Who's Steering The Ship?

There's a Zen Koan, sometimes referred to as “The Gateless Gate” or “Hyakujō’s Fox”, which can be summarized as follows:

The result of thoughtless planning is not freedom from consequences; it is becoming trapped by consequences.

As koans go this is one of my favorites, which perhaps stems from having trained mercelessly year over year in order to not simply do well in my formerly sponsored racing career, but to be capable of placing-podium at nationals for "24HR NORBA Cross-country Championship Series". Before we get to that, some interjections are due.

Self-Defense in the Era of Endlessness

Twenty-ish years ago life was very different; I had not yet needed protection from a stalker, not needed multiple legal name changes, not needed to move every 1-2 years, not needed to take an FBI instructor course in "live-fire self-defense", or needed to maintain corporate attire compatible with concealed-carry. There are many reasons for my not wanting to move back to CA, but daily life with hypervigilance in this state is simply a fact that's not able to be debated. SF was my home, or at least where I felt most at home since the early 90s; and they let it fall into ruin - but politics are not the point here.

I "Respect The Chemistry" just as much as I "Respect The Bullet"; this implies that the weapon is always safety-locked and loaded, with a live round in the chamber. If you need to pull your side-arm it must be ready to fire and you must be ready to pull the trigger and accept the consequences. End of Story. When one fails to respect the bullet or the science then bad things happen: people make mistakes, reactors melt down, and people die.

Excuse my language, but reality exists and so do evil people who harm others on purpose. I never wanted to flag down a taxi full of post-clubbing-party people in the depths of The Mission at 3am, politely demanding through a partially opened passenger window for "Anyone! Someone! Call 911!". I was also not a 2A advocate until I was held at gunpoint at 3am, but that is life.

PTSD Wrecks; Maybe More PTSD Helps? Nope.

Stripped of everything, robbed, wandering down 16th in complete system shock, vision and logic scattering from adrenaline, remembering the cold steel barrel he pressed against my back, then the middle of my sternum - then placed hard to the back of my skull while being told to "walk away and don't look back or we will find you again". They had my ID, cell, keys, and everything else. One of the two men held my arms locked behind my back, while the other held the gun with one hand. When finally, it was over... but it's never been over, and it will never be over, the memory never goes away. Trauma does not go away.

Nearly half (45%) of women in the United States have experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes(*). This includes 21% who reported rape, 20.3% who reported sexual coercion, and 39% who reported unwanted sexual contact. [*] CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.

The police never found the two men, but I was told that on this particular night I was not their only victim. "Fuck San Francisco" became the refrain, and some months later I moved to Colorado and worked remotely. My first purchase in Colorado was a 12g pump shotgun, then a Ruger SP101 snubnose .357 revolver, then a beautiful hunting rifle in .300 WSM, and then began amassing a collection of ammunition, and of course the required licenses for training and reciprocity-based interstate carry. Any time I left the house I considered one thing above all else..

"Was today a .357 snub-nose type of day, or a Glock 27 sub-compact .40cal type of day? hm, maybe the HK, or the Colt Mustang II.. "

This routine for leaving the house was impacted when I was forced to short-sell after the 2008 financial crisis; the house where I raised twelve huskies, the house where I kept one pistol-grip pump shotgun under my side of the bed (stagger-loaded, alternating 00-buck with rifled slugs). If someone hears a 12 guage pump being racked in otherwise turgid silence of a potential B&E, that sound says one thing "WRONG HOUSE. YOU SHOULD LEAVE NOW". If the reader ever wants to know if a 12g gauge slug can blast a hole through two walls and still kill someone, then go look at ballistics-gel penetration testing videos on youtube.

Back to that Koan, Back to the Races

Some of my 24hr race events were arranged for 2-4 rider team-relay, some were solo, and then sometimes co-ed teams (rarely). Planning, purpose, goals, dedication, and endurance. Harder, Faster, Never Stop.

My cross-country 10-20mile lap times were in the Top-3 consistently, though there were so very few women racing at my level in the 90s and early 2000s, with some 1st-finisher grabs on my favorite solo courses.

This was, back in my day, kind of a big fucking deal; it was and it still is for those who engage in 24hr mountain races. It is not an endeavor to enter into lightly. One tends to have 2-3 race bikes, at least one ultra-light road bike for hill-climb training days (each ~$5-10K USD circa the millenium $/value), own multiple wheelsets, and be able to resolve technical issues while on-trail after the inevitable crash occurs (especially after going head-over-bars into the darkness during nighttime training rides and maybe breaking components or twisting/snapping titanium spokes).

Then there are the years of experience leading up to the point where one is capable of enduring the required amount of caloric burn on a regular basis; and then more so for twenty-four hours at race-pace. For my metabolic system in the early-20s through mid-30s, this was 1,250 Kcal/hr equivalent to 178-188 BPM peaks and 168-174 average BPM heart-rate.

All of these expensive aspects had to be obtained via 'pro-deal' discount by working in the industry - and so I did that, and worked in a local bike shop during most of my college years, and raced, and trained, and raced, and also lots of skiing, and laying out on one or another of the beautiful beaches around the East Shore of Lake Tahoe... tales for another day.

I was not racing anyone but myself, torturously wanting to outlast and surpass all of those memories, the events, the people, everything. There is a type of focus in ultra-endurance which makes that possible - until you stop, and then the reality of living with PTSD almost immediately returns.

When I was not training or racing I was attempting to rest, recouperate, and that modality never stopped - except for when I temporarily died a decade later.

Hypertrophy & Catabolism for Fun and No-Profit

This kind of fitness is hard anaerobic territory which induces catabolic muscle wasting. When the body cannot access sufficient oxygen and sufficient reserve fuel resources it begins to burn muscle protein as fuel.

Least of one's worries being body fat ("what body fat?", back then I was cranking hills while leaned-out at 12-10% BF during training season, and leaning out to 8-6% at the end of a race). The body does not bother with reproductive functions at that stage, which was mostly irrelevant due to my genetics - though I did not yet know the full story on that front at the time. Too many chromosomes? Too few? Some manner of extremely rare condition? Who cares.. just go faster. Never stop going faster.

Dipping below 8% generally induces a state where organ tissue starts to be negatively impacted - the liver is hit especially hard, and is metabolically consumed. This survival mechanism has a hard shutdown limit. Going below 5% often leads to rapid cardiac failure, heat-induced seizure from elecrolytic deficiency, extreme dehydration, and eventually cellular aptosis causing brain death.

Fun! Not really, but it's fascinating? Yes, the things we do and learn when we're young and don't care about risks, or older and don't care about risks, or are simply too reliant on fitness to prioritize off-season rest (that's what Cyclo-Cross and Telemark are for, right? I won some of those races as well.. and my knees and neck hate me in my 40s). Besides, how can there be "off-season rest" if there is never an off-season? Indeed.

Harder, Faster, Longer, and Never Stop

This mantra has stayed with me for as long as I can remember. One of my earlier memories of my father involves a mostly one-way conversation focused on me from his eyes to mine, with words sourced from deep within our shared-well of frustration and shared love for existence..

You don't know when to stop, do you? When will it be enough?

I couldn't have been older than ten years, so whatever it was which spurred such authority postured statement-questioning, there was only ever going to be a single answer.

Whenever I want it to be enough.

I have never lived half-assed, never taken the easy way out, and never avoided pain out of a sense of fear. Occasionally I sought it out, the things which caused physical pain - not for reasons of self-harm, but out of a mixture of first-person experiential curiosity mixed with the desperation to feel something, anything, to remind me that I was alive.

The events of my childhood were not always pleasant, and I did not always tell those of whom who should have known - what all was happening, or being done to me. At those ages the mind is still developing concepts of personal boundaries, emotional limits, self-awareness, social concepts of 'right and wrong', and cognitive capacity for the internal dialog and sense-of-self.

The mind is maleable and easily led towards fraught conclusions of okay-ness. I was not ok, but I stayed silent, because no one ever truly listens - that was the lesson.

What is This About Ten Percent Body Fat?

What does 10% look like, you may wonder? Here's what 10% looks like from my mid-30s. Some pics are post-gym session. some are post-3hr rowing, some are after a nice 3-4hr ride in the mountains.

After I failed to have a child in my first marriage, and after DV ended it (no one hits me a second time or the ring is removed forever).. I left the mountains again and moved back to San Francisco to focus on my career. Arriving under-weight, abused, miserable, and lonely, all I did was ride and work. Raining? Ride. Fog in the Marin Headlands? Ride. Insomnia at 2am during wind-sheering on the Golden Gate bridge... RIDE. Can't ride? Gym time, smash weights.

None of that mattered really. Nothing matters when your twin dies in front of you, and before the year was over I was in a coma, hooked up to life-support machines.

Then I re-learned how to speak, to walk, to feel emotions, and how to love all over again... but it took a long time.

That's Exceedingly Sad, Why Discuss This?

Sadness is an emotion, a reaction, a biochemical response to sensory perception, nothing more. Memory of traumatic events is often inherently unreliable due to the state of shock, and the mechanics of neural processing of sensory inputs .. well.. if you care to read more about that, the associated document is very detailed.

Memory consolidation processes in the striatum go through a sensory filtering process with multiple layers of modulation of input.

A Knee Injury Induced Course-Correction

When I was thirty seven, no longer racing mountain or road, I switched to solo-crew (despite not liking boats). I had to keep doing.. something physically difficult, something challenging, something to keep the blood pumping.

When training I loved seated rows, mid-rows, reverse-tricep pulls, trapezius everything – vertical and 45-degree pull-downs, and everything else which inevitably results in striated delts and eight-pack abs. Give me a cable machine with ball-ended-ropes, a sit-down water-rower, and a set of 5-25lb dumbbells in 2.5lb increments and I was the happiest I've ever been in a gym. I never bothered with "max weight" or "3x3 sets", that's better for bulking. Instead, it was superset-burndowns for muscle group rotations, with 24-50 reps per set, with core crunches in the hundreds at a time.

No one cares though. Not really, unless it's to tell women that muscles are for men and "why do you want to do that anyway?". Because it feels good, and when it's done correctly it's healthy.

I can never claim to be "natty", not because I love steroids but because my endocrine system is missing parts entirely on a physical level. Everything has to be prescribed and supplemented - everything. One month without all of it and I am not alive; and not by choice, but by the simple medical reality that I should never have made it to adulthood. I have been broken since birth and I am fully aware of the implications with which I've had to govern my medical life, my tangible existence, and the extreme cost of being required to do so.

Why? Because "women who can't conceive are irrelevant", and because "I am not a profitable healthcare patient in America". Those two operating principles are primary reasons for constantly leaving the country and never wanting to return. Every time I'm back here it's a matter of 2-5 years before the medical industry fails to sustain my "unique neuro-endocrine needs". Crossing the border just to get the medication that my body should be able to make on its own; the resources that so very many people don't even know the names of - and take it for granted that their autonomic systems keep the'ol heart beating and lungs breathing. Please don't take those systems for granted.

None of it matters because I don't have a choice. I can make the most of it and whenever I can, I go as fast and as hard as possible until nothing is left. That is my life well-lived. It's taken me to the summits of countless peaks, down nearly every double-black run in the Sierra and Rockies on telemark skis, and into the wilderness depths of peaks and valleys in winter and summer to simply leave humanity to its unlimited amount of problems which I am not able to solve. That last part is challenging, because I love solving complex problems (ref: career, neurology, physiology, genetics); another aspect I've had to adapt to.

What matters is that I keep breathing and keep going. So that's what I do, and I guess most of the time I'm pretty decent at it, or so it goes.

On Self-Awareness of Limits

Training for 24hr mountain bike races involved 4-6 days/wk with sunrise-morning rides on the mountain passes involved with each summer's 120+mi thigh & lung burning electrolye depleter known as "The Death Ride - California Alps", interspersed with long hours in the saddle at night, riding sections of the "Tahoe Rim Trail", almost always solo, and occasionally "The Downieville Cross-Country Classic" for good measure.

You cannot simply ride a lot and win. Understanding the mechanics involved with one's metabolism, endocrine modulation, internal cycles required for mental and physical rest & recovery, a combination of immediate + long-term + short-term project planning, and the ability to be intimately familar with ones maximal-limits and failure-modes: all of which requires metrics collection and data-analysis for VO2 capacity, hold-limits for heart-rate, patterened respiration to optimize training for aerobic and anaerobic ability, tracking blood glucose levels, wearing a chest-strap for 24/7 ECG, the list continues.

Success in the ultra-endurance world is a mixture of genetics, mental and physical capacity planning, self-actualization, self-awareness, dopaminergic drive + desire + reward system modulation, and clear-headed awareness which informs all forward movement and progress toward a sustained and unrelenting goal. Usually these qualities are found at the Olympics, but my genetics would have banned me from global competition even back in the 90s when I was actively competing, for my blood carries two sets of 46 (the curious may search for this), and for this reason I must supplement everything, and this medical reality is a blocker not to regional, or state, or local - but WADA is another story.

So, inescapable maladies and compensatory treatments aside, my genetics were perfect for that kind of racing, and I happily made the most of those years. I missed that time of my life severely after moving from Tahoe to San Francisco to start my career in tech. I kept riding, but not racing.

My race against time would come sooner than I knew, sooner than anyone could know at the time. It was an inevitability of consequence.

An Evolved Definition of Leadership

Over the years I stopped racing. I stopped riding solo nearly all of the time in favor of riding double, accepting more invitations to group rides (working at FitBit was interesting, but I expected more fitness obsessed people like myself).. and I remembered that leadership is not limited to "Those Operating Above", nor is leadership well-defined by situations involving "Topping from The Bottom".

Leadership is about shared awareness and shared problem solving. Leadership does not occur in a vacuum and it certainly does not occur out of happenstance. Leadership is a choice, insofar as Free Will is anything more than a convenient explanation for guilt and sadness: blame must go somewhere, yes? Not always. Sometimes shit happens and there was nothing that anyone could have done differently.

Successful Leaders Define, Design, and Drive Shared Goals

The future is not ours to inherit, but to build together. Life advances not through ease, but from asking better questions;
Ones which embrace complexity, challenge assumptions, and strive for success. Visionary leaders build the future; Our Future.

The Inevitable Return to Consequences

So, back to the Koan. Hyakujō’s Fox inevitably realizes the lesson.

A former head monk says that an enlightened person does not fall under causation. Because of that wrong answer, he says he has endured five hundred rebirths as a fox. Hyakujō’s corrective answer is not that enlightenment escapes causality, but that one “does not ignore causation.”

For leadership, the reading is direct: a leader who believes they are above cause and effect—above feedback, incentives, dependencies, timing, or consequences—has already become the fox.

The result of thoughtless planning is not freedom from consequences; it is becoming trapped by consequences.