The Big Adventure

Wow, time flies when you're having fun!

It's almost unbelievable to me that I head to Europe this week. Back in March, July felt so far away in the future, now it's here! First stop is London and then I head to Iceland for “The Big Adventure” – so much has been going through my mind as I've been training and preparing for this event, it almost feels like a lifetime of contemplation has been condensed into a few months of intense training. I look forward to the adventure and whatever will come after it. I have thought a lot about how fabulously unpredictable life is, when I was younger I never imagined I would be living the life I live today. What a magical journey!

I still don't for one second take for granted just how lucky I have been to experience so much awesomeness during the last 4 months. Besides the Joshua Tree road trip and hanging in the Headlands and Bolinas, I made it out to Muir Woods twice, I’ve been up near Auburn a handful of times, I spent an amazing week in Kauai and I have immersed myself in the sights and sounds of San Francisco and it's surrounding areas.

Many hours have been spent running and hiking in the Marin Headlands, sometimes on my own, sometimes with friends – it is true that the more you spend time in one place the more intimately you get to know it – there are so many gems in the Headlands. The birds, the plant life, the rare sight of a bobcat or coyote, the little lizards that scurry away in the heat, even the wind has it’s own unique sound as it comes over the valley from the ocean. I’ve observed how the valley changed as it moved into summer. This is life in the slow lane.

It seems quite incredible just how much I've managed to slow down since March and also how much more simple life feels - I continue to feel more "unbundled" from my old corporate life every week. So much so, that some days I dream about a life lived far away in the woods where I could write and tinker all day but in reality, I don't think that is something I will be able to achieve on my own in the near future – Without setting any limitations on myself, I just don't like the idea of being isolated. I am a social being and I do anticipate having a partner in life who has similar values and dreams to mine; besides, I am driven to succeed and I fear that besides the isolation, I may get bored in the woods after some time. Having said that knows what the long term future holds ... I am open to any possibility right now and I have been surprised before - after all, I never had a plan to live in San Francisco and here I am 8 years later, happy and healthy... dare I say, thriving?

So, in a couple of days I leave for London and for "The Big Adventure" ... it's going to be so good to see old friends in London ... it's always a little serendipitous, London was home for a long time and is close to my heart ... It’s nice to know I have no appointments to keep while I am there, this is purely a leisure (pleasure) trip. I also look forward to (once again) immersing myself in nature and the elements while I am in Iceland.

I was asked recently why I am doing this crazy race – who runs 250km in wind and rain across a part of Iceland? The only answer I can come up with is “BECAUSE I CAN!” ... How many of us in this lifetime have the opportunity to push ourselves way outside of our comfort zone to see what is on the other side? I am pretty sure I will come back home exhausted but with a pocketful of unparalleled experience. Who needs another reason than that?

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." Helen Keller

To follow the race on the Racing the Planet web site, here are some links:
Home page
News and Updates
My blog page on RTP
Email a competitor

Rediscovering a sense of freedom in San Francisco

It is the middle of May and that means it has been two and half months since I last woke up and went to an office to start my workday. Time flies when you're having fun! This week for the first time I felt as though I was finally starting to get into a new "groove" ... one where I am not spending every day dealing with some sort of administration ... whether it's healthcare, banking, unemployment, travel booking, it's amazing how much time it all takes.

Besides all the administration I have also made time for "things that matter" and one of those things was to make time to re-certify for the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT). I had let that expire about three years ago and I am glad that I spent this time to recertify. One must, after all, always be prepared for an emergency! It seems as though I used to easily be able to make time for volunteering in my community but the last three years of work were so intense, I lost focus.

People ask me what I do with my time. For one, the weather has been awesome recently, a typical day has me starting off with some form of workout, either bootcamp or a run, or both. My days vary, but I'll typically have something on my calendar, like driving across town to my favorite bakery for bread or going to the spa or doing laundry. Lunch is often with friends somewhere or I'll go out in my neighborhood and on slow days when I don't feel like traveling far, I'm discovering the daytime staff at The Toronado. I am keeping myself busy that's for sure!

Last month I got a new tattoo on my leg, it’s an image of the Marin Headlands and at the bottom is a scroll with words that that read "Take Time to Play" ... this is a sentiment I want to keep with me for the rest of my life. In this life, work can take many forms, it does not have to be all consuming. It makes me think of the Confucius quote: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” My next act should be just that: Something I love! But not yet, right now, my focus is on training for my Iceland adventure – it is a mere 80 days until the event and I feel that I am in a good place with my training. I'd been nursing a slight ankle injury (tendonitis) for a few months now and even though I feel it once in a while, it feels like something I can actually run through now.

I don't for one second take any of this leisure time for granted. I feel extremely privileged to have this time, in San Francisco, to run, to rediscover what is important to me; and most of all to feel free!

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. – Albert Camus

Change and The Dawn of New Optimism

Big news in my world: A month ago I was laid off from my job where I had worked for a little over 12 years. Now before you say “Oh no!”, you have to know that I see this as a positive change. I had in many ways been drifting in the tide of the company sea since I joined TMP in November of 2000 and it was a good ride. I had not had to spend too much time thinking about my own goals, I just followed one opportunity after another and often put the company goals before my own. Although I spent a lot of time dreaming, I did very little to act on those dreams.

I see this lay-off as a gift. I have been given the opportunity to shape the next chapter of my life – Although it is somewhat terrifying, it brings with it an incredible sense of freedom and I have decided that in order to explore other parts of my life that have been ignored for far too long, I am going to take significant time off from work before I get back into the thick of things ... call it a sabbatical of sorts.

I won't be idle though, there is so much to do! There are courses to take and road trips to go on and I intend to focus on running and development of my "inner self". Already in the past month, I have been kept busy dealing with "stuff" at home. I found myself purging during the last few weeks, everything in my closet had to be reorganized and in the process I have thrown out or donated at least a third of what was in there … I had been feeling overwhelmed by all of my belongings and have had a real urge to get “lighter”. I did not realize how long this process takes but I have made steady progress and best of all I am working at my own pace.

The most noticeable change I have observed since I stopped working is that I am slowing down and within this "slowing down", I have found that I am getting more patient. I feel with more patience one is also a lot kinder, when one is kind, kindness is often returned. I like this change. There is a lot of goodwill in this world when we take the time to observe it.

This amazing life journey so far has led me to where I am today and I recognize that to be living in San Francisco and to have the time to explore it and take advantage of what it offers is a blessing. I have no idea where this new path will lead me to and it is possible that I will land up back at the beginning, but for now I know that I owe it to myself to seek a more authentic life and this change is an opportunity to explore just that.

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” ― Noam Chomsky

It's getting real now!

Today there are 166 days left until Iceland 2013. It has been almost a year that I have been dreaming about this adventure and it's almost unfathomable that it is less than 6 months away now but I have been training and preparing both mentally and physically.

Equipment adds an interesting dimension to this event. So far, I have purchased a pack and a sleeping mat that I am happy with. For the pack, I chose the Inov-8 Elite, it is light and fits snug on my back with plenty of pockets for easy access to smaller things. It is also "hydration compatible" which was an important factor for me since I am not a big fan of carrying a water bottle in my hands while I run. For the sleeping mat I settled on the Klymit Interia X frame because it is small and light. I will buy more equipment as we get closer to the date but next on the list is the sleeping bag, I want to take time to research all the equipment carefully and make sure it works for me before I purchase it.

As far as training goes, I decided to work with a coach who has experience with multi-days ... I still consider myself a newbie to running so I am grateful for all the help I can get in preparation for the event. I have only been running for 5 years and although I have many marathons under my belt as well as multiple 50k’s and one 50 miler - I am slow... (think turtle not rabbit.) so I'm aiming to build endurance over speed.

I've run one multi-day but it was "only" 50k over two days so I can't begin to imagine what it will feel like to run for 7 days but by the time I get to the start line in Iceland I should have completed another 50k, a 50 miler and a 100k. I'm trusting that this will be plenty of training.
My ultimate goal is to arrive at the start line, prepared and injury free.

Back at Home

Returning from my recent trip to Germany I was thinking about the meaning of home. In my time on this earth I have seen quite a lot of this beautiful planet. Ever since I was small, I have been traveling, moving, uprooting and saying goodbye. My first move was with my parents when I was two years old and since then I have moved more times than I can count.

My parents moved between South Africa and Germany several times while I was at school and once I had left school and ventured out on my own, I continued to move. I moved from apartment to apartment within Johannesburg and then between Cape Town and Johannesburg several times and in the year 2000, I made the big move to London. There I moved five times in the five years and always had a feeling that I would leave again. In 2005 I made the big move to San Francisco where I have stayed. It's the first time in my life that I have lived in the same city and same apartment for 7 years!

I've never had a real sense of home in the traditional sense of a childhood home. There is no family house to go back to and today my parents continue to move between Germany and South Africa – most recently my father made a joke that they just take long vacations with their furniture!

This sense of home is an interesting concept. There is a word in German "Heimat" ... this describes the sense belonging to a place where one is from (home). Not having ever had this kind of physical place that I can call home has often resulted in my feeling as if I don't belong anywhere. There are no roots to go back to, no history to trace. In Germany I feel I am not German enough, in South Africa I have always felt like an immigrant, in London I was too South African and in America ... well... here, I have no roots to speak of at all.

Sometimes this can make me feel disconnected and I accept that I will always remain an outsider no matter where I choose to live but I also accept that I have a choice in how I feel about it. One thing is certain, I feel fortunate to have chosen San Francisco as my home. This is a very diverse city and there are many people that are not from here, people that are here actually want to be here and that makes it easier to connect and feel a sense of community.

I have learned that home is where you make it and what you put into the space around you. I have felt at home in many places. I feel at home in nature. I feel at home where I feel loved. I feel at home where I feel peace. Home is within me.

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Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

Future World

Leaving San Francisco last week I got to think about just how real our "Brave New World" already is. I used to think of this future world as a place that existed in the minds of the science fiction writers. As I arrived at the airport in the hybrid taxi it occurred to me more than before just how "futuristic" our existence already is.

Our grandparents could not even have fathomed the idea that one could fly from city to city, or country to country, in one day, let alone that an airport would be like a "train station" ... today an airport is a transit hub just like every other.

The entire process at the airport is also so "Brave New World". After you have retrieved your boarding card ... having scanned your identity document into a machine, you stand in a long line to enter a "millimeter wave detector" ... (Seriously? What the hell is that anyway!?!) scanning us for our safety in the skies!

Human behavior itself has evolved so much in the last ten years. When we need to figure out how something works, we search for it on YouTube and somewhere in the world someone will have posted a video tutorial explaining how to use it. I had to use YouTube recently to figure out how to start a Prius (yes, this is true!) and I have also used it before to figure how to use one of those fancy coffee machines with the pods that they have all over Europe.

I do see that it could be possible, that I am simply not of this new "generation" but I do evolve and I do my best to take part in new things. I think it is most important to stay interested in all things (new and old) Thankfully traveling keeps my day to day interesting, and I get to see how trends change in other parts of the world.

In my future, I hope to slow down a little. I dream about less travel, about owning a dog and spending more time running in the hills. I want to travel for leisure and for pleasure and I also want to remember to value some of the "old" things of this world.

But for now, I will live for today and with every breath of my being enjoyed it as much as I can. In the words of Buddah: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

Independence

So this past week in America it was the oh so grand 4th of July celebrations. While many families were barbequing or watching parades or fireworks, I spent the day with friends eating cheese, drinking wine and listening to old vinyl records. I had forgotten how wonderful the sound of vinyl is. There is something so unique to the sound of records, a sound that itunes just cant replicate. There is also something so delightfully nostalgic about lifting the record needle, placing it on the record and then when the one side is done, lifting that needle again, placing it in the cradle and then flipping the album over for the B side and another 5 songs. We are so spoiled with the option of a continuous stream of music that I don't think we savor those 5 songs in the same way anymore. Ah, the good old days...

In the sprit of the independence holiday, I have been focusing on my own hard fought independence. I am inspired to make changes in my life like eating better and sleeping more. These positive changes will help me move towards more conscious living and better running!

I am starting to get my running legs back but I cannot believe how much harder it feels. My brain thinks I can still go the distance but my lungs and legs are not entirely up to speed. It’s humbling for sure, but I am aware that it’s all about consistency and perseverance, I just need to keep getting out there – in a few months, it will feel a lot smoother. I know it.

It is just over a year until I head to Iceland for the biggest adventure yet, I will be taking part in a multi-day race in Iceland. I have a lot of training miles ahead of me and I will be sure to document some of it as I go along. First though I need to remember to focus on the smaller stuff, the consistent 6 milers, the long runs on the weekends and simply keeping one foot in front of the other.

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”