In September 2015, at the Spartan Race Sun Peaks Beast, I started down a road I never intended to be on so that I could stop being a hypocrite. I had been telling my training clients for years that they needed to do the stuff they hated / sucked at to really improve and grow as athletes and fully explore their physical capabilities.
If I was gifted with any natural physical talent at all, it was explosive power and coordination. It served me well as a soccer player in my childhood, in my dabbling with martial arts in my early teens, and during my brief foray into athletics as a sprinter and long jumper in my latter years in high school. I then spent over a decade wasting the prime years of my athletic potential being sedentary and hedonistic.
In late 2004 / early 2005, the combination of a certain charismatic young gent who had come to work at the law firm where I worked convincing me to take up training martial arts with him (thus discovering how far I had actually declined during that wasted decade), having my first attack of gout (at 30!), and the news that my wife was expecting our first child all fortuitously coincided to give me a good swift kick in the ass. I had my first real “WHY” for my fitness journey - to just not suck SO BAD at everything (LOL), and to not be one of those dads just sitting on the sidelines, unable to play with their kids because they were too out of shape.
I embraced training with my own personal “Pai Mei” (kung fu movie nerds - if you know, you know…LOL), and signed on with a personal trainer as well. In a fairly short span, I went from struggling a LOT in the beginning, to forming some semblance of fitness, to becoming a ravenous experiential learner of human movement, to a fledgling part-time career as a personal trainer, all by playing to my historical physical strengths and eschewing the things I figured I sucked at (mostly anything that called for any kind of sustained endurance).
I got VERY strong, deadlifting double my bodyweight “raw” (I.E. without belts, straps or any kind of assist). I was incredibly explosive, able to leap from the ground to the top of a box that was only a few inches shorter than the top of my head. I could move with almost cartoonish agility and accuracy in drills and sparring while delivering solid speed and power in my martial arts training.
But “jogging”? Forget it. Not interested. That stuff would just make me slow and weak.
I had plenty of training clients that were avid runners, regularly entering 5K, 10K and even some half- and full-marathon events. Many of them HATED the heavy strength and high-intensity interval stuff I threw at them, but I just kept telling them they needed to do that stuff to be well-rounded in their athletic endeavours. To my credit, without fail, they all got better, not only at that stuff, but also became faster and stronger runners too.
At one point, I went as far as begrudgingly running a 5K loop on a regular basis with one of my training clients who was preparing for a local 10K race, but only on the condition that we were going to go FLAT OUT the whole way. I got pretty quick too, posting a low-22-minute time in the 5K event that accompanied her 10K (where she podiumed for her age group). But that was pushing HARD for no more than 25 minutes at a time. I could kind of, sort of, get my head around that being not-quite-endurance, and it didn’t really affect my performance in other realms. I still wouldn’t consider anything more than 5K, and that event was just a one-off.
But then, midway through 2015, I realized how much of a hypocritcal horse’s ass I was being by avoiding the steady-state endurance stuff just because I sucked at it or didn’t enjoy it. So, in typical JP fashion, I searched around and found what I felt would be the suckiest suckfest of an endurance event close to home, and signed up for that 2015 Spartan Race Sun Peaks Beast.
The original BTG Spartan Team, crossing the 2015 Sun Peaks Beast finish line
I had no idea what I was getting into, and that event simultaneously kicked the shit out of me, opened my eyes up to the possibilities of what really broad-based physical capability could encompass, and gave me a new “WHY” for my journey. You can read more about the experience of that first Beast and the affect it had on my beliefs around training here, but to quote myself from that article, “It was horrific. It was the most physically terrible thing I’d ever done. It was PERFECT.”
So, for the past 9 years since that fateful September day in 2015, my own journey has been driven by “my next race.” I became a Spartan SGX Certified Coach a year or two later. Since then, I’ve run 32 Spartan Race events and dozens of trail races. I’ve helped dozens of people conquer their first Spartan Race. I’ve completed 7 Spartan Trifectas, including 4 Trifecta Weekends. I lasted 24 hours of the 2023 Spartan Summer Death Race after entering on only 4 weeks’ notice after previously saying that I would never consider entering that event. I distinctly remember saying, while being passed by a Spartan Ultra competitor during the 2017 Sun Peaks Beast, that those guys were f-ing crazy, and there was ZERO chance, EVER, that I would even attempt that. Yet there I was, on my 50th birthday this past August, grinding my way through my first ever Spartan Ultra at Big White.
I feel like I’ve been chasing that revelatory, life-changing high of that first Beast for the past 9 years, going from one race finish line to the next. I have all but stopped training in the areas where I was strong, and focused relentlessly on improving my performance on the mountains.
Me cramping in the damn clover field at the 2023 Spartan Summer Death Race
I’ve sought enlightenment, understanding and purpose through the crucible of incredible suffering, whether that was due to pushing my performance to my physical limits and beyond, or pushing through pain and injury in search of the finish line. This included such highlights as:
Walking half a kilometre on a broken ankle to get to help in my first-ever trail race in 2016 (which was just supposed to be “training” for my next Spartan Race)
Running nearly that whole race the following year on a badly sprained ankle that I rolled about 500 metres into the event
Running the last 11K (with about 700 metres of descending) of a 21K trail race in Manning Park with a badly sprained ankle
Spending about three hours hopping around with my feet tied together and a 40 pound pack on my back in the blazing sun, cramping repeatedly while looking for a four-leaf clover during that 2023 Summer Death Race (no joke - and I did find one eventually before having to quit due to the cramping)
Running 28K of a technical, gnarly, 30K trail race on a badly sprained and fractured ankle last year on that same f-ing mountain that ate my ankle in 2016 (don’t even get me started…me and that mountain have a thing)
I’ve pushed through fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of wildlife, fear of the elements, fear of humiliation, fear of drowning, fear of heights, fear of embarrassment, fear of just not being fucking good enough…fear of damn near everything.
I have learned to suffer and keep moving forward, to supress my ego and stick to the plan, to just take things as they come. I have learned to ENDURE.
At what should have been the pinnacle of achievement for me after 9 years of striving, crossing that finish line of my first ever Spartan Ultra, completing a 50K race on my 50th birthday, finishing 2nd in my age group and over 2 hours faster than I had anticipated despite horrendous conditions, I felt…NOTHING. No deep sense of accomplishment, no great fulfillment of purpose. It was just ticking another box.
The podium for my age group at the 2024 Spartan Race Kelowna Ultra
I honestly have felt a bit lost since then. I sought the advice of friends, and was very grateful to receive the wisdom of two guys who have truly been there, done that. I took on another challenge a month weeks ago, embracing my fear and pushing my performance envelope on the trails to previously unexplored limits to meet some aggressive cutoff times and succeeded (you can read more about that here). But I still feel adrift and rudderless.
Sometimes, finding your direction has to start with deciding where you are NOT going. I’m on the fence right now about whether I will ever run a Spartan Race event again, and leaning towards no. What I have decided is that in 2025 (and what’s left of this year) I am NOT racing or entering in events, at all, anywhere.
I need to find new purpose for my journey, and the first step in doing that is to try and get back to having some FUN, without the pressure or demands of preparation for a specific event. While I’m not sure what my body is capable of taking on anymore (it’s not the age, it’s the mileage…LOL), I want to see if I still have some explosive, more dynamic movement and raw strength in me to go with the endurance engine I’ve built over the last 9 years.
I’m not giving up on the trails that I have come to love over the years, but I want to get back to more fast, flowy, fun running and exploring new destinations just to explore, instead of the steady, plodding, methodically-paced grind of training for longer and longer distances.
Me after finishing my most recent race, the Around The Lake Give’R Take 30K
That said, I’m also intending to take on some adventures on the endurance side of things, just not being so single-minded in my training and preparation.
I might (OK, I most likely will) return to racing in 2026, but I’ve committed to myself that this year will be about rediscovering the fun and finding my new “WHY”, and that why has to come from within, not some external goal or finish line.
It might be hard to find focus, and it may mean some frustration along the way as I discover the depredations of the years on my previous levels of performance in what used to be my strong areas. Maybe the answer really WILL be that I want to continue to push the endurance limits deeper into ultramarathon territory. Maybe I’ll really miss the broad-spectrum challenge of a Spartan Race event, or maybe it’s going to be something completely different. We’ll just have to see how it goes…