wrestled and threw discus and my REAL focus was playing clarinet in Band and tenor sax in Jazz Band. 

In college I raced bicycles competetively for a year, but I'm an ox, not a gazelle and so after one season, I stopped and worked the support truck for the team instead.  I was less than average as a bicycle racer....and again my REAL focus was clarinet, sax, and trumpet.  Oh, and that biology major, too. 

After college, for about 4-5 years, I was a more-than-recreational runner. I   did 60 miles a week, including sprint training, intervals and so on,  for a couple of years, there. But again, I'm an ox, not a gazelle, and my best 10K times never broke 38 minutes.  That's barely faster than Joe Schmoe.  Average runner, or actually for all the time I put in, quite a bit less than average.

I tried Cross  Country ski racing for a while, but again, I'm an ox, not a gazelle.  I never had the cardiovascular capacity to put out 110% effort at 8,000 feet elevation, for four hours.  I was a much less than average XC ski racer.

When I started sailing, I started having some successes in an athletic endeavor, but I didn't start out successful. In fact, I bombed as crew on a couple of regular boats, no "glory boats" for me. I only got on a "glory boat" once, and they didn't ask me back a second time.  I discovered that my heart was in singlehanded sailing (solo) and in fact I did well at it, but doing well at that sport is not really a physical thing...it's a mental thing.   Yes, you have to be in reasonable condition, and OH yeah, doing a headsail change in big waves and 30 knots of wind at 3:00 in the morning is freaking exhausting, but still....those moments are rare.    There are huge endurance issues, mostly centered around sleep management, and there are huge project management issues as well. I did well in the sport because I have "stick-to-it-iveness" not because I'm a great athlete.

I'm 54 years old. At this age, the overwhelming majority of guys who were outstanding athletes have retired to the couch and  the remote. There are exceptions, of course....look at Mike Baab.

I will NEVER retire to the couch and the remote. Ever.  My wife and I just celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary by going backpacking in the Emigrant Wilderness. We had our big day at Pingree Lake, 12 miles in and 1,000 foot elevation gain, from the trailhead.  we will NEVER stop doing that, though of course we will slow down.

   I love trying new things, and because I am who I am, I like to go whole hog, when I jump in.  I'm a pretty good 54- year old Highland Athlete....but I'm not great, if the measurement is how far I throw a hammer or how high a toss a weight. I'll never win the MWC.   If the guys who were in my class and played football and basketball hadn't retired to the couch, they'd probably beat me now, just like they did, back then.

But they retired.

I didn't.

So I don't think  of myself as an outstanding athlete. I think of myself as a guy who refuses to quit, who refuses to think that since I'm not as tough as when I was 25, that the Game is over.  But most of all, I think of myself as a guy who likes to have fun doing physical stuff.....and this throwing stuff is fun. It's just that it's MORE fun if I challenge myself and put some work into it.


Anyway, thanks for the kind words!....and for reading my training log!

KiltBill wrote: Alan you always inspire me! 38 minute 10K? That's about a 6 minute mile average, Wow! For a Clydesdale that's great. I always learn from your log and the witty banter is the icing on the cake. Thanks.

Yeah, well that 38' 40"  10K PR was, um... gee.... if I was in HS at the fall of the Byzantine Empire, then the 10K was about the time the Visigoths sacked Rome. 

That'd be about 1985. I was 28 years old! (I also weighed 195 pounds!)

On the other hand, the Missus and I did the Tahoe-Truckee XC ski race (about 30 km) about ten years ago when I was in my mid-40's.  That's  about 19 miles.  We were way WAY back in the pack, like finishing in the 350's out of the 400 people who finished or something, but what the hell. We DID it.

http://www.thegreatskirace.com/

I busted my ASS to get ready for that event..... but the gazelles ate me for lunch. That's OK, it was still a blast.