Failure

I hate failure. Let me just put that out there right away. This past marked my third attempt at Mount Rainier. This time should have been it: great team, great weather, good conditions on the mountain. I could go on. So what happened? Reflecting back on the experience, I may have failed mentally before ever setting foot on the mountain, but that's a lame excuse. Did I not train enough? It's possible. Leading up to the climb I continued to Crossfit. Looking at my most successful season in the mountains, my training was vastly different. The year was 2001. I weighed 20 pounds less, ran every day, and lifted 3-4 days a week using the old body parts approach. It worked. I was able to haul ass on all of the fourteeners; never felt altitude sickness; carried other teams gear, etc. Fast forward to 2010. I weigh 205, rarely rare, and felt sick 3 out of 4 days on the mountain. The worst part of this failure: letting my partners down.

Mark Twight wrote an insightful essay on failure in his book Extreme Alpinism. I have to agree that failure is a necessary part of any endeavor that involves growth and improvement. I do learn more from my failures than successes. Reflecting back on the experience once the wounds have begun to heal seems to offer even more insight than immediately after due to the loss of the emotional component of the failure.

So what will I change after this most recent failure. I think it has finally sunk in that I need to drop this excess, and useless if not harmful body fat. Doing so will require some dedication but is certainly a reasonable goal. I will also begin to focus on more aerobic conditioning. Crossfit works wonders for anaerobic metabolism, and works reasonably for strength, although the MEBB spinoff seems to work better towards this goal. Look for a mix of Crossfit, Crossfit MEBB, and good ol' running and biking in the workouts in the near future. . . I'll keep you posted.


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