Are dreams important?

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

oil2How are your dreams? Are they intense and in color? Or do they fade so quickly when you rise in the morning that you cannot remember them?

Last night I dreamt that I was out on a trip somewhere with Sue. We wound up on opposite sides of a river when a flood hit. It was a really big flood. The river was brown and swollen. Impassable by swimming or by foot.

Yet I led a crew through a series of obstacles in order to cross the river via a tall but somewhat dilapidated bridge.

First, we had to gain permission to pass over the property of a landowner in a rickety old house. He stood inside the gate yelling at us that we had to go back. “No one can use my grid!” he kept yelling. He was referring to a long metal gridlock bridge that clung to the cement side of the bridge. I could feel my fear of heights kicking in just thinking about crawling along the side of that bridge.

But first I appealed to the man’s sense of decency. “I’ve got all these people with me that need to get across,” I told him. “There’s no other way!” I made some impassioned speech that played on his sense of religiosity after that. He softened and let us go by.

Then one by one the people I was leading climbed along the grid. For some reason, the last step involved pushing a loose screw into place using a small screwdriver bit from a drill. Just before I crossed, I directed a kid to climb up and get over the side of the bridge. Somehow I knew that he was out on parole for something. He looked real rough with a bad haircut and lots of sweat all over his body.

When he got to the spot where he was supposed to reaffix the screw and climb over the top, he dropped the drill bit. I had a dream closeup of this process for some reason. I  watched the drill bit fly out of his hand and down the long drop to the ground. Then the kid himself fell. I watched him, not able to do anything. Then I climbed over the bridge.

We made it to the other side through some other portal we found within the bridge that enabled us to go through the interior despite the fact that the water had risen over the top. We clamored through dripping corridors and emerged inside the neat house of some unidentified resident on the other side.

oil1Creeping through the house, we talked in quiet tones. But once we got outside, our voices raised in jubilation. And at that moment, a strange little woman came out of the house yelling at us for invading her privacy. I think someone in our group had taken something from one of the bedrooms. She was barking about that and at the same time seemed like she was desperately lonely and wanted to meet us. So she donned some crazy costume and began dancing around the streets. We left her there dancing. 

I don’t know what that means.

I found a cell phone somewhere in the weeds and was able to call Sue and let her know that I’d made it across and helped some others do that too. And then I woke up.

Dream interpretation

Who knows what the dream meant this time. I’ve analyzed dreams before through the Internet and with friends.

So I searched on the Internet and found this fascinating piece of analysis that is quite apropos to my station in life at this time.

Psychological Meaning: A river may represent the flow of the life force. In a spiritual sense, it may show your acceptance of divine will and destiny. Instead of struggling against life you ‘go with the flow.’ Crossing a river may symbolise a fundamental change of lifestyle.

Mystical Meaning: Consider your dream in the light of this quotation from Siddhartha by Herman Hesse: ‘But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions.’

oil-3Both of these interpretations are pretty meaningful to me. I literally am changing things in life. New work opportunities. Getting married in May. Helping family members and myself grow through stages of grief and sorrow to joy and new opportunities.

So dreams bridge the gap from happenstance to reality.

I once had a dream in which I ran a marathon and finished in 2:26. The entire run was smooth. That dream was probably 20 years after my competitive peak. So it surprised me to find myself running along effortless at 5:30 pace.That was one sweet dream. 

It wasn’t without precedent, however. I raced 25K or 15.5 miles in 1:25, about 5:20 pace if I recall. That was well on my way to a 2:26 marathon. During the race, I chatted with the video crew on the back of a truck. I got third overall in the race after having trained 15 miles on Thursday and 10 miles hard (60:00) on Friday. Because I had not thought that I would race that weekend.

So the race itself was dreamlike that day. There have been others like it in which I ran nearly my best and felt like it could go on forever.

IMG_9983But then the race ends and it is what it is. Another experience that fades into the past like all the others. It becomes, in other words, nothing more than a dream.

And are dreams important? There surely are. They help us imagine, on purpose or by accident, what our minds really want to know about us. They are subconscious journeys even when carried along by the physical body.

“I could only dream of doing an Ironman,” someone might say. But then the dream takes hold. It becomes something a person cannot get out of their head. The entire act of doing the race might feel like a dream, or a nightmare, depending on how it goes.

Then we wake up, feel ourselves out and start dreaming all over again.

Dream on. Because dreams are important.

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I try to be nice

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

Nice red ball.jpgLast night it was cold enough to deter me from an outdoor run. So I bundled up the Tyr bag and headed down to the Vaughn Center with the idea to run a series of 400s on the track.

So I warmed up. And while I did, a gaggle of kids piled in for their afternoon workout with a coach that runs practice there every week. I should remember that 4:00 in the afternoon is not a good time to go to the track at the Vaughn. But in the moment, a part of me hoped that this track coach might recognize that there are runners other than his young proteges on the track.

That was a naive hope. He lined his kids up and started having them do strides in all four lanes of the 200-meter track. I avoided the crew the first interval. But the kids were circling back in the center of the track on the second one. So I walked off the track and went over to my bag and got dressed. Figured I’d go run outside.

But that didn’t feel right either. Apparently, I was just not meant to run at all yesterday.

Did I behave like a spoiled brat? Could I have waited to see if the track would clear after they did all their drills like they always do? Yes. I could have waited. And it was my fault for not remembering that they start their workout that time of day. It’s a fact of public facilities that organized workouts take precedence over the needs of individual runners on any track. It’s an unwritten rule, but it’s still a rule of some sort. Like the Pirate Code.

I do still think there’s another rule that all runners and coaches should abide. The Lane One rule. If someone is obviously doing something serious in Lane One, then how hard is it to accommodate that person? Well, truth be told, sometimes it is hard to alter a workout for thirty kids for just one person.

Perhaps I could have walked over to the coach and asked for permission to run in Lane ONe while his kids were engaged in drills. But honestly, I decided my needs weren’t that important at that moment. Plus I felt heavy, slow and stupid during that first interval because I felt heavy, slow and stupid in general yesterday. On days when I feel heavy, slow and stupid, I’ve learned to let it all go. There’s usually some good reason why my mind is not 100% focused.

And once I went outside in my gear to run, I realized that I still had the final little dribs of a project to finish. I think that was lurking in the back of my mind all along. So I ditched the run entirely and went back home to finish up the project and felt good about that.

Soaking in it

Try to be nice.jpgLater that evening I did a rare thing. I poured a big bath in our jet tub and soaked in it for a while.

This morning, I got up and did a six-mile run through a local forest preserve. I had my hood up and it was cold as heck outside. But I felt light overall, and the birds were singing despite temps of sixteen degrees.

But when I got home, there was a note in Facebook Messenger waiting for me. Some guy from a networking organization to which I formerly belonged had sent a Friend request. But I wondered why he wanted to Friend me. So I wrote him through Messenger and asked:

Me: Hi (Name). I received a friend request from you and want to respect that. But know that I’m politically liberal and capable of expressing it across a number of fronts. If you still want to friend on FB given my perspectives all good. But I’ll not apologize when I publish the facts of science and the like.

Him: Well, as an engineer majoring in physics & mathematics I’m rarely wrong when it comes to sciences; so we may disagree, but I don’t discuss it on FB since no opinions are changed online:)

Me: Well I’ve met professional geologists who claim it’s all a product of the Great Flood. So sometimes it’s a gray area to people

Him: True…some areas are gray…. theory of relativity got us to the moon and quantum physics brought us the semi-conductor… Yet both theories are in conflict… So which one is correct?

Me: That’s the beauty of science. It doesn’t pretend to resolve those issues until it finds reason to do so. I’m comfortable with not knowing everything but the process of learning continues.

Him: Lol …the liberal who used science to jump off a building thinking he would never hit the ground and not die. “I’ll start at 1000ft and always have 1/2 the distance to fall….500, 250, 125, 62 1/2….” Sadly he only talked to one math professor who didn’t teach calculus.Have a good day Chris

After that, his comments got nastier and nastier. So I could tell he wasn’t really trying to be “friends” at all. Then he revealed his actual purpose for Friending me by typing in the words GO TRUMP! He was just aching for a chance to be vindictive. It didn’t really surprise me. As you may have surmised, I half anticipated his purpose from the outset.

I knew that because he’s the friend of another guy from the same networking group from which I resigned. And that other guy once posted a political meme calling President Obama a narcissist on my Wall, and then objected when I suggested that he provide some context to his comments. Then he attacked me through Messenger demanding a “man to man apology” after calling me, and these were his words, “A sick fuck.”

And the guy’s a family counselor for a living. Nice.

Run it off

But I’d had such a good run this morning that I decided to forgive and let it all go. But I also took two minutes to write the national office of that networking group to notify them that even after I had quietly and politely resigned from their group due to their long and vocal practice of derogatory comments about liberals and millennials and gays, they had gone to some trouble to harass me.

I left the networking group because I saw that I was not a fit with the political and religious tone of some of the members who treated it like their own private political cult. Yes, I quietly asked some fellow members whether the political comments bothered them. Several former members of the same networking group later told me they left for the same general reasons. We all left with civility. Because sometimes you recognize that some people aren’t about to change. Not for anyone. Or anything. And they’ll do everything they can to make your life miserable if you suggest otherwise.

But I believe there is such a thing as civility. I left the workout yesterday because I saw that my needs and desires to do a speed workout did not trump the priorities of those kids learning how to enjoy the sport of track. And unlike some of the people I’ve encountered over years on public roads and facilities, I didn’t stand by the track shouting that I pay taxes and deserve to run there when I feel like it. I didn’t moan that my freedoms were being impacted or call people names in order to chase them away. I didn’t do those things because that’s not how I view the world.

I try to be nice. Handle it with all the class you can muster. Avoid confrontation, but don’t back away if people need to be called to account for their actions.

Because in the end, there’s such a thing as being nice and there’s such a thing as being too nice when people with ugly intentions try to foist their nastiness on the world.

 

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Hanging with the twenty-somethings

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

 

Twenty somethings

Sue’s daughter’s Sarah (left) and Stephanie (right) with close friend Meghan

With the Cudworth-Astra wedding coming up in May, everyone in our household is knocking out workouts to get in shape for the dresses and tuxedos we’ll be wearing. The treadmill in the workout room has gotten quite a bit of work from Sue’s daughters and son. And one of the boyfriends who lives with us has been leading trips up to XSport, the gym where I’d belonged until Sue and I joined the Vaughn Center for the pool and 200-meter indoor track along with the weight room.

So the energy’s interesting around here. In fact, living with a house full of twenty-somethings has been a change in rhythm after the previous couple years of relative empty-nesting it in my Batavia place. But now that we’ve created this communal existence in our North Aurora house, even my own children have swung in an out with visits or stays. And I’ve learned a few things about twenty-somethings today.

They’re just like twenty-somethings from forty years ago. Virtually. The same.

20-sumpin’ livin’

I once rented a nifty little foursquare coach house in a town near here. It served as a gathering place for all my twenty-something friends. There were the requisite drinking parties and quite a few hits of pot taken during those nights. One male friend struck up a relationship with a female friend, and they spent a few nights banging each other on the couch in my living room. That was an interesting couple of months.

It’s all about connection. It’s always going to be about connection.

Cell phones and Direct TV and the Internet may have changed the entertainment rhythms a bit for today’s 20-somethings. But not that much. Last night I got home from a workout and an evening meeting to take a shower. I noticed when I got home that the kids were all parked on the couch watching some program they all like. So I went upstairs to change and shower and came back expecting to maybe hang with them a bit. And they were all gone. They had vanished like the flock of birds from a feeder when something startles them. Off to their rooms and gaming stations throughout the house. Bleep. Bloop. Millennials.

Hanging out

So I did not get the chance to hang out with them. Because that’s what twenty-somethings always do. They hang. Until they get sick of hanging. Then they move off to other things.

There was one small difference between my 1980s twenty-something friends and the crew that lives here with us. A number of my friends were fellow runners. That meant we’d train like mad and be more than half-tired before we even started partying. But it didn’t stop us. More than once my health collapsed because I was burning the candle at both ends and frankly, from the sides as well.

The distance runners and cyclists I’ve known in life have all liked to party. It’s part of the risk-taking psychology of athletes that they like to push themselves in everything they do. Athletes and twenty-somethings. They never really change.

TWenty somethings older

Sue (right) modeling some impromptu curtain clothing from our friend Jada’s house. Both are Ironman triathletes.

Sue flies in and out of this existence with considerable organization panache. That woman has more discipline sticking to her workouts than Jesus avoiding temptations from Satan in the wilderness. But had she gone 40 days without eating, she would no doubt have given into temptation because she gets kind of ‘hangry’ when the blood sugar gets low. This I know from dating her four years.

Keeps me going

She keeps me going, that’s for sure. I sort of train along in her wake, keeping her company for most of her long runs and ride. I’m good for 10 miles or so on the run and then she’s on her own for the last three. My hips hate the long stuff.

When we ride together she prefers to pull most of the time because it doesn’t really help to train for a triathlon by drafting while in aerotuck on the bars. Plus it’s illegal to draft in most triathlons. So she trains the way she plans to race. That means she pulls a lot, and I take my occasional turn while riding in the drops. Overall we’re pretty compatible that way.

Not in our 20s anymore

We’re both aware, however, that we are not in our 20s anymore. Not physically anyway. The wear and tear of training requires adequate rest. We got to bed at 9:00 most nights, because Sue’s up at 4:30 to swim, ride or run.

So it’s nice perhaps to train with some (more) perspective these days. Sue follows her coach’s orders and I use the scale that measures my body fat and weight. That’s my coach.

It’s also an indicator of how I’ll look in that tuxedo come May. That’s the motivator for the whole house it seems. So we’re not so far apart, us fifty-somethings and those twenty-somethings. And all points in between.

 

 

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, cycling, running, training, tri-bikes, triathlete, triathlon, triathlons, we run and ride, We Run and Ride Every Day, werunandride, When the other man is an Ironman | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Three Cat Night

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

Wanda.jpg

Photo of Wanda by Emily Cudworth Photography

With Sue out of town on a business trip, I hit the sack at 10 pm and waited for the cats to arrive in bed with me. Normally there are one or two of them that curl up in the crook of our legs. Usually, Benny the orange and white kitty is on Sue’s side. Wanda the big Tuxedo Mama with black and white fur lies next to me. She snores sometimes and purrs if I reach in the middle of the night to stroke her back.

 

To my surprise, a third cat joined the overnight bedtime party last night. That would be Mercury, the beautiful long tabby who loves to roll on his back whenever I come up the stairs. He begs for a tummy rub, and waits for his brother Apollo to some slinking by for a grudging pet on his own terms.

It becomes a bit of a logistical problem when three cats come to sleep with you in bed. I sleep on my side, never on my back, because I snore otherwise. But when three cats press against your legs the covers grow tight and rolling over feels impossible. Yet I somehow managed to go from left to right to left, and the cats, like four-legged energy circuits, simply found the next crook in my body and settled back into sleep.

I tend to want to move before my body stiffens up. But with cats pressed against you, there’s this sleepy guilt you get in not wanting to disturb such peaceful creatures. So I stayed on one side or the other a little too long and things started to ache.

The human body simply isn’t designed to stay static that long. We’d run seven miles that morning in relatively cold weather. 17 degrees and sunny. Just a little wind. But come nightfall the body wants to forget that it just covered 36, 960 feet. It wants to rest. And yet it also needs to move. Go figure. 

Mercury

Photo of Mercury and Benny by Emily Cudworth Photography

I recall the feeling after some of those double workouts back in the day. A body so tired and ready for sleep I could doze off with six people standing around talking in the room. That’s fatigue for you.

 

The same goes for riding a century on the bike, or doing a hard 60-miler on a late spring day. God, you feel so tired.

And it’s funny to come back after a venture like those and find the cats all curled up on four corners of the bed. It sometimes happens. Wanda runs the roost, so she gets her choice of position on the bed most frequently. Then comes Benny the 9 lb. pistol. Apollo and Mercury just fall into place wherever they can flop. Sometimes I’ll walk in the bedroom and the two brothers will be curled up together in a yin and yang fur ball.

There are days when they all rise, except Wanda, to chase each other around the house. Call it Cat Crossfit if you will. They wrestle and even bounce off the walls. The cats got to have their fun too.

This is their little world. They never go outside. We don’t let them kill birds or get chased by coyotes. But Benny did escape once for ten days. Lived in the wilds of the former neighborhood. He was one hungry kitty when we caught him again.

They know nothing more about the world than the spinning leaves on the back porch, the twitch squirrels hugging the suet feeder and the occasional bird that comes close to the window. And when night comes, they know the comfort of pressing their bodies against the people who feed them. Another day. Another Three Cat Night.

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Divvy up that commute, would ya?

Posted on March 11, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

 

Bike City

Chicago. Photo by Christopher Cudworth. 

I’d like to share a couple things about commuting to Chicago. My goal is to make it efficient to get to and from my home to the office in the city where I work a new gig as a content strategist.

 

Going back in time, I’ve commuted to Chicago at several stages of my career. For example, way back in my 20s, I commuted from the suburbs to a job at 208 S. LaSalle Street. That was the former US Steel Building. In a strange turn of events, I worked in the exact same office where one of my uncles had worked for the US Steel company twenty-five years before. Time warp.

The walk from the train to LaSalle Street took perhaps ten minutes. The train ride downtown took an hour. I lived two miles from the station where I caught the train in those days. All told, it wasn’t a terrible commute.

But at that age,  I took the whole thing as an affront to my character. I was young and selfish with my time. I didn’t like leaving at 6:30 in the morning to go downtown. I hated getting back at 6:30 at night. That left hardly any time to go running in the evening. In wintertime, it was already dark by 4:30 p.m.

Another twenty years later I worked in the city again. This time the commute took longer because the company was located in the Hancock Building. That’s the 900 block of N. Michigan Avenue. a long walk from the train station, more than two miles. So most days I’d take a bus. That wasn’t bad. In really bad weather, I’d take a cab. But that was expensive. About $10 one way to the train station.Not sustainable.

One day the rain hit the city and I couldn’t catch a cab because they were all taken. But I needed to make a 5:40 train to catch a commitment back home. So I started running through the rain with my computer bag strapped over my shoulder. The rain was pouring down and I had no raincoat. Within three blocks of running the water soaked through the suit and I was dripping wet inside. Water ran down my ass crack. My shoes were full. Socks were saggy. It all sucked big time. When I hit the train the suit  (and I) smelled like a dead sheep. Turns out that’s what happens when you wear 100% wool in a rainstorm and generate a lot of heat running to the train. The sweat didn’t help much either. So rather than sit next to some poor commuter on the train I stood in the space between cars and let the water run down my ass and into my shoes. Aren’t I a nice guy?

 

Bike Rock

Photo by Christopher Cudworth. 

I wasn’t a happy guy in the first place. The company that had hired me promised during the interview that I’d only have to commute downtown one day a week. The rest of the time they wanted me to work out in the suburbs to recruit companies that needed creative staffing work.

 

Only that promise and plan never came true. The company never got its remote database organized. The office they promised in the suburbs never materialized. One could not enter prospects in the system except in the office. So I commuted like a fiend through weather thick and thin.

So I commuted like a fiend through wintry weather and then come spring they said “Screw it” on the whole suburban recruiting idea entirely. So the whole thing came to naught.

But I learned a few things about commuting. I sure did.

 

B Peregrine and Prey Cropped.png

Peregrine and Prey. Painting by Christopher Cudworth.

In the years since I’ve had occasional contract work in the city, so I’ve commuted on and off. Now that work is increasing and I’m commuting regularly again. Not every day, mind you, but enough that it matters how I get back and forth from the train to the office. The City of Chicago is so familiar to me it’s like a

 

The City of Chicago is so familiar to me it’s like a back yard. I’ve done paintings of its buildings from Wacker Drive and walked among the city canyons where commuters like me trudge from work to the train and back again in the morning.

A few things about moving around downtown have changed. The likes of Uber and Lyft have entered the downtown traffic fray. I tried Lyft and it wasn’t much cheaper than taking a cab. Then I tried it again and the ride was not due for 10 minutes so I said screw it and took a cab again. I canceled the ride within two minutes and still the Lyft app dinged me for $2.00.

So I wrote and complained to the company and they took the $2.00 off my credit card. But they warned that there was a $2.00 fee if there was ever a Lyft vehicle within five minutes of the scheduled pickup. That seems like a system heavily tipped in their favor. The Lyft app had told me the ride would not arrive for eight minutes and that pretty much didn’t help my schedule. At that rate, I could have just walked and got there in about the same time. So I did.  My dreams of getting cheap rides across town thanks to hyper-cool apps like Uber and Lyft have yet to be realized.  So far they’re more like slapps than apps.

Which brings me to Divvy bikes. You know the ones you can rent in the city. They rack them up all over cities like Chicago and New York. You can rent a bike and ride it if you like. Through city traffic. Such a cinch. Totally safe. Not.

I’ve been watching Divvy riders navigate through traffic. I’m not afraid to do that. But I do think wearing a helmet would be a good idea. A friend recently had a slow bike crash and suffered a bad concussion that lasted for weeks. I’m a writer by trade, and if my head hurts or it’s hard to think clearly, I’m sunk.

So the tradeoffs on Divvy bikes are interesting. But I downloaded the app and took a look at all the locations. The app tosses an arrow up on your screen and all you have to do is follow the direction of the arrow to find the nearest Divvy rack.

Or you can look it up yourself and plan your route across town. There are now huge bike lanes through the City of Chicago. All that would be necessary to find a good route is to figure out where those bike lanes go and take the shortest route.

 

B City Canyon Cropped.png

City Canyons. Painting by Christopher Cudworth. 

But to test the real distance between the office and the train, I walked it on foot today. It was exactly two miles, and took me 22:00. That’s not bad. I wasn’t killing it either. But it’s still 22 minutes. To catch a train, that might not be good enough at times.

 

So there needs to be a strategy in place for all conditions. And the thing I’ve considered is buying a really shitty bike and locking it to a light pole downtown somewhere. There are bikes like that locked up everywhere. It seems like some of them hang out there forever, or at least until their owners come get them again. So it might pay to look up the city rules and see where bikes can legally be chained.  Then I might take one downtown and leave it there. Just for my commute. On days when it’s not raining.

It could not be a decent bike or it will get stolen. Yet it can’t be such a shitty bike that you can’t ride it. Part of me wants to take that risk with the Trek 400 that I own. It’s a circa 1984 bike that I originally rode to figure out if road bike riding was for me. It’s a steel frame bike now equipped with cage pedals. Rides smooth. I could get across town in less than ten minutes on that. Better than a cab sometimes.

But we all know that the city is harsh on anything that’s left around. Those cage pedals on the Treck would not be hard for someone to remove. All it takes is a pedal wrench and five minutes of time. So I’d want to put the basic pedals back on.

Here’s a bit of irony. Carrying bikes on the train during rush hour is not allowed. I almost spit when I think about that.

Divvy bikes.jpegSo there are still a few things to figure out to make this all wise, sustainable and suitably convenient. The Divvy option still looks good. It reputedly costs $99 for an entire year subscription.IN truth, to rent a Divvy without a subscription is frankly prohibitive. If i understood the rates correctly, it costs $7.00 for a half hour. That’s as much as a cab ride. I’m like, WTF? A bike should cost $2.00 to rent and ride for a half hour. Don’t you think?

But if you ride more than half an hour on that subscription rate, the minutes start accruing. I think that sucks. What if I want to ride up the lakeshore some day and tan my ass at Montrose? Or travel down to Hyde Park and stick my toes in the water at the beach? My $99 should cover that. And if I want to ride naked through town on one of those wild nights when people do that, my $99 should cover that too. With no risk of arrest. It’s pubic transportation, isn’t it? Ooops. Forgot the ‘l.’ Or is the El? That doesn’t go anywhere downtown I need to go.

I’ll have to study all the rates a bit further. Or buy a shitty bike and lock it up in a few safe places on rotation. Get a big-ass Kryptonite lock and hope for the best.

The city really should have some place where people can store bikes to use for commuter purposes. I see people with collapsible bikes rolling through town but I’m not going to lug one of those around either. This should be simpler. It really should be simpler.

 

Posted in bike accidents, bike crash, Christopher Cudworth, cycling, cycling the midwest, cycling threats, I hate cyclists, running, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

True stories. Strange tales.

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

ralph-lauren-white-cowboy-western-shirt-product-2-6942564-461243900_large_flexI’ve seen a lot of strange things while out riding and running over the years. But the strangest had to be the tall guy dressed in white cowboy gear from head to toe.  And blood spattered down the front.

He was standing at the top of a rise on Ice Cave Road in Decorah, Iowa. As I was running up the hill, he walked to the middle of the road and gestured toward me to come look at something he was eager to show. Obviously, my self-protection radar went up when I saw the bright red blood down his shirt. This had all the makings of a horror movie, I thought to myself. And I don’t even like horror movies.

He was jumping around now, to the point where I was not sure that I could get past him on the road if I tried. So I stopped about fifteen feet away and asked, “What’s up?”

Sorry, that wasn’t more insightful or compelling. It was all I could think to say at that moment. Then he gestured wildly again and pointed at a tall tree. “Want to see my snakes?”

And that’s when I saw the snakes. Each of them nailed to the trunk of a tree. And there was blood running down the length of their bodies.

Being the naturalist that I am, my first instinct was to ask. “Why are you killing snakes?” There were several kinds of snakes, you see. It was the month of May, and warm outside. So the snakes that live in the many burrows and dens of the limestone bluffs around Decorah were very active that time of year.

Canaebrake rattlerThis guy somehow knew how to find and catch snakes. And kill them. I noticed there was a long canebrake rattlesnake nailed to the tree. What a shame, I thought. The bright cinnamon stripe down its back seemed to glow in the late spring twilight. There were other kinds of snakes as well. The guy had killed an entire snake rodeo.

The ring of snakes nailed to the tree was macabre. So were the blood-stained white clothes of the cowboy. See, there is no real need for cowboys in that part of the country. The cows that live on the farms around Decorah are largely kept for dairy, not bred for meat. So the cowboy was dressed like a cowboy by choice, not profession. He was living some sort of strange cowboy fantasy. Or perhaps he was just ahead of his time.

But seriously, what goddamn real cowboy would dress in an all white outfit anyway? I supposed the Lone Ranger was pretty close. But that’s because black and white TVs back then couldn’t handle contrast very well. Every outfit on the tube looked either black or white in those days.

I decided that the cowboy I’d encountered was at least unstable, if not downright dangerous. A few nights before I’d seen another guy dressed in cowboy gear at one of the local bars. He was drinking heavily and started to lean toward his boots on the barstool as the night went on. Finally, after one too many drinks that evening, he simply pitched forward and sprawled across the floor. Mission accomplished, I guess. Drunk as shit and no need to listen to that complaining wife anymore. If that was the issue.

Sinister truckSo I took stock of the bloody cowboy dude in my general path and started to run towards home. But he jumped in front of me, so I used an old basketball fake to get past him.

He called after me but I was running fast back toward the college campus. I took a glance behind me to make sure the cowboy hadn’t gotten into a sinister old truck to try to run me down. I’ve had that happen before. Several times in fact. The townies around Decorah hated runners.

But mercifully for me, the cowboy in white was standing there by his blood-covered snake tree as if I’d just stood him up for a date. He looked so pitiful. And alone.

When I got back to campus I told my buddies  about the blood-covered, snake-killing cowboy. They all shook their heads and laughed. “Sure, Cud,” they teased.

So I convinced them to run the two miles back out to the spot on the road where I’d seen the cowboy. Of course he was gone. So were the snakes. But the ring of bloody spots where he’d nailed the snakes to the tree were still there. So I thought I was vindicated. “See?” I told them. “Look at the blood!”

They all laughed. The blood had no effect in convincing my running teammates that I’d had an encounter with a guy dressed in white cowboy gear that had been killing snakes.

But it’s a true story. I know what I saw. I just can’t explain why. I won’t even make any jokes here to cast doubt on the verity of what I’ve just related. It’s not the only strange thing I’ve seen over years of running and riding. But it is one of the strangest.

There was also that guy I met while running through the campus of Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory near my home. The guy rode up next to me on a beat up bike and started jabbering away about voices in his head. He was literally wearing an aluminum foil hat because he thought it protected him from whatever government mind control was emanating from the bowels of the tower. This lasted for a couple miles, so I picked up the pace and finally dropped him. He yelled after me to insist that get a hat just like his if I planned to continue running near the facility.

I’ve written about some of these incidents before. They just crop up now and then when I read or here strange things on the news, or see them on the Internet. Perhaps there’s some great conspiracy behind the things we experience. It’s all puzzling evidence, but about what?

All I know is that I’ve never heard any voices while running and riding through Fermilab. Nor have I developed the urge to kill snakes since my encounter with the White Cowboy covered in blood.

I do still run, and some people have always considered that strange behavior. I still ride too. But I don’t wear a tinfoil hat while doing it. Just a helmet. Supposedly that actually does protect your brain.

Who knows if it’s true? True stories.

What’s are some of the strange things you’ve ever seen out there? 

 

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You don’t say

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

therevenantdicapriohardy.pngEarly in my career, I worked two years for a non-profit organization. Our job as District Executives was to increase membership and raise money to provide programs for youth. That meant we had to set goals and make projections based on what we thought we could attain.

I already knew a few things about setting goals and achieving them. I’d just come from 10 years of distance running success in which the plan was clear and simple. Set your goals, do the work and compete to the best of your ability. Those experiences taught me that setting goals is no light matter. But you do it with the best information you have and then commit to the project.

But my supervisor was a much more conservative character named Mo. I liked Mo personally. But his Big Phrase in making projection was far more benign than visionary:  “If you don’t see it, don’t say it.” 

Now granted, that’s a bit of wise advice in some sectors of this world. Mo didn’t want to stick his neck out. We both knew from direct experience that the organization was harshly structured to penalize anyone that missed their goals. So his idea was, “Set ’em low, and take what you can get.”

Ghost units

There was just one problem with that philosophy. We were already working against goals that were falsely standardized. The non-profit employees that had preceded us had long engaged in shady practices designed to inflate the numbers of youth enrolled in the programs. This was done without saying a word to anyone else, but it was “business as usual” even if it was corrupt. To cheat, District Executives would take their own money, falsify memberships and turn them in to create “ghost units.” Then the new unit would show up on the membership rolls. The non-profit would gain support from other funding sources and the cycle would continue that way year after year.

Instead of engaging in such practices, I believed we should “take the hit” by letting ghost units lapse, then start from an honest baseline. But the field director was having none of that. “You had better hit your numbers,” he warned. “There is no going backward.”

It wasn’t that easy to go out and generate all new units to replace the ghost memberships. First one had to secure a presenting or host sponsor. Then volunteer leadership had to be recruited. These people had to be trained. It all took time. There simply wasn’t enough time to get that type of recruiting done in a short space of time in order to cover the difference between the ghost units and the level of membership the non-profit demanded in order to pitch its case to the funding organizations who wanted to see growth, not regression. It was a circular cycle of corruption.

Perpetua

Thus the cycle perpetuated itself. But my response was not to give up. My background in distance running would not permit me to adopt that type of failure. I’d learned that if you at least go at challenges incrementally, success will come.

So I went out and started units and ran them myself until I could find someone to take over. When confronted by staff leadership about my unorthodox manner of attaining membership, I stared them in the eye and said, “It’s going to get done the right way.”

So in some respects, I abided by the same philosophy as my partner Mo. But where he preferred to take the conservative route in projecting membership, I wanted to put my numbers up and go for it. But Mo wanted no part of it. He stood by his “If you don’t see it, don’t say it,” philosophy. So we set our numbers low, as he decided. And we made them, but only because I stuck my neck out.

Putting it out there

Two years later I was working in sales for a media organization. We had a big sales contest for what we called our Progress Edition. Those ads were meant to be sold “above and beyond” the daily advertising we placed for advertisers. And in my fashion, I set projections that were aggressive and I met them.

Each day the new ads came in, I posted them as instructed on the daily tally sheet. The top salesperson would earn some extra money and other perks. I led the contest for several weeks.

But on the last day of the contest, a fellow salesperson walked in and posted a slug of ads he’d been holding back on posting. He’d been sandbagging and he beat me by a few column inches. The other salespeople laughed and slapped him on the back. Such is the way of the world.

I was stunned at the cynicism however. Here I’d been trying to provide leadership by posting my ad sales. That honestly clearly helped others find reasons to sell, because the sales manager used those numbers to urge our team to keep pushing. We blew past all our projections.

The Sandbagger still won the award for top salesperson. Sure, one could say that he won it “fair and square.” He sold more ads than me. That’s the empiric fact of the matter. But I thought he was a chickenshit for winning the way he did.

Bully pulpits

It wasn’t losing the award so much that bothered me. It was the “If you don’t see it, don’t say it” approach that was so underhanded. Where’s the courage or leadership in that?

Yet we all know that much of the world operates that way. Part of becoming an adult is the realization that so many people prefer to act in their self-interest rather than trying to effect true leadership or give of themselves in ways that would require sacrifice or any kind.

The flipside of all this can be found in ways that people use very public statements to intimidate and coerce others into complicity. That’s called being a bully. And the fact that so many people consider bully pulpit leadership a sign of true character is just as sad as the claim that the underhanded approach and sandbagging or cheating to “make your numbers” is in any way admirable.

Justice served

Thus I’ve seen firsthand how corruption works against those trying to conduct themselves in an honest fashion.

Yet I’ve also stood on the starting line in just a thin pair of shorts, a tiny singlet and light shoes waiting for the starting gun to go off. In those moments, there is no hiding our intent or purpose . There is no room for chicken statements or underhanded tactics. There is only you, the road, and the distance between two points. You either have what it takes or you don’t.

So whenever I hear people who speak in support of the conniving and underhanded crap going on these days; the Russian interference, the fake claims of wiretapping, the harsh dismissiveness of health care manipulations, I know from whence they speak.

It is not from honest intent. They may think they’ve taken the shortcut to success, or been so smart they have gotten away with the bully pulpit tactics. But that’s where the lessons of eternal patience kick in for me. Because while earthly success may seem rich, and where victory feels like a mandate for those proud of earning approval through dishonest means, it is also true that justice has a way of sneaking up on them.

It bloody well does. At the end of the movie The Revenant, the lead character played by Leonardo DiCaprio engages in a brutal knife fight with the man who clandestinely killed his adopted son. For most of the movie, the killer thinks he’s gotten away with it. But as blood sinks into the snow and the evil killer sinks into the icy stream, a band of ghostly Native Americans comes by horseback up the cold stream. DiCaprio lets his rival go, acknowledging in that frozen moment that final justice was not his to administer.

And the universe seems to mutter, “You don’t say…”

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On strategies for the long run

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

In 2005 I took a swim lesson or two with plans on becoming a multisport athlete. The swim lessons were interesting. I lost a contact lens in the pool and did not make much progress. That was in late April, and I’d just been given a road bike on which I was starting to put in miles in hopes of doing a triathlon.

IMG_9983I did not know exactly what I wanted from the sport. My sense of purpose was focused on diversifying the sports I do in anticipation of later years when it seemed like being a one-trick pony was a bad idea. If I couldn’t run, for example, how would I stay fit?

Time passes

That was twelve years ago. Unfortunately, that same spring I re-tore my ACL playing outdoor soccer. That halted any near-term plans for becoming a triathlete.

But it did push me onto the bike more, and in 2007 I purchased the Felt 4C carbon fiber bike that enabled a lot more training. I raced the Felt in criteriums and did some long rides like the Wright Stuff in SW Wisconsin where the hills provide a test of character.

A lot happened in life during the twelve years since I first showed interest in triathlons. Eight of those years were consumed by caregiving for a wife with cancer. My rides often turned into difficult therapy sessions trying to deal with the stress. I wondered to myself if there was a form of PTSD going on. I’ve never looked it up before, but just now I checked online for a definition and this is what it shares about the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“Symptoms of PTSD usually develop within the first 3 months after the event, but they may not surface until months or even years after the original traumatic event. Symptoms may include:

  • Intrusive thoughts recalling the traumatic event
  • Nightmares
  • Flashbacks
  • Efforts to avoid feelings and thoughts that either remind you of the traumatic event or that trigger similar feelings
  • Feeling detached or unable to connect with loved ones
  • Depression, hopelessness
  • Feelings of guilt (from the false belief that you were responsible for the traumatic incident)
  • Irritability or angry outbursts
  • Hypervigilance (being overly aware of possible danger)
  • Hypersensitivity, including at least two of the following reactions: trouble sleeping, being angry, having difficulty concentrating, startling easily, having a physical reaction (rapid heart rate or breathing, increase in blood pressure)
  • Headache
  • Disrupted sleep, insomnia

There are some who might deconstruct those symptoms and say, “Everyone deals with stuff like that.” But the truth about PTSD is that it feels like a form of brain injury to those going through it. I’ve interviewed a number of military veterans with PTSD symptoms. One of them sat next to me on an airplane coming back from Florida. He told me that he felt like permanently damaged goods.

Concussion of life

But soldiers aren’t the only people who can experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There are all kinds of events that can disrupt the mental capacity for perceiving order and controlling thoughts. A violent car accident can do the same thing. So can childhood incidents of abuse, emotional or physical. There are no rules about who can experience PTSD, or how.

Long-term difficulties and shock from dealing with emotional, financial or health challenges can also induce forms of PTSD. Often these are associated with a person’s relative disposition toward anxiety or depression.

Running and riding or swimming can help us all cope with unstable emotional foundations. Physical exercise changes our brain chemistry just like an anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication.

Stress and commitment

PP Clicking In.png

The real challenge is when the source of stress never really relents. To some degree, it has taken me a few years to heal from the emotional stress of caregiving for my wife and others in my life. Some of that was held over in caregiving for my father after my wife passed.

The problem with long- term caregiving commitments is that you literally cannot run away from them. The needs of that person are there no matter where you go.

I have friends now in similar situations to my own. They are taking care of aging parents or spouses. A part of me wants to tell them it will all be okay. But I know that doesn’t necessarily help in the moment.

Over the last ten years, a wide range of people in my life have died. I’ve had a caregiving role in each of their lives. My late wife. My father-in-law. My own father. My mother passed away in 2005 before all of them. I was present when she passed away.

The profundity of death is its ultimate quietude. From all the hubbub and fear and change and distraction and stress that come with caregiving someone who is about to die, there is always the profound quiet that comes in the end. Sometimes I’ve wondered why my grief seems in some ways to be so rational. I’ve learned to accept death. Is that some kind of dispassionate personality trait, or a rational response to the unavoidable?

Other people

I stood in the hospital room alone with my father after he died. I was the first one to be called, and I walked in and heard soft music playing. The hospital rather prefers that people would die at home. Perhaps it is a black mark on their books to have patients die. But people have to die somewhere, and it’s not always convenient or possible to get them back home after a major health failure. So when death happens hospitals have a definite plan in place. Still, they never know how people will react.

An hour after my father passed away, my father’s caregiver Leo arrived. I had called to tell him that Stew had passed away, but Leo did not always understand English perfectly. So when he arrived he was under the impression that Stew was still alive.

I watched the shock of realization cross his face, and knew that his attachment to my father was as real as any family member. Leo had been “The Man” for five years in caregiving my father. 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. 365 days a year.  He took my dad on trips and tended to his every need. Truth be told, my father could be a difficult, demanding man. Unforgiving at times, and impatient at others. Yet he also had an amazingly tender side to his personality, and loved people.

So I knew that it hurt Leo deeply to lose my father as well. It also meant that Leo would have to find a new gig. Never an easy deal for anyone, but even more difficult for a former tradesman with no degree and a Green Card Visa.

So we gifted Leo with a couple months pay, and as it happened, I found him a new caregiving assignment. Now I see him occasionally and he is full of warmth and thanks. He is grateful, in other words, both for his time with my father and for the opportunity I helped him find.

Do for others

Mountain bikingSometimes that’s the best thing we can do for others. Help them find that next stone on the path of life. Keep them from a complete dropoff and the massive stress that can take over people’s lives. No PTSD.

But it’s also true that it is nearly impossible to help everyone. When I commute to the city there are homeless people on every other block. One man sits against a wall just north of Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue. A couple weeks ago I was walking back to the train from the office. I was feeling good, grateful there were positive things happening. As I passed the homeless man,  I looked at the sign next him and read it: “Military veteran. PTSD. Bi-polar. Need help for wife and family.”

A wave of compassion washed over me. I took $20 from my wallet, looked him in the eye as I walked over and said, “Hey man. Here you go.”

I’ve been helped

I don’t know if it helps, but I know that I’ve been helped. And it mattered. People have reached out to my family and I in hundreds of ways. It took a few years to get over the relative effects of PTSD as they impacted my life. That’s not an official diagnosis of PTSD by any means. I just know how I felt, and it matched many of the symptoms described. They were part of my life for a time. I am happy to say that they are largely gone now.

There are still moments when I feel a pang of guilt about the fact that my late wife died. I feel pain for my children as well because losing a parent is so difficult.

So the best thing I can do is remain aware and sensitive to their needs. It was confusing for a while, I’ll admit. But when I’m out running and riding or swimming I try to let the thoughts flow and try to figure out if their potential to heal is real.

Release

oil-3So I sat in church last Sunday and let a few prayers loose in the universe about all these things. Somehow it helps.

I think back to that moment four years ago in April when I attended church on Good Friday the week after my late wife passed away. My brother asked me why I thought that was a good idea. “I’m walking right into the pain,” I told him.

Walking out of church that evening, I felt a calm that transcended human thought. There was a plausibility to death that I could not explain to anyone else at that moment.

We all go there eventually. Somehow knowing that has been a baseline for finding new love and loving life as a result. This worldview accommodates both the facts of reality and the hopes and dreams of time now and later.

It is a strategy, as they say, for the long run.

 

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Running those personal oxbows

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

“When I look back, boy I musta been green, bopping in the country, fishing in the stream, looking for an answer, trying to find a sign, until I saw your city life, honey I was blind…”

Elton John, Honky Cat

 

oxbow

The bank of this oxbow stream at a local forest preserve is one of my favorite places to run. The clear water enters Nelson Lake Marsh, and Illinois Nature Preserve. 

I’ve written in the past about the fact that I’m a hayseed at heart. As a small kid, I spent a week each summer on a farm in Upstate New York. I liked shoveling the manure into the troughs behind the cows and rattling around the dusty hay mow. Mornings I’d catch leopard frogs hiding in the water-filled troughs left by tractor tires. Evenings we’d fish in the Susquehanna River. I was in my hayseed glory.

 

By the time I was twelve I joined my brother Gary for fly-fishing ventures on Octoraro Creek in Southeast Pennsylvania. That cold, clear water rushing over the feet of my waders felt like life itself. Pulling brown trout out of the stream by fly rod and reel was a pure and vital experience.

I kept at the nature thing once I became a birder in my teens. For this hobby, I took merciless ridicule from running teammates. “Birdman,” they’d chirp in a derogatory fashion. But I did not care. Being outside in nature was a soul-soothing adventure. Running was a big part of that.

Outside and loving it

Running kept me outside for long periods of time throughout my teens and early 20s. I attended Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where nature bumped right up against the campus and a National Wild and Scenic River flowed right next to the school. My 100-mile weeks were done on winding dirt roads that rolled in oxbows through the hills and bluffs that rose above. It all felt secret and wonderful to pass through those deep valleys running as fast as we could go. Sometimes we’d move as silent as a stream, our footfalls echoing softly off the limestone walls beside us.

The natural world beyond

When I joined the working world I’d ache to be outside on nice days rather than sitting inside some office building staring out at the natural world beyond.

Sometimes I’d sneak outside for lunchtime runs. The delicious escape often resulted in problems solved in my head while I ran. Often these would present themselves as some faster way to get a problem solved. Before the run, I’d be thinking about all the obstacles or bureaucracy that stood in the way. During the run, I’d get an idea that would break through the bends and twists in front of me.

This concept has a precedent in nature. It’s called an oxbow. That’s the process by which a stream or river pushes against at an opposing bank until it erodes away. Eventually, the stream cuts right through to the next section and leaves the former streambed behind. That’s an oxbow.

Personal oxbows

We all have oxbows in our life. Sometimes these are work-related. Other times they exist in terms of relationships or islands of grief or anger or personal difficulty against we bump like a swollen stream.

But in every case, they typically have something to do with what we believe about ourselves, or some situation. As a result, we might blindly work against that personal obstacle under the assumption that it will never go away. Then one day the preconception falls away by choice or by chance and we wonder why we ever let it stand in our way in the first place.

I’ve had these feelings of liberation many times in life. I wonder if you have too? Some believe these revelations to be the product of divine grace. Others are just happy that circumstances finally changed. In either case, when the time comes to move along, and the dam or oxbow breaks free, the sense of personal freedom can be overwhelming.

But first…

Often it is self-doubt that holds us back the most. As endurance athletes, we might dream of going up in distance or pace, but some bank of worry or fear stands in our way. We might go weeks or months or years bumping up against it and never work up the courage to break through on our own. “I can’t run a half-marathon,” we might tell ourselves. Or:  “I could never do a half-Ironman,” our fearful brain ruminates. “An Ironman is just beyond me,” the self-doubt mutters. These beliefs may have nothing to do with reality, but they have everything to do with how we perceive ourselves. So we keep following the same old streambed. Taking the long-way-around. The long way home. The long way to personal enlightenment and actualization.

Oxbow triumphs

But take a minute to think through the things that are holding you back. And think about what you see when you attend any type of race. What you’re seeing when athletes cross the line with arms raised in triumph is a breakthrough on a personal oxbow. It is nothing less and nothing more. They have crossed an oxbow and come out ahead.

Of course, the oxbow process just starts all over again. That’s the nature of nature. These processes never end. They just take on new forms. New challenges. New oxbows to rub against and navigate.

And just like the former paths of streams that broke through the oxbow, we can see traces of our former selves in the landscape we leave behind.

 

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You may be the athlete of the future

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

brand1I read a compelling bit of business journalism yesterday. The piece featured an interview with Mark Cuban, the wealthy entrepreneur and sports team owner with a knack for making money off future trends. Here’s what he said about the future of the working world, and how things might change.

Cuban — We’re going to see more changes in technology over the next five years than we have in the past 30. We’ve seen processing speeds really accelerate and that’s allowed tech guys to start to really talk machine learning and artificial intelligence. Because of that, we’ve evolved from automating manual steps to connecting things together. We’re going to be getting to the point where we’re automating the process of automation.

So, jobs like writing software and programming that seem like great jobs, at the lower end, they’ll be gone. We’re going to come back full circle where the valuable crafts are going to be teaching, liberal arts, philosophy, math and science. Because once all the machines are doing all the work of calculating, someone’s got to interpret. You have to be a thinker. You have to learn how to learn.

What a fascinating observation. But now, what has that got to do with running and riding and swimming? Let’s connect some dots and see where this leads us.

Automation nation

Consider the first paragraph. Cuban is talking about a world in which people are replaced by automation. I just wrote this piece yesterday on Linkedin Pulse about how a woman who works at the Metra commuter station selling train tickets just got replaced by an app that does the same thing. Technology has a tendency to wipe out jobs in one place while adding jobs, perhaps not as many, in another.

But at what point does that process reach a zero sum basis on the horizon?

Some people speculate there may come a day when no one has actual jobs, of any type. To some people, that notion is abhorrent and smacks of big government. But what if the free market drives us there? What then?

The economy may indeed gravitate toward replacement of all but the most granular bits of human labor. We’re already moving toward a scenario in which self-driving vehicles will replace human drivers. There go jobs in trucking and shipping. The Uber dynamic is automating warehousing and logistics as well. Jobs by the thousands are likely to disappear. This level of change will not be “adapt or die.” It will be “find something else to do or forget about it.”

Cuban warned that technology is also revamping concepts of energy and efficiency. “The coal jobs are not coming back,” he intones. If he’s right, it sounds like the 25%  of American who voted for regressive economic and social policies are frankly pushing in the wrong direction. The push may last a while, but market forces will blast right through those walls of denial. Buggy whip salesman just don’t have much use these days.

It’s a harsh reality in some ways, but a brilliant opportunity awaits. The things we credit of supposed value will change before our eyes. Work itself will be commoditized. There may come a time when most people simply live off the merchandising of products created by technology.

Don’t laugh. We’re already halfway there.

Personal branding

brand2These days on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, people create personal brands focused around what they can show off, not on what they can do. The more someone can funnel these impressions out to other people in ways that entertain or compel them to buy, the more Followers they attract. It’s a Share To Be Shared World.

Which means that runners or swimmers or triathletes or cyclists that have an interesting story to tell are becoming key merchandisers for companies looking to present their products in the best light. It’s not about the direct sell anymore. It’s about advocacy. And like it or not, you’re an advocate for the products you buy. There is no escaping that fact. Which is why so many people have outright chosen to embrace it as part of their lives.

Everyone’s a celebrity now

There have long been models for this dynamic in top level sports merchandising. Celebrity sports testimonials have a long history in marketing. People still like celebrities, but the notion of what defines a celebrity or a sports star have been changing rapidly.

Now there is stardom for the mom who can balance training with raising babies and holding down a job or starting her own little company. People line up online to follow such exploits. When that gal hits 50,000 followers, other merchandisers want to share her network. It rolls on out from there. Personal advocacy is the way of the future.

All over Instagram and other social media, there are one-trick pony triathletes marketing themselves, posting their goals, training times and overall commitment to the sport. These people are models for what may become the future of marketing through personal brands.

New paradigm

brand4It’s not quite the same dynamic as slapping logos on the kits of pro cyclists, but it may be close to that. There is a lot of expensive junk that goes along with the sports of swimming, cycling, running and multisports. Ironman branding now covers everything from watches to tattoos people put on their bodies. Some people hate Ironman for that. But it works.

So future athletes may have some role to play in merchandising. That could be a bit disturbing in some ways. We all cringe when an insurance salesperson slides over to make a sales pitch at a party, or some multi-level marketing zealot calls with an offer to “join my business.” And God Forbid some religious cult shows up at our front door.

People don’t like the creepy stuff that goes with some types of personal marketing. But the smart ones make it fun. Those who follow these mini-celebrities choose to do so willingly. There may come a giant “opt-in” moment in the future when people liberated from the traditional work world, through force of automation and technology, are called upon to translate the meaning of brands and get themselves involved in doing that as part of the process.

And mind you, this is not some liberal pap I’ve invented to justify a hopeful ideology. This is what tech and businesses are warning us about the future. The work world is contracting, both literally and figuratively. You can hate it all you want, but it’s still likely to happen.

Which raises the question: How many brand logos can a fit body hold? Well, it’s more about what you represent than what you can show off.

As for me, I’ll look forward to that second paragraph by Mark Cuban. That’s the part about creative people and critical thinkers becoming more valuable in the future. For a couple decades I’ve sat in rooms with people using Post-It notes in an attempt to wade through the creative process.That brand of ‘creativity’ is really nothing more than using bits of paper to do mental spreadsheets. It usually results in committee-think and results such as TRONC, the Tribune company’s lame attempt at repositioning themselves as an online content organization.

It will be up to each of us and those in the future to figure out what our roles will be when the world of work gets turned inside out. Certainly, the anachronistic attempt to yank America back fifty years is not going to get very far in this business climate of global competitiveness and worse yet, global warming.

So get out there with your selfie phone and swim, run and ride for all you’re worth. It may how you go to work each day in a few more years. You may be the athlete of the future.

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