Monday's Murph was fantastic. 12 people, the majority first-timers, took upon Murph like he was delivering rice to their starving village. They attacked like they had to; like he was solid enough to stand upon once they were done, and thereby reach some higher shelf.
If you believe the Theory of Evolution, then you must believe that your ancestors were the strongest, fittest, smartest among their peers. Your family has survived, generations individually, where others did not.
For the first time ever, the world in which we leave our children will not be easier than the world given us by our parents. There will be hard problems that must be faced down without waffling. The environment won't be as forgiving. Even the air will be harder to breathe. We've weighed them down with the baggage of low demand: they didn't grow up with the need to strive. They didn't have to catch a chicken before the sun rose, or split wood under a hot sun, or even walk home in the dark. We've given them helmets, soft landings, crutches; we're still surprised when they can't run.
Not all of this challenge will involve physical labour, of course. A colleague mentioned attending a brainstorming session for the revitalization of his city's Downtown area. The great thinkers were there: young and old, hip and practical, monetized and unfunded. In the final few minutes, the moderator called for a no-holds-barred, no-wrong-answer throwdown: shout out your best idea.
"They should build more cafes!"
"There should be more people walking around downtown! They need to ban cars!"
"They should put up an artists' colony!"
"They should open up a bigger farmers' market!"
My friend stood up. He asked, "Who are THEY?" No one knew.
Our kids will have to be prepared to make decisions, not fake them, and deal with the consequences. They must be able to handle adversity – heck, be willing to face adversity beyond the cancellation of Grey's Anatomy.
In the gym, we're pushing, pushing, pushing not to escape these hard realities, but to prevent them escaping us. It's too late to change the DNA we're going to pass along to our kids; maybe it's time we taught them by example. Maybe it's the only gift left to give them. Maybe we could tell them that a bit of competition is okay. Maybe even that confrontation isn't so bad. Maybe even that hard work is its own reward, that a penny saved….. or that cliches aren't good enough.
Maybe we have to set some kind of standard for them to reach. Maybe even an example for them to live up to: Here it is. Do this well, or do better.
On that last mile of Murph, I was behind the clock. Leaving at 30:00, I knew there was no chance of breaking my 34:42 PR. My first run had been a quick 6:15, but I suffered on pushups all day, and felt drained. I was about two minutes ahead of the kid, Wylie, I was racing; with no competition to push me, or clock to pull me, I was lagging. Walking. Suffering.
"Come on, finish."
"Hurry up! You've got to push through to the end."
"NO! Don't walk. Keep running."
"Lean into it. You'll stumble forward faster than you're going now. Can't get any slower."
"Are you walking AGAIN?"
None of those things worked. And then, after the 1/2 mile turnaround, two little words that made me run:
"There's Wylie."
Wylie was the kid who was 2:00 behind me when I left. Now he was less than a quarter mile from me, and he was jogging. "I'm gonna puke!" he mumbled as I passed him, going the other direction. I started to jog.
I passed a dog. I passed its walker. I rounded the final corner. I knew that if I kept jogging, he wouldn't catch me.
Then he caught me.
Sprinting. "I'm gonna puke!" he yelled.
He won by 00:06. He didn't puke. But he made me run.
In my head, during that final jog? "The human body just isn't meant to do this." Words by a physician, written on a Runners' World blog, regarding CrossFit.
Not yet, it isn't. But it's getting there.