Hard work: Honor, Loyalty, Perseverance, Strength

Often times these days I think of where I came from, how I came to be.

Why?

Well, quite simply I think personal values a person develops at young age have a significant impact on what kind of sports and direction they self-select.

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Originally born in Australia, I lived there and Arizona as a young child. Before my parents divorced we lived in suburban bliss in warm weather where I could play in the sun, ride my bike and swim nearly every day, this of course did not last long.

Shortly after the last trip to Oz we moved to Oregon and I was raised as the oldest of three in a small town in the shadow of the mountains outside of Eugene. It wasn't immediately blissful and we weren't a forward thinking hippy family nor were we like the folks that worked in mills in and around Eugene-Springfield. My mother is a hard driving, no compromises NY Italian and my father, an Australian who grew up in a mining town in Aus outback. Suffice it to say there was no coddling.

My father eventually left, in a nutshell Mum and Dad weren't ever going to get along, how they lasted nine years is a miracle in itself.

And soon enough there were new challenges, the house lost its oil heater and so we heated the old two story house via woodburning stove.

I grew up chopping wood everyday and living like Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn as much as I fantasized I could. I did read all of Mark Twain's works cover to cover several times over then.

To be candid, I loved chopping and stacking wood. It was a year-round task, in the summer we were in a rush to be sure that our wood would be split and stacked against the side of the house in time for winter and in winter eventually we'd need to have more split and I'd have to cut kindling everyday so that I could start the stove back up when I came home from school.

Chopping wood is hard work, and I was only eight years old when I started. Somehow I found the small challenges in each small thing I did each day. The loads of un-split cords looked mountainous and my friends would revel in helping me whittle them down. Once split, the task of stacking was as physically tough as splitting.

As you might imagine it's also rainy in Oregon, so much of the fun I'd manufactured for myself was "enhanced" by the conditions !

The parallels to running, swimming and riding in all manner of crud winter conditions might be apparent now I hope. Two hours on the bike in January, no big whoop. Let's find a suitably hilly route and lose ourselves in the effort ! A really muddy run or day on the mountain bike? Get it !

Eventually I fished out of streams, spent summer days floating down all the streams in town and lazing around a perfect swimming hole as soon as school was out. I was already developing a propensity to rest and play like an endurance athlete.

That upbringing certainly shaped who I am now. I've had a wealth of experiences in my life that many take their entire lives to collect. And, that includes the good and bad. Learning the value of hard work on my own very early distilled down to some basics now that drive most of the values now.

If a choice seriously compromises a basic value then I probably won't be happy and it likely wasn't right. All well and good until we mix in the behavior of others, unpredictable as it can be.

And I do think we, (I as well), who have selected endurance sport as a life long pursuit "get it" meaning they love the simple intrinsic value in the work. They see the pile of wood as a worthy pursuit not because there is an end to it but because the challenge in getting through it is reward in itself.

There cannot be endless cords of wood so to speak, our freshness and verve will blunted; we need continuous and creative new challenges and adventures that bring out the best in all of us, whatever those might be.