if anyone has ever wondered what goes on physically during the course of an Ironman, a recent article appeared in Inside Triathlon that i think should be mandatory reading for anyone contemplating doing an Ironman, anyone associated with someone doing an Ironman, or anyone curious about Ironman. you can read the article here:
http://triathlon.competitor.com/2012/10/training/a-physiological-view-of-what-the-human-body-goes-through-in-an-ironman-2_46170
in case the link doesn't work, i've pasted the full text of the article at the end of this post.
this is probably the best summary of the physical toll of an Ironman out there. i've read more comprehensive descriptions, with probably the best being Joe Friel's Going Long (which i also think is mandatory reading for any endurance athlete, triathlete or otherwise). and admittedy, this article doesn't delve too far into the mental aspects in terms of emotional and spiritual phenomena (of which, trust me, there are...there's a reason why the Tarahumara natives treat their 200-mile runs as spiritual exercises).
but this helps to understand the physical demands being placed on the body and shows just how dangerous this sport really is. which is why i say that Ironman is not something to be taken lightly: you will pay the price for any mistake, any transgression, any weakness in body or character, in spades.
it makes the distance the race of truth.
the kind of truth we don't get from anywhere or anything or anyone else in our lives.
which is why we love it so.
A Physiological View Of What The Human Body Goes Through
In An Ironman
Inside Triathlon
By Matt Fitzgerald
Oct 2, 2012
In the past year Chris McCormack, Julie Dibens and Chrissie Wellington have announced they will take a step back from Ironman racing for various reasons. All were at the top of their careers and have emphasized the toll that Ironman training and racing takes on the body. The following story explains exactly what the body goes through over 140.6 miles of racing.
From the outside, swimming, cycling and running appear as movement. But from inside the triathlete’s body, swimming, cycling and running appear as an acceleration of time. Blood gushes through veins and arteries like traffic through night highways in a timelapse video. Within muscle cells, glucose and triglyceride molecules are tossed into the fiery furnace of mitochondria at a breakneck pace, as though someone has put a DVD of the process at rest on 4x fast forward. Armies of oxygen radicals punch holes in muscle cell membranes, causing a general deterioration that calls to mind those computer animations that show a person aging 20 years in 10 seconds.
Indeed, from an internal perspective, completing an Ironman is a bit like sitting on a sofa for 12 hours and aging two decades. In other words, the changes the body undergoes in 12 hours of extreme exertion are similar to some of those that occur in the body over the course of two decades of non-exertion, as a result of normal aging. Fortunately, though, those years are restored to you within a few weeks. Then it’s
time to start thinking about tickling the reaper again.
Let’s take a more detailed look at how racing an Ironman affects various parts of your anatomy. There’s no particular lesson in this exercise, but it may give you a greater appreciation for the accomplishment of crossing an Ironman finish line.
Something “Wicked Hard” This Way Comes
Ironman begins to affect your body even before the starting horn—or cannon, in one notable event—sounds. Research has shown that the mere anticipation of exercise increases blood flow to the soon-to-be working muscles, as well as oxygen consumption and the release of hormones, including epinephrine (adrenaline), that
prime the muscles for activity. This anticipatory response is mediated largely by a primitive part of the brain called the periaqueductal gray area, which is responsible for regulating the cardiorespiratory response to exercise.
That internal roiling you experience when you step out of your car at the event site on race morning, surrounded by your fellow competitors and the electric Ironman atmosphere, is essentially the same feeling your dog experiences when you show him the leash.
When the race begins, the biochemical state of every system in your body changes as each responds first to the challenge of swimming 2.4 miles, then to that of cycling 112 miles and finally to that of running 26.2 miles. Among the greatest physiological challenges are core body temperature regulation, dehydration, fuel supply and usage, muscle damage, nutrition absorption and processing and brain fatigue.
On a Hot Streak
Core body temperature regulation is not a big issue in most Ironman swims, as cool (and even somewhat warm) water transfers heat away from the body very effectively. But the bike and run legs are a different story, especially on hot days. Almost threequarters of the energy that your muscles release during cycling and running takes the form of heat waste. If this heat were allowed to accumulate in the muscles it would eventually cause serious tissue damage.
Your body has various means of preventing this heat from accumulating. The best known and among the most effective is perspiration. But the most effective of all is simply regulating your exercise intensity. The more you slow down, the less heat your muscles produce. That’s why you don’t race as fast on hot days.
You might assume that your core body temperature begins to rise gradually at the beginning of the bike leg and continues to rise throughout the rest of the race, reaching its highest level when you cross the finish line. This is seldom the case.
“Within the first 10 to 20 percent of the race, the core temperature rises relatively quickly,” says Jonathan Dugas, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at the University of Chicago. “For example, it might rise from 37.5 to 38.75 degrees C in that timeframe. And then for the remainder of the event it stays within a very narrow range—maybe 0.1 and 0.2 degrees Celsius.”
The maximum safe core body temperature is 40 degrees C, or 104 degrees F. Even on the hottest days, Ironman participants seldom cross this threshold. According to Dugas, that’s because the brain constantly monitors the core body temperature and produces feelings of discomfort and fatigue that force you to slow down and generate less heat if things look like they’re about to get out of hand. Triathletes sometimes
mistake these unpleasant symptoms as indications of heat illness, but they are actually products of a self-protective mechanism that prevents heat illness.
But this self-protective mechanism has been known to fail. That’s probably because the brain itself can become too hot to function properly during exercise in hot environments. When this happens, the central nervous system begins to malfunction and the athlete becomes dizzy, disoriented and uncoordinated, and may collapse.
Running on Empty
The most celebrated physiological challenge of Ironman racing is supplying the muscles with enough energy to cover the distance as quickly as possible. The average Ironman competitor burns more than 6,000 calories between the start and finish lines. These calories come from fats stored in adipose tissue and within muscle tissue, glycogen stored in the muscles and liver, amino acids released from the breakdown of
muscle proteins and calories ingested during the event, usually in the form of carbohydrates.
The balance of fuels shifts over the course of the day. During the swim and the first portion of the bike leg, carbohydrates are likely to provide almost half of the muscles’ energy, with fat providing an equal amount and protein just a sliver. As the body’s carbohydrate stores decrease, the carbohydrate contribution to forward progress diminishes and fat takes up the slack. By midway through the marathon, at the latest, muscle glycogen will have reached critically low levels in the calves, quads and hamstrings. Consequently, total carbohydrate contribution to continued running drops further, fat oxidation increases, and amino acids may provide as much as 15 percent of the muscles’ energy.
The inability to supply sufficient energy to the muscles is one of the main reasons individuals who do not train for an Ironman cannot complete an Ironman. Endurance is strictly limited by the availability of glycogen in the liver and working muscles. When these stores fall too low, your day is done. Endurance training greatly increases the body’s capacity for glycogen storage. But even the fittest triathlete cannot store enough glycogen to fuel an entire Ironman. Thankfully, training also greatly increases the capacity to burn fats, which allows the athlete to conserve glycogen, making it last longer.
There’s a Hole in the Bucket
The most visible effect of Ironman racing on the body is the production of tremendous amounts of sweat. Thank heavens for sweat. Perspiration is a vital cooling mechanism for the body. The blood carries some of the excess heat produced by the muscles during cycling and running away from the muscles to capillaries near the surface of the skin, where it leaves the body. Sweat glands then take up some fluid from the blood, and with it some heat, and release it onto the surface of the skin, where it evaporates, cooling the skin. Finally, cooled blood flows back toward the core of the body to absorb and distribute more heat.
The only problem with this mechanism is that it’s essentially self-sabotaging. The more you sweat, the more your blood volume shrinks, and the more your blood volume shrinks, the less heat your circulation can carry away from the working muscles. However, contrary to popular belief, dehydration only slightly increases core body temperature. Its greatest effect is on performance, because as your blood volume decreases, so does your cardiac efficiency, or the amount of oxygen your heart can deliver to your muscles per contraction.
In a typical warm or hot Ironman, athletes sweat in excess of one liter of fluid per hour on the bike and during the run. That adds up to more than 20 pounds of fluid loss for many athletes! If some of these fluids were not replaced through drinking, triathletes would not be able to complete Ironman events nearly as fast as they do. By the time they got to the marathon, their blood volume would be reduced to the point where
walking or a painfully slow shuffle would be the greatest level of exertion possible. Even with the availability of sports drinks and water, most triathletes finish their Ironman races weighing a lot less than they did when they started. Nevertheless, rather modest amounts of fluid intake appear sufficient to enable the body to maintain blood volume, as the body can also draw fluid into the blood from other compartments (and, for that matter, much of the weight lost during an Ironman comes from the metabolism of fuels and the release of water stored with glycogen, which does not contribute to dehydration). A 2007 study from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, found that while participants in an Ironman triathlon lost nearly 5 percent of their body weight, their blood volume actually increased.
Wear and Tear
Muscle tissue stress may be the single greatest challenge the body faces in an Ironman triathlon. Vast numbers of muscle cells are disrupted, damaged and deconstructed along the way. The main cause of muscle damage is mechanical stress, which is caused primarily by eccentric (pronounced ee-centric) muscle contractions. In an eccentric contraction, the muscle lengthens as it contracts (for example, during the lowering phase of a biceps curl) instead of shortening as in a concentric contraction (e.g., the lifting phase of a biceps curl) or staying the same length as in an isometric contraction (e.g., flexing to show off one’s biceps). The muscle is really being pulled in two directions at once during an eccentric contraction, like a tug-o’- war, so it’s easy to see the potential for tearing.
A second cause of muscle damage during exercise is the breakdown of muscle proteins for energy, called catabolism. Protein is not a preferred energy source during exercise, but when carbohydrate stores run low in the later portion of an Ironman, protein is called upon increasingly to take up the slack. As mentioned above, by the end of an Ironman, protein may supply as much as 15 percent of the energy your muscles use to keep moving. If you’ve ever finished a long workout or race smelling like ammonia, that’s a sign you’ve been burning a lot of muscle protein, as ammonia is a byproduct of protein catabolism. When your blood glucose level drops during exercise, your adrenal glands secrete the stress hormone cortisol, which assists in breaking down carbohydrates, fats and proteins to release energy. Most of the proteins that it breaks down are found in your muscles.
Muscle damage is also caused by oxidative stress during exercise. A small percentage (an estimated 2 to 5 percent) of the oxygen molecules that enter the body lose an electron while participating in energy release in the mitochondria, becoming “oxygen radicals.” This increases their instability and causes them to pilfer an electron from a living cell in order to regain stability. The result is often a chain reaction of “free radical” damage to cell membranes, DNA and various structural proteins. During endurance exercise the rate of oxygen consumption can increase up to seven times above resting levels, with a corresponding increase in the production of oxygen radicals.
Just how much muscle damage does your body experience over the course of an Ironman? One of the chemical biomarkers used to estimate muscle damage is creatine kinase (CK), which leaks into the bloodstream from ruptured muscle cells. According to Bryan Berman, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist with Carmichael Training Systems, in a recovered state, the typical athlete’s serum creatine kinase level is approximately 125 U/L. Twenty-four hours after completion of a half-marathon, the CK level doubles. A day after a bike ride to exhaustion at 70 percent VO2max (a little faster than Ironman intensity), CK levels are as high as 700 U/L. And one recent study found that 16 hours after finishing an Ironman, triathletes had an average serum CK level of 1500 U/L, or more than 10 times the normal level.
I Think I’m Going to Puke
Australian professional triathlete Chris Legh had emergency surgery to remove half his colon after the 1997 Hawaii Ironman. A good chunk of the organ had literally died during the event due to inadequate oxygen supply. While this type of crisis is extremely rare in Ironman racing, and in Legh’s case was probably related to a congenital heart defect, completing an Ironman is stressful to the gastrointestinal system of every competitor. Common problems include stomach discomfort and bloating, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Exercise scientists do not fully understand the causes of such symptoms of GI distress during intense physical exertion. But they have identified some of the contributing factors. In a 2005 review published in the online International SportMed Journal, authors Stephen Simons, MD, and Gregory Shaskan, MD, wrote, “To date, contributing theories mainly focus on the mechanical agitation of the gut, fluid shifts, decreased splanchnic blood flow, dehydration, increased sympathetic and parasympathetic tone, endotoxaemia, changes in bowel transit time, hormone shifts and autoimmune changes. However, none of these adequately explain the full range of GI pathology.” Triathletes also bring many of their GI troubles on themselves by trying to consume too much fluid or nutrition or foods that are too difficult to digest while competing in
Ironman events. The gastrointestinal system cannot tolerate the same rates and types of nutrition intake during vigorous activity as it can at rest. Studies have shown that athletes who take in the most nutrition during endurance events are most likely to suffer gastrointestinal mishaps.
The Final Stretch
If you’ve ever completed an Ironman, you know that the last few miles of the marathon are a unique experience that is only hinted at by the experience of running the last few miles of a regular marathon. Your body is so impaired from the beating it has taken over the course of the day, it’s almost funny. The simple act of lifting your foot off the ground to take the next stride feels akin to performing a heavy squat with a weighted barbell on your back. Research from the National Institute of Sport and Physical Education in Paris confirms that the energy cost of running at the end of a triathlon is significantly greater than that of running at the same speed without swimming and cycling beforehand. And that’s an Olympic-distance triathlon.
There are probably multiple causes of the “weightlifting” effect of an Ironman marathon’s closing miles. Stride form is measurably different at the end of a triathlon run than it is in the same athletes in an independent run. The stride changes that increase the energy cost of running at the end of a triathlon are themselves caused in
part by local fatigue in specific muscles, which necessitates a change in form in much the same way you might start running with a locked right knee to protect a suddenly cramping right calf muscle. It’s neither efficient nor pretty, but it sure beats the alternative.
In triathlons and independent runs alike, fatigue and loss of mechanical efficiency are associated with increasing ground contact time. The closer you get to the finish line, the harder it becomes to pry your feet off the road. This bit of bodily mutiny is caused by a weakening of motor output from your brain to your working muscles. It is your brain’s way of preventing you from running faster—and perhaps even forcing you to slow down—in response to feedback from your body.
Your brain itself may become tired by the end of an Ironman—a phenomenon known as central fatigue. Like your muscles, it runs low on critical fuels and accumulates increasing levels of metabolites that interfere with its functioning, resulting in feelings of discomfort, loss of will to continue, fractured thinking, declining mood and reduced ability to fire the motor neurons that activate the muscles.
The Aftermath
It takes a good while for the body to recover from the stress of completing an Ironman. An Austrian study found that blood levels of antioxidant enzymes remained significantly reduced, while biomarkers of muscle damage and inflammation remained significantly elevated in triathletes nearly three weeks after they had crossed an Ironman finish line.
The immune system plays a major role in helping the body recover after exhaustive exercise, but the immune system itself is overwhelmed by the stress of endurance racing and its aftermath. Immune cell function remains depressed for as long as three days after such an experience, greatly increasing the athlete’s susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections. The causes of this effect appear to be multiple and are not fully understood. Part of the problem is that the immune cells’ main fuels, such as the amino acid glutamine, are depleted during exhaustive exercise. It seems that the immune system also downregulates its inflammatory response to tissue damage to avoid out-of-control systemic inflammation that would otherwise result from the high muscle damage incurred. But this very downregulation impairs the immune system’s ability to fight foreign invaders.
Triathletes also commonly suffer from a malady known as the “post-Ironman blues” in the weeks after an Ironman. It is likely that such mood depression is to some degree just another symptom of the general overtraining syndrome that commonly affects endurance athletes after such a test. Overtraining is known to disrupt brain neurotransmitters that influence mood. It has been hypothesized that as a symptom of overtraining, depression is your brain’s way of discouraging you from overexerting yourself again—in this case, doing your next Ironman—for a while.
Thursday, October 04, 2012
Friday, September 28, 2012
hardening
we take it as a given and assume it as a universal, and so apply it to mean that we harden our bodies and harden our minds and harden our spirits in the expectation that we harden ourselves to everything and every body and anything and any body.
but we never stop to question if this is all true.
admittedly, it's a survival mechanism, and one that is highly instinctive. and it has its own perverse logic: we are our lives, so our lives are us, and if our lives are hard then we are hard.
the problem is that life isn't always hard. life happens the way life happens. life is what it is. life just is. it's not always what we like, not always what we want, not always what we expect. because life, being constituted by a universe beyond our reach and outside our understanding, is most assuredly not within our control. and by treating all of life the same we ignore all the splendors being shared with us from the cosmos.
the problem is that even when we do encounter the brutal and the tough and the unforgiving and the vicious, the appropriate response isn't always to return the same in kind. becoming hard means becoming insensitive. impassive. cold. even cruel. which is not how we were born, not how we were made, and not what we were meant to be. and so by becoming hard we deny what we are--we deny our humanity.
more than that, it only perpetuates the suffering we face. not just us, but everyone around us. even the ones who've been anything but hard towards us. even the ones to whom we know we ought to offer love.
the problem ultimately is that we take it as a shield to hide behind, turning to it with each problem, building it with each torment, believing it to be the answer to our torture. and we never realize all the while that as the shield grows its weight grows, to the point that it can become crushing.
nor do we realize that since the shield is of our own design, it doesn't actually work to change anything about us and instead only covers up what we are, meaning that there will come a day when we encounter something that resonates in just the right way to reach deep within us to the essence of our nature so as to crack, then break, then shatter the shield of our own making, causing our world to come cascading down to crash around us. and the result, for many, can be devastating.
in short, becoming hard means becoming brittle. when what we really want is to become resilient.
and to do this, we have to know what we are, so that we can understand why we hurt and recognize why we fail, and from there begin to know how we can respond to challenges in ways that allow us to recover so that we can recommence our race and thereby come to succeed through our journey of the distance. not to deny our humanity, but to accept it. not to control life, but to live it.
in other words, we don't want hard. what we really want is wisdom.
because creation is about more than competition, it's about living. and in living, we want do more than just survive. we also want to flourish.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
aging athletes (part 1)
given this, we are left with an understanding that there is a beginning and an end, and by implication the interval in between. within this interval we live our lives, following an arc of aging and a path of maturization that leads us through the turns of experience which become our ways of wisdom. it's not always pretty, it's certainly not easy, and it's never simple.
it's a reflection of who and what and why and where and when we are. of our decisions and our mistakes. of things that worked and things that didn't. of things we did and things we didn't. all ultimately choices we made given our circumstances based on what we knew drawn upon what we had using what we were.
but this tells us another fundamental truth.
our lives are what we make of them. they aren't inexorable, inevitable, or invariable. if anything, they are constituted in a crazy haphazard mishmashed agglomeration of confusion and chaos. in other words: they are not linear.
our lives are what we make of them. they aren't inexorable, inevitable, or invariable. if anything, they are constituted in a crazy haphazard mishmashed agglomeration of confusion and chaos. in other words: they are not linear.
so even as time is beyond our control, our lives our not; even as the beginning and the end is beyond our control, the interval in between is not.
which leaves us with the question of what we choose to do in response: do we live the life given to us? or do we die within our time?
the difference is that the former accords some respect to the thing called life; the latter desecrates it.
the former sees the phenomenon that is the appearance of something coming from nothing, and recognizes the mystery that is existence arising from the emptiness of the abyss, and accepts the wonder that is creation alighting the darkness of infinite. and in so doing, it comes to know it as grandeur. glory. majesty.
the latter misses it. ignores it. denies it. and in so doing, blinds itself from the profound and lobotomizes itself of the great.
the difference is that the former endows life with value; the latter wastes it.
the former sees the phenomenon that is the appearance of something coming from nothing, and recognizes the mystery that is existence arising from the emptiness of the abyss, and accepts the wonder that is creation alighting the darkness of infinite. and in so doing, it comes to know it as grandeur. glory. majesty.
the latter misses it. ignores it. denies it. and in so doing, blinds itself from the profound and lobotomizes itself of the great.
the difference is that the former endows life with value; the latter wastes it.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
a different kind of coach, Swedish style
i'm breaking away from endurance sports for this post to comment on something that i think is relevant for sports in general. there was a news item last recently that sort of got lost in the media, but which was a relatively major event for anyone following soccer (futbol) or women's sports. Pia Sundhage, the coach of the US national women's team, left after 5 years to coach for Sweden.
you can't blame her. she's done just about everything any coach could have wanted to do for the US women's soccer: she turned around a program that was in disarray and mired in infighting following the debacle of the 2007 World Cup, changed a national style of play away from sheer physicality to meet a world whose quality in skill and fitness had become much more competitive, led the US to the World Cup finals in 2011 in a series of games for the ages, and brought the US to 2 gold medals despite a series of challenges that would have shaken most national teams. she now gets to be the national team coach of her home country, a dream job for any athlete.
it made bigger news in Sweden:
for those of you who don't know Swedish, she's essentially discussing her return to Sweden and the Swedish national team. this is a big deal for Swedish soccer, since Pia Sundhage is a national hero and her coaching record is rife with success. she's expected to do the same thing she's done in her previous coaching stints: raise teams which have been seen as underperforming.
the reason i'm bringing this up here is because of some things that have been said in Pia's praise in the wake of her return to Sweden. a good example was this piece from Julie Foudy on ESPNW (i've also posted the text of it at the end of this post):
to me, this raises some important points regarding coaching. Pia is proof that you don't have to be a raving, screaming, frothing, gesticulating maniac to be a good coach. it's possible to train, educate, and lead players with a completely different approach involving techniques that might seem different, quirky, or even bizarre. i think there's a number of things the rest of sports can learn from this:
on a final note, i'm not going to say that everyone go out and mimic Pia and play a guitar and sing songs for the team. i will say, however, that this is another area that shows just how good a coach Pia is. she managed to get her players to buy in, even while doing things that i think most athletes, particularly American athletes, jaded and cynical as they are, would find cheesy, corny, even silly.
again, this shows that there are skills involved in coaching that most people don't understand, and that too often we turn to the stereotype of a screaming red-faced lunatic because we're lazy, ignorant, don't know any better, or don't know we deserve better. as a result, it's just too easy to engage in destructive coaching. i think that Pia's tenure as a US coach is a reminder that it's worthwhile to develop the skills of positive coaching, and not just for the national pride, or the team, or the players, but also society.
Pia's Calm Through the Storms Redefined the US Team
September 4, 2012
Julie Foudy
To better understand Pia Sundhage's five years with the U.S. women's soccer team, let's rewind to 2007 and revisit the state of the program at that time.
The U.S. team had been blown out of the 2007 Women's World Cup semifinals in a 4-0 loss against Marta and Brazil. Hope Solo, who was curiously benched for that game, had just been kicked off the team for blasting her coach, Greg Ryan, and U.S. goalkeeper Briana Scurry after the loss.
The team was playing unattractive soccer and the program seemed to be on a sharp decline only three years after it had won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The team was in chaos; there is no other way to put it.
Cue the music...and the singing...
... in walks Pia Sundhage, with her guitar in hand, who busts out Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'" tune for the team (no joke ... you cannot make this stuff up). Pia, a former Swedish star player known for her free spirit and tendency to break into song, was hired to coach the U.S. women's team at a time when things surely need some changin'.
When Pia came to the team in November 2007, she either didn't notice the mess or, more appropriately, didn't care. In typical Pia fashion, she brought life back to a team that desperately needed laughter. She was the perfect hire because she didn't just preach enjoy the game, she lived it. And through her joy, players found oxygen.
If you look at her record alone during her tenure as head coach -- two Olympic gold medals, one Women's World Cup final appearance and only six losses overall -- you would be incredibly impressed. But that doesn't tell the whole story; it doesn't even tell the most impressive part of the story. In my opinion, these actually were Pia's defining moments:
• Her first task was to bring Solo back into the family. No easy task given the history of this team and what had transpired. But Pia asked the team to move on and said it needed Solo as a goalkeeper to win, and the team bought in. Whether or not you like Hope's vocal style, you can't say she hasn't been an effective, world-class goalkeeper over these past five years under Pia's direction.
• Just before the 2008 Olympic Games, Pia's first major tournament with the U.S. team, the Americans played in a final "sendoff game" against Brazil before heading to Beijing. In the 31st minute, their biggest star and leading scorer, Abby Wambach, broke her leg ... in the final game before the Olympics. Most coaches would show just a hint of stress upon losing their leading scorer on a team that was having a difficult time scoring. But Pia did not panic. In fact, she was as calm as can be, telling the team it would be fine and adversity brought growth.
• In its opening game of those 2008 Olympics (with everyone reminding the team it was without Wambach), the U.S. gave up two goals against Norway in the first five minutes and lost 2-0. Now, let me remind you, this is after the mess of 2007, after losing Abby and the team living continuously with the pressure of comparisons to our old team of the 1990s and 2000s. Again, no panic from Pia. An opening loss was not a problem, she told the team. She preached about enjoying each game and promised there would be plenty of time left in the tournament to show the world how good the U.S. team was. The Americans went on to beat Brazil (yes, the same Brazil they had lost to the previous year) in the final to win the gold medal.
• Fast forward to the Women's World Cup qualifying tournament in October 2010. The U.S. lost to Mexico in the semifinals and was forced into an extra playoff round of home-and-home games against Italy to qualify. The U.S. had never missed a Women's World Cup; if the Americans didn't qualify, Sundhage's tenure would have been a very short one.
When asked about the way her U.S. team would have to qualify, Pia said then: "OK, we need to take a different road to the World Cup and look at it in a positive way. The glass is half full. It's been a bumpy road, but we need to enjoy it and it will take us all the way to Germany."
First, the U.S. first pulled out a 1-0 win in the first game against Italy, thanks to a goal in the 94 minute from young star Alex Morgan. Then, in what would become a common dramatic theme with this U.S. team, the Americans posted a heart-stopping 1-0 victory in the second game in Chicago to become the last team to qualify for the 2011 Women's World Cup. Pia smiled and promised the experience would make the team stronger.
• At the 2011 Women's World Cup, the U.S. lost 2-1 against Sweden in its final group game, which set up the early powerhouse U.S.-Brazil quarterfinal matchup. Playing a goal and a player down, the U.S. equalized on Wambach's incredible goal in the 122nd minute to force penalty kicks (the U.S. won 5-3 in PKs). Pia said she never doubted her team. Of course she didn't; neither did her players.
• In the Women's World Cup final, the U.S. gave up two leads against Japan, the second coming in the 115th minute, and lost the game on penalty kicks. As gut-wrenching as that loss was, Pia was gracious, smiling and congratulating Japan for its tenacity and style of play.
• I didn't think I would see another U.S. women's game rival the excitement of the Brazil-U.S. Women's World Cup quarterfinal, but it happened just one year later in a semifinal matchup against Canada at the 2012 Olympics. My goodness. The U.S. also had to come back in this match ... not once, not twice, but three times. Morgan scored the game-winner in the 123rd minute (of course) to put the Americans into the Olympic final.
These key moments help put Pia's "way" into perspective. As leaders of teams, corporations, families, countries, whatever it may be, we all strive to be calm, confident, positive leaders who try to inspire others into action. It's easy to do when times are good, but what about in moments of adversity, when there is loss, a setback and/or extreme pressure? How does a leader react? What does a leader do? Because those moments define outcomes. They are the reason a team presses on or a company bounces back. A leader's reaction to adversity says everything to me.
And here is what I know after watching Pia for five years. I know I would want Pia by my side in the trenches. I would want Pia smiling and singing as the rest of the world panics. I would want Pia telling me, "Yes, the road is bumpy, but that is what makes the road so special," when I started to doubt something in life. I would want Pia dancing from the sideline, smiling even when the team was down two goals. I would take a Pia every day in my life to remind me to smile, embrace the moment and enjoy the journey. Dang, we all need a Pia in life.
Sure, there are areas within the team she could have addressed more thoroughly; there are players she could have brought along earlier, but no one can ever question Pia's immense impact on the team's success. Every single U.S. player I spoke to after the 2012 Olympic gold-medal match told me the most special attribute about this group of players was that it didn't panic, that they love the adversity and welcome the challenge, that they enjoyed the adventure. Yes, those were the players talking, but that is Pia Sundhage to the core. She set that tone, she set their way, and the U.S. team is better because of her.
As Pia announced her departure to a sold-out Rochester crowd before the U.S.-Costa Rica friendly on Sept. 1, it seemed perfectly fitting that she busted out another Dylan song, saying "If not for you, I wouldn't be where I am ... " That may be the case, but I am certain the U.S. women's team would not be where it is today without Pia's grace and contagious energy.
Thank you for five great years, Pia. Sweden is lucky to have you back at home. I can't wait to hear what song you bust out for them in that first meeting ... and I cannot deny that I am begging for some ABBA.
you can't blame her. she's done just about everything any coach could have wanted to do for the US women's soccer: she turned around a program that was in disarray and mired in infighting following the debacle of the 2007 World Cup, changed a national style of play away from sheer physicality to meet a world whose quality in skill and fitness had become much more competitive, led the US to the World Cup finals in 2011 in a series of games for the ages, and brought the US to 2 gold medals despite a series of challenges that would have shaken most national teams. she now gets to be the national team coach of her home country, a dream job for any athlete.
it made bigger news in Sweden:
for those of you who don't know Swedish, she's essentially discussing her return to Sweden and the Swedish national team. this is a big deal for Swedish soccer, since Pia Sundhage is a national hero and her coaching record is rife with success. she's expected to do the same thing she's done in her previous coaching stints: raise teams which have been seen as underperforming.
the reason i'm bringing this up here is because of some things that have been said in Pia's praise in the wake of her return to Sweden. a good example was this piece from Julie Foudy on ESPNW (i've also posted the text of it at the end of this post):
to me, this raises some important points regarding coaching. Pia is proof that you don't have to be a raving, screaming, frothing, gesticulating maniac to be a good coach. it's possible to train, educate, and lead players with a completely different approach involving techniques that might seem different, quirky, or even bizarre. i think there's a number of things the rest of sports can learn from this:
- positivity and positive reinforcement works. the overall message out of Pia's tenure with the US women's national team is one of constantly building her players, not just in terms of fitness or skill but also chemistry and outlook. i think it paid dividends when things got rough and her team was called upon to adapt and overcome. this isn't to say that people are not held accountable, but that rather that everyone understand that the idea is to become--and more importantly, believe--that they are growing better.
- there's a place for humor, affability, rapport, respect, and composure alongside all the qualities that we typically associate with competitive sports. again, this is a reflection of a positive outlook. while it may seem pollyanne-ish, panglossian, or naive, and while it can certainly go that way, maintaining a positive outlook is important to the extent that it keeps people engaged in constructive ways with their mission. it's better than being destructive.
- life is an adventure. it's not always easy. things are not always wonderful. events don't always go the way we want. but that's motivation to keep working and to keep going, since just as there are lows there also highs, and you only get to the highs if you keep moving forward. as a result, it's important to keep everything in perspective and not dwell too long on the negative (sound familiar?) but instead build towards the positive.
on a final note, i'm not going to say that everyone go out and mimic Pia and play a guitar and sing songs for the team. i will say, however, that this is another area that shows just how good a coach Pia is. she managed to get her players to buy in, even while doing things that i think most athletes, particularly American athletes, jaded and cynical as they are, would find cheesy, corny, even silly.
again, this shows that there are skills involved in coaching that most people don't understand, and that too often we turn to the stereotype of a screaming red-faced lunatic because we're lazy, ignorant, don't know any better, or don't know we deserve better. as a result, it's just too easy to engage in destructive coaching. i think that Pia's tenure as a US coach is a reminder that it's worthwhile to develop the skills of positive coaching, and not just for the national pride, or the team, or the players, but also society.
Pia's Calm Through the Storms Redefined the US Team
September 4, 2012
Julie Foudy
To better understand Pia Sundhage's five years with the U.S. women's soccer team, let's rewind to 2007 and revisit the state of the program at that time.
The U.S. team had been blown out of the 2007 Women's World Cup semifinals in a 4-0 loss against Marta and Brazil. Hope Solo, who was curiously benched for that game, had just been kicked off the team for blasting her coach, Greg Ryan, and U.S. goalkeeper Briana Scurry after the loss.
The team was playing unattractive soccer and the program seemed to be on a sharp decline only three years after it had won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The team was in chaos; there is no other way to put it.
Cue the music...and the singing...
... in walks Pia Sundhage, with her guitar in hand, who busts out Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'" tune for the team (no joke ... you cannot make this stuff up). Pia, a former Swedish star player known for her free spirit and tendency to break into song, was hired to coach the U.S. women's team at a time when things surely need some changin'.
When Pia came to the team in November 2007, she either didn't notice the mess or, more appropriately, didn't care. In typical Pia fashion, she brought life back to a team that desperately needed laughter. She was the perfect hire because she didn't just preach enjoy the game, she lived it. And through her joy, players found oxygen.
If you look at her record alone during her tenure as head coach -- two Olympic gold medals, one Women's World Cup final appearance and only six losses overall -- you would be incredibly impressed. But that doesn't tell the whole story; it doesn't even tell the most impressive part of the story. In my opinion, these actually were Pia's defining moments:
• Her first task was to bring Solo back into the family. No easy task given the history of this team and what had transpired. But Pia asked the team to move on and said it needed Solo as a goalkeeper to win, and the team bought in. Whether or not you like Hope's vocal style, you can't say she hasn't been an effective, world-class goalkeeper over these past five years under Pia's direction.
• Just before the 2008 Olympic Games, Pia's first major tournament with the U.S. team, the Americans played in a final "sendoff game" against Brazil before heading to Beijing. In the 31st minute, their biggest star and leading scorer, Abby Wambach, broke her leg ... in the final game before the Olympics. Most coaches would show just a hint of stress upon losing their leading scorer on a team that was having a difficult time scoring. But Pia did not panic. In fact, she was as calm as can be, telling the team it would be fine and adversity brought growth.
• In its opening game of those 2008 Olympics (with everyone reminding the team it was without Wambach), the U.S. gave up two goals against Norway in the first five minutes and lost 2-0. Now, let me remind you, this is after the mess of 2007, after losing Abby and the team living continuously with the pressure of comparisons to our old team of the 1990s and 2000s. Again, no panic from Pia. An opening loss was not a problem, she told the team. She preached about enjoying each game and promised there would be plenty of time left in the tournament to show the world how good the U.S. team was. The Americans went on to beat Brazil (yes, the same Brazil they had lost to the previous year) in the final to win the gold medal.
• Fast forward to the Women's World Cup qualifying tournament in October 2010. The U.S. lost to Mexico in the semifinals and was forced into an extra playoff round of home-and-home games against Italy to qualify. The U.S. had never missed a Women's World Cup; if the Americans didn't qualify, Sundhage's tenure would have been a very short one.
When asked about the way her U.S. team would have to qualify, Pia said then: "OK, we need to take a different road to the World Cup and look at it in a positive way. The glass is half full. It's been a bumpy road, but we need to enjoy it and it will take us all the way to Germany."
First, the U.S. first pulled out a 1-0 win in the first game against Italy, thanks to a goal in the 94 minute from young star Alex Morgan. Then, in what would become a common dramatic theme with this U.S. team, the Americans posted a heart-stopping 1-0 victory in the second game in Chicago to become the last team to qualify for the 2011 Women's World Cup. Pia smiled and promised the experience would make the team stronger.
• At the 2011 Women's World Cup, the U.S. lost 2-1 against Sweden in its final group game, which set up the early powerhouse U.S.-Brazil quarterfinal matchup. Playing a goal and a player down, the U.S. equalized on Wambach's incredible goal in the 122nd minute to force penalty kicks (the U.S. won 5-3 in PKs). Pia said she never doubted her team. Of course she didn't; neither did her players.
• In the Women's World Cup final, the U.S. gave up two leads against Japan, the second coming in the 115th minute, and lost the game on penalty kicks. As gut-wrenching as that loss was, Pia was gracious, smiling and congratulating Japan for its tenacity and style of play.
• I didn't think I would see another U.S. women's game rival the excitement of the Brazil-U.S. Women's World Cup quarterfinal, but it happened just one year later in a semifinal matchup against Canada at the 2012 Olympics. My goodness. The U.S. also had to come back in this match ... not once, not twice, but three times. Morgan scored the game-winner in the 123rd minute (of course) to put the Americans into the Olympic final.
These key moments help put Pia's "way" into perspective. As leaders of teams, corporations, families, countries, whatever it may be, we all strive to be calm, confident, positive leaders who try to inspire others into action. It's easy to do when times are good, but what about in moments of adversity, when there is loss, a setback and/or extreme pressure? How does a leader react? What does a leader do? Because those moments define outcomes. They are the reason a team presses on or a company bounces back. A leader's reaction to adversity says everything to me.
And here is what I know after watching Pia for five years. I know I would want Pia by my side in the trenches. I would want Pia smiling and singing as the rest of the world panics. I would want Pia telling me, "Yes, the road is bumpy, but that is what makes the road so special," when I started to doubt something in life. I would want Pia dancing from the sideline, smiling even when the team was down two goals. I would take a Pia every day in my life to remind me to smile, embrace the moment and enjoy the journey. Dang, we all need a Pia in life.
Sure, there are areas within the team she could have addressed more thoroughly; there are players she could have brought along earlier, but no one can ever question Pia's immense impact on the team's success. Every single U.S. player I spoke to after the 2012 Olympic gold-medal match told me the most special attribute about this group of players was that it didn't panic, that they love the adversity and welcome the challenge, that they enjoyed the adventure. Yes, those were the players talking, but that is Pia Sundhage to the core. She set that tone, she set their way, and the U.S. team is better because of her.
As Pia announced her departure to a sold-out Rochester crowd before the U.S.-Costa Rica friendly on Sept. 1, it seemed perfectly fitting that she busted out another Dylan song, saying "If not for you, I wouldn't be where I am ... " That may be the case, but I am certain the U.S. women's team would not be where it is today without Pia's grace and contagious energy.
Thank you for five great years, Pia. Sweden is lucky to have you back at home. I can't wait to hear what song you bust out for them in that first meeting ... and I cannot deny that I am begging for some ABBA.
Friday, September 07, 2012
eating dilemmas: fat, low-fat, or no-fat
well, here's another post to add to the fat debate.
i came across this minor news item that i thought was worthwhile to bring up, since it echoes a lot of things that i've come to believe in recent years:
in brief, the article brings up something that recent nutritional guidelines and medical science have started to argue: fat is not necessarily bad, and it's a mistake to eliminate it from your diet. in fact, the fat-free options for food in some ways are even worse, since they deny your body the ability to absorb nutrients and adjust your biochemistry in ways that harm your metabolic rate and sense of appetite.
i used to believe that fat was generally just bad. like so many other athletes, i had coaches who drummed into me the line that fat--either on me or, under the "you are what you eat" mantra, in my food--was the root of all evil and the scourge of all that was good and noble and right and just in this world. as a result, my nutrition plan often involved an obsessive witch hunt to eradicate all fat from my diet and, by extension, from me.
except that it didn't. if anything, it seemed to make the fat on me more stubborn. worse, it affected how i felt, emotionally and physically, with irritability, despondency, sluggishness, and sometimes outright weakness being chronic states. the result in my performance was decidedly negative.
in recent, years, i've come around to believe that fat has a crucial role to play in our body biochemistry, and that it's unwise and perhaps even dangerous to treat it as categorical anathema. it serves a function in regulating the chemical reactions in the body, and so impacts our metabolism and hormones, and thus influences mental and physical health.
the issue, however, is that there are problems with too much fat just as much as there is with too little fat, and problems with good fats and bad fats. i'll refer to this sample of useful links:
probably not what people who lead busy lives want to hear--more study, more attention, more care. but i can tell you from my own experience that it has made it easier for me to control my body fat, and i've been feeling a lot better. while i certainly won't attribute everything to a change in how i deal with fat, i still think it is a relevant factor. one thing's for sure: ice cream sure tastes better.
i came across this minor news item that i thought was worthwhile to bring up, since it echoes a lot of things that i've come to believe in recent years:
in brief, the article brings up something that recent nutritional guidelines and medical science have started to argue: fat is not necessarily bad, and it's a mistake to eliminate it from your diet. in fact, the fat-free options for food in some ways are even worse, since they deny your body the ability to absorb nutrients and adjust your biochemistry in ways that harm your metabolic rate and sense of appetite.
i used to believe that fat was generally just bad. like so many other athletes, i had coaches who drummed into me the line that fat--either on me or, under the "you are what you eat" mantra, in my food--was the root of all evil and the scourge of all that was good and noble and right and just in this world. as a result, my nutrition plan often involved an obsessive witch hunt to eradicate all fat from my diet and, by extension, from me.
except that it didn't. if anything, it seemed to make the fat on me more stubborn. worse, it affected how i felt, emotionally and physically, with irritability, despondency, sluggishness, and sometimes outright weakness being chronic states. the result in my performance was decidedly negative.
in recent, years, i've come around to believe that fat has a crucial role to play in our body biochemistry, and that it's unwise and perhaps even dangerous to treat it as categorical anathema. it serves a function in regulating the chemical reactions in the body, and so impacts our metabolism and hormones, and thus influences mental and physical health.
the issue, however, is that there are problems with too much fat just as much as there is with too little fat, and problems with good fats and bad fats. i'll refer to this sample of useful links:
- http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/good-fats-bad-fats
- http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/skinny-fat-good-fats-bad-fats
- http://www.healthcastle.com/goodfats-badfats.shtml
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/good-fats_n_1408719.html
probably not what people who lead busy lives want to hear--more study, more attention, more care. but i can tell you from my own experience that it has made it easier for me to control my body fat, and i've been feeling a lot better. while i certainly won't attribute everything to a change in how i deal with fat, i still think it is a relevant factor. one thing's for sure: ice cream sure tastes better.
Friday, August 17, 2012
re Ironman swimming death
by now most of you have heard of the death that occurred at the recent inaugural Ironman New York. for those of you who haven't, a competitor was pulled from the water during the swim portion of the race and taken to a hospital where he later died. at this point, the cause of death is still unknown.
you can read a couple of news announcements here:
i think this stresses just how serious an endeavor triathlon, particularly Ironman, races are. no athlete is immune from the dangers of injury or death. they're not to be taken lightly. not by competitors, not by race organizers, not by volunteers, not by host communities, not by spectators, not anyone.
which means that there's plenty of opportunity, if not responsibility, to go around for everyone involved to make them as safe as possible. apart from my comments in previous posts as to what can be done, i came across an excellent Slowtwitch article by Dan Empfield that echoes a lot of my sentiments but adds in some further insight and recommendations:
as a final word, i recall that USA Triathlon convened a task force in 2011 to investigate the rise in deaths at triathlons and make recommendations on how to mitigate them. i haven't heard anything about what the task force has done, but i'm curious. especially now in the wake of what happened at Ironman New York. i think there's now some cause for a sense of urgency about the task force, and i think many others in the endurance sports community are starting to feel the same way.
be safe out there, folks. this is serious stuff.
you can read a couple of news announcements here:
- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/sports/hudson-river-swimmer-dies-during-ironman-race.html?_r=2&src=rechp
- http://www.app.com/viewart/20120811/NJNEWS10/308110024/Hudson-River-swimmer-dies-during-Ironman-race
- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/03/triathlons-and-marathons-are-amazing-fitness-feats-of-fitness-but-neither-one-is-without-risks-dehydration-exhaustion-bro.html
- http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/warning-over-triathlon-death-rate-1690626.html
- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/fashion/28fitness.html?pagewanted=all
- http://www.slowtwitch.com/News/Death_Strikes_During_Ironman_NYC_Swim__2985.html
- regarding recent fatalities
- follow-up: regarding recent fatalities
- boston marathon 2012: race organizers with a conscience
i think this stresses just how serious an endeavor triathlon, particularly Ironman, races are. no athlete is immune from the dangers of injury or death. they're not to be taken lightly. not by competitors, not by race organizers, not by volunteers, not by host communities, not by spectators, not anyone.
which means that there's plenty of opportunity, if not responsibility, to go around for everyone involved to make them as safe as possible. apart from my comments in previous posts as to what can be done, i came across an excellent Slowtwitch article by Dan Empfield that echoes a lot of my sentiments but adds in some further insight and recommendations:
as a final word, i recall that USA Triathlon convened a task force in 2011 to investigate the rise in deaths at triathlons and make recommendations on how to mitigate them. i haven't heard anything about what the task force has done, but i'm curious. especially now in the wake of what happened at Ironman New York. i think there's now some cause for a sense of urgency about the task force, and i think many others in the endurance sports community are starting to feel the same way.
be safe out there, folks. this is serious stuff.
Monday, August 13, 2012
wisdom to live by: NEVER do an inaugural race
i don't know if anyone caught the announcement from the World Triathlon Corporation regarding registration for the 2013 Ironman New York. apparently, they've suspended registration due to issues that arose with the inaugural 2012 race held this past weekend. you can reference:
i don't know what happened. and i suspect we never will. at least not officially. i think that as in all things, the only transparency we'll ever get as to what really happened will be from those who participated in the race and are willing to share what they learned. in which case, all we'll have are the words of wisdom shared between athletes.
but that's probably the most important thing to consider.
there are certain words of wisdom that you pick up in endurance sports, wisdom that's rarely ever printed and certainly never stated to anything resembling the public or the press, but that's shared nonetheless among the community of competitors who have undertaken, are undertaking, and plan on undertaking endurance events. particularly with the big ones. it's understood that these words are just words, passed on verbally from one stranger to the next. as such, they're not rules and they're not official. and so you don't have to follow them. you can choose to ignore them. you can even deny them.
and many often do.
but being words of wisdom, they have a peculiar habit of persisting despite the intentions, negligence, or recklessness of everyone involved, and have an alarming tendency to be proven true at the most inopportune and most ignoble times.
and so they're understood to be the kind of things you ignore at your own peril.
one of them was something i learned when i first started in endurance sports from a friend of mine. a multi-Ironman veteran and seasoned endurance athlete, he told me that there were certain rules of endurance sports that he held to be absolute, and one of them was this: NEVER do an inaugural race.
it was partly in jest, partly out of superstition, but also deadly serious. his reasoning was that an inaugural event (i.e., a race being held for the first time) represents a learning experience for the race organizers and host community, and so entail a healthy supply of mistakes caused by people variously unfamiliar with an innumerable unnameable unexpected slew of issues, including the mechanics of doing a race, the logistics of operating public events, the chemistry of people new to working together, as well as the vagaries of the local geography, local weather, local society, local politics, and local gods of chaos, happenstance, misfortune, and accident. there are many variables involved in the conducting of a race, and it does not help to compound them with the 1st-time growing pains that come from inaugural races.
are they insurmountable? no. are they impossible? no. are they insufferable? no. everyone, from competitors to volunteers to organizers to community, can work together to overcome them. the questions, however, are: what price will everyone pay to survive the growing pains? how will this affect everyone's experience and memories?
i admit, i've broken the rule a few times. but it was always in a situation where i figured that the price wouldn't be too high (i.e., i wasn't going to get injured...or worse), and the experience and memories would still be positive.
but every once in awhile i'm reminded of my friend's rule. and when i hear back from the people who've ignored that rule, i'm reminded of the perils that we have to recognize that comes from ignoring words of wisdom...and i'm glad that i didn't have to deal with them. because the bigger the race, the higher the stakes, the greater the presence of chaos, and the larger the consequences of whatever that befalls to you.
i don't know what happened. and i suspect we never will. at least not officially. i think that as in all things, the only transparency we'll ever get as to what really happened will be from those who participated in the race and are willing to share what they learned. in which case, all we'll have are the words of wisdom shared between athletes.
but that's probably the most important thing to consider.
there are certain words of wisdom that you pick up in endurance sports, wisdom that's rarely ever printed and certainly never stated to anything resembling the public or the press, but that's shared nonetheless among the community of competitors who have undertaken, are undertaking, and plan on undertaking endurance events. particularly with the big ones. it's understood that these words are just words, passed on verbally from one stranger to the next. as such, they're not rules and they're not official. and so you don't have to follow them. you can choose to ignore them. you can even deny them.
and many often do.
but being words of wisdom, they have a peculiar habit of persisting despite the intentions, negligence, or recklessness of everyone involved, and have an alarming tendency to be proven true at the most inopportune and most ignoble times.
and so they're understood to be the kind of things you ignore at your own peril.
one of them was something i learned when i first started in endurance sports from a friend of mine. a multi-Ironman veteran and seasoned endurance athlete, he told me that there were certain rules of endurance sports that he held to be absolute, and one of them was this: NEVER do an inaugural race.
it was partly in jest, partly out of superstition, but also deadly serious. his reasoning was that an inaugural event (i.e., a race being held for the first time) represents a learning experience for the race organizers and host community, and so entail a healthy supply of mistakes caused by people variously unfamiliar with an innumerable unnameable unexpected slew of issues, including the mechanics of doing a race, the logistics of operating public events, the chemistry of people new to working together, as well as the vagaries of the local geography, local weather, local society, local politics, and local gods of chaos, happenstance, misfortune, and accident. there are many variables involved in the conducting of a race, and it does not help to compound them with the 1st-time growing pains that come from inaugural races.
are they insurmountable? no. are they impossible? no. are they insufferable? no. everyone, from competitors to volunteers to organizers to community, can work together to overcome them. the questions, however, are: what price will everyone pay to survive the growing pains? how will this affect everyone's experience and memories?
i admit, i've broken the rule a few times. but it was always in a situation where i figured that the price wouldn't be too high (i.e., i wasn't going to get injured...or worse), and the experience and memories would still be positive.
but every once in awhile i'm reminded of my friend's rule. and when i hear back from the people who've ignored that rule, i'm reminded of the perils that we have to recognize that comes from ignoring words of wisdom...and i'm glad that i didn't have to deal with them. because the bigger the race, the higher the stakes, the greater the presence of chaos, and the larger the consequences of whatever that befalls to you.
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