The body keeping score and the mind keeping score are not separate disciplines.
This is what that looks like.
Skydives, including wingsuit flights. Over twenty years in the air. The milestone is recent. The habit is not.
Jump completed six weeks post-surgery. Medical device attached. A neoprene belt held it in place.
Surgeries. The body rebuilt itself each time. So did everything else.
Minute 5K — the year after Crohn’s nearly killed him. First time under 20 minutes since college. Twenty 5Ks that year.
Age group finish, Ultimate Hawaiian Trail Run. The comeback had a destination.
Catalina Classic finishes, one of the most demanding open ocean paddling races in the world.
I started skydiving recreationally 10 years ago. A few years in, I added wingsuit flying, the discipline where you wear a suit that gives you surface area for lift and forward movement, slowing your descent rate and letting you cover ground across the sky. Getting there required hundreds of conventional jumps first.
A few months ago, my main parachute wouldn’t deploy. I burned from 4,000 feet to just above 2,000 working the problem before going to reserve. The reserve opened. I landed. The diagnosis: A tightly parachute container as I had put on 35 pounds since that rig was made, most of it in my chest and shoulders. The rig didn’t fit anymore. I ordered a new one built to my current dimensions that week and a month later, got back in the air for jump 1,000.
There’s a reason I close a keynote about designing your life with that story. Some lessons are best learned at altitude.
I was an ocean lifeguard in California. Paddling came with that for conditioning, for surfing, and eventually for competition. Prone paddleboard and surfski racing became part of how I trained and how I measured myself. Over the years I’ve been a national and international competitor in prone paddling and surfski races. The Catalina Classic is on that list more than once. Thirty-two miles of open ocean, Catalina Island to the Manhattan Beach pier. One of the most demanding paddling races in the world. You finish it by not stopping. We moved to the Carolina coast in part because of this. The Intracoastal at the end of our street, the ocean a short 10 minute drive. The kind of mornings that make the rest of the day easier to manage.
The year after 21 surgeries in 36 months, I ran 20 5Ks. And ran a personal best with a sub-20 minute finish for the first time since college. Not in spite of everything that had happened. Because of the decision I made in that recliner about what the rest of this was going to look like.Two years later: top of my age group in the Ultimate Hawaiian Trail Run.
The running didn’t stop there. Every year I compete in adventure races and Spartan races. The format changes. The discipline doesn’t.
The full story of how the physical and the professional connect is on the About page.