Training Log Archive: barb

C • Thanks! 12

Today is a work day for me. Dave, Tim and Ben are running a Tour race. Most JWOC team members are doing Sprint & Relay model. My parents took off on a train for Prague this morning; they are headed next to Serbia to stay with the parents of an exchange student they hosted about 30 years ago. Before coming to JWOC, they visited Liberec, also in the Czech Republic, where they served for two years in the Peace Corps 18 years ago. They presided last week over 3 gatherings of a total of 19 former students and colleagues. So they are having quite the social time here in Europe. Dad taught history and English and western civilization and Russian in high school for many years, and just knows everything, though it only comes out when you ask about it. When I asked something about Czech history recently, he rattled off names and dates of changes of government, including the famous defenestration.

Our family was camping outside Prague just months before the Soviet invasion of 1968, and that was the time I was (at age 6) sleeping alone in the tent next to the camper van, and thieves slit the tent door netting in the night, stealing the suitcase on which my mother had laid out my clothes for the next day, and pulling the sleeping bag with sleeping me from the far side of the tent to near the door but abandoning it when they realized it was occupied with a small child. I did not wake up. The next morning, the fellow victims around us blamed the thefts on the neighboring encampment of gypsies.

Dad just could not get over the fact that I was "coaching" two West Point cadets, and wanted a picture of me with them:



Erin casts widely for metaphors and systems of thought to develop and express his many ideas. He spoke to my mom the other day about some aspect of developing one's running or athletic ability. He used a mathematical analogy, something about how just counting you never get to infinity, but in geometry and calculus you can get to infinity and back. I don't think he realized that my mom is a math teacher, but I don't think that would have either held him back or spurred him further on. I admire the steadiness with which he puts out these ideas; it both gets them out into the world and provides him with feedback. My mom, however, just listened and worked to understand his point. He spoke genetics to me in Trutnov, and was claiming that we can change our genetics. Faced with what sounds like bad pseudoscience (where "bad" is often redundant in modifying pseudoscience imho), I at first did the usual Moore thing of nodding and working hard to try and understand the point he was making, because I think Erin usually has a good point, though I don't always understand it at first. But after a while I did engage, and stated first off that it is hard for me to follow his arguments as I have more of a scientist's need for clarity and proof and whatnot. I also encouraged him to consider using the metaphor of epigenetics rather than genetics, as I think epigenetics is perhaps more, slightly more, under our direct control. And later I walked through an example of specifically how we could change our genetics, not by visualizing possibility and infinity and back (though I don't rule out psychosomatic power and do believe that many systems of thought that appear non-scientific are very useful), but rather by, say, loading a retrovirus with some desired gene etc etc.

Here are some of Erin's ideas or ways of operating, as I understand them, that I love. I've learned these more from seeing him interact with people than from his expositions.

Use positive phrasing for goals. And maybe for most things.

Examine whether your (or another person's) assessment of a situation is just their interpretation, or has evidence to back it up. Don't rush to act on someone's interpretation, especially when it involves ascribing a bad motive to another person.

Be open to other people's points of view, observations -- especially about themselves. Invite people to consider the motivations behind their actions or desires. In other words, invite them to interpret their own behavior.

Instead of blindly following one approach or system (e.g. of developing an athlete), observe them and listen to them to determine what might work best.

Explain the reasoning behind what you are asking someone to do. That helps them understand and is more motivating, and opens the door for them to contribute to refining the underlying goal and coming up with an even better plan. Avoid just giving instruction with no rationale.

Take your time in deciding what to do.

Get rest.

Develop a rhythm.

Thing big. Talk about your ideas.

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

Let people make mistakes so they can learn from them.

Laugh.

Expand your consciousness outward. When you are running through the woods, don't stay within your body; move your mind outward into the forest.

By helping your teammates, you bring up everyone's abilities. If you focus only on yourself, you will not attain the same level of orienteering as you would by contributing to the community of orienteering.

Did the first 5 controls, with no compass. Saw Dad and ended up shadowing him and convincing him to bail before completing his course.

We tried out the bike tower today. Fun.

another trip