Introducing the iTeam.
They say there’s no I in Team, but there is in my new Team Terrapin®
Go pro or go home. The bigger the fear the bigger the reaction. Scary is good! Scary is what makes us actually feel. Gonna have to put up with fatigue, to overcome fears and anxieties and spend the entire 2018 going pro. I’ve just tripled my ambition. UTMB M8!
I’ve always been black or white, – a perpetual metronome of emotion. Happy, sad, up or down, manic in my thinking. In the years gone by I would drink alcohol to help me nurture emotion, I would drink the strongest coffee to reach dizzy New heights of feelz, I would listen to the saddest boy band music on repeat (I remember when iTunes used to show you how many plays of a song you had, seeing a particular Westlife song with 1324 plays certainly makes you think) to plunge me into deep despair. I spent time with multiple psychologists to try to learn how to feel comfortable in the grey space that had always felt so empty to me. Nothing really worked – it was a tiring journey.
Since taking up ultra running I’ve been able to find a range in my emotional spectrum that is never grey but instead every colour you can ever imagine – the running rainbow has twice as many colours – trust me you see things that you’ve never seen before. I’d go as far as saying I’ve found meaning in life. I just don’t what it is yet.
I’m utterly obsessed with running – it’s defining me, its motivating me, its making me a better me. It’s my freedom, my escape and my dream enabler. It’s taking me places I’ve never been. Literally actually. It’s my meditation… it’s my therapy.
However, unlike standard meditation – running doesn’t subdue – (I don’t actually meditate so that’s unfounded but for the purpose of this narrative just deal with it), it opens up major possibilities and actually pushes whatever powers you possess to a new level – it teases the teats of possibility.
It’s helping me ride my greatest power. Obsessional unbalance. Obsession leads to be beint unbalanced. And it’s that unbalance which is required to get you through the extremes.
My insatiable desire to go to go all in at the drop of hat, to be obsessional with my actions – hence being able to turn on a key – assuming that’s the saying – in an instant and change my life.
In many ways, there is only one way… I now understand that unbalancing is the only way to truly achieve greatness. You have to unbalance to comprehend the absurdity of the mission. You have to unbalance to be ultra.
“It is totally up to you how much you want to throw yourself into this: we could go full bore, and put a total elite environment around you”
And with that exact actual sentence I knew it was a match made in heaven. Yesterday I made my level up move. Hiring a professional running coach capable of pushing me to the light and harnessing the obsessional unbalance. It was destiny, I dotted the i and put it in Team… although it’s a solitary sport it’s essential to have a wingman. I’m facing all my fears.
Team Terrapin® was born. (tattoo to follow)
Here’s what we’re now working on
- Regular physiological testing
- - Altitude training and sleep
- - Bloods to determine nutrition, training loads and recovery – TBC from St Marys uni, Twickenham
- - This would then bring around the need for a specific nutritionist
- - Personalised S&C – (probably only need to look at one a month to just tweek things)
- - Heat chamber training – TBC from St Marys Uni, Twickenham
- - Training Camps throughout the year – dependant on our schedules (would be good to do 3/4 – 3/4dayers)
- - Basically putting a full performance culture around you for me to manage – it will be a hell of an experience
Mail me on mills@ustwo.com about anything that this or any of my musings might ignite in you.
