Goals, Targets and Challenges

Iliya gears up for her first Mumford & Sons gig.
On reflection its mummy and daddy who need the ear defenders. At night.

At ten past nine this morning I looked in the mirror.  Shadows under my eyes, almost a week's worth of stubble on my face and sick down the front of my t shirt.  No, I have not descended into alcoholism; this is just a normal saturday morning in the Phillips household.  The sick is, of course, Iliya's.  Last night we woke at 2am, 4am, 5am and 6am, hence the bags. Anita is faring worse than me - she spends an hour awake in the middle of every night feeding, knowing that her lifelong insomnia means she will struggle to return to anything near meaningful sleep.  But we rise to the challenge - what choice do we have?

No doubt contributing to my extreme tiredness is the fact that I have continued to train hard throughout the last five exhausting weeks.  Perhaps I am misguided, but in my mind it is a way of continuing with some semblance of normal life - that there is something to focus on beyond the cycle of morning routine - work - evening routine - bed. Or perhaps it is just selfishness on my part? I have to be realistic about what I can fit in, so my twice weekly climbing wall training sessions now happen at 6.30am before work.  If I am efficient I can manage two hours at the wall, a shower, a double espresso, a peanut butter bagel and be at my desk before 9.30. For a while I was obsessed with pure difficulty level, but now I am focussing on volume - yesterday morning I climbed 60 moderate problems in about 90 minutes.  I am aiming for 120 in 120. I drag myself upstairs for late night fingerboard sessions before the 11pm feed and twice a week I dash to the gym at lunchtime and run 10km on the treadmill. At the moment I can run 10km in 47 minutes - not particularly impressive by any reasonable standard, but only a month or so ago I was managing 49 minutes, so I know sub-45 is not far off. 

Why this obsession with goals and targets? Should I not just be climbing and exercising for the sheer enjoyment factor? Does it matter how hard or how much I can climb, or how fast I can run? I am sure many people would answer "no", but for me it matters a lot. Why? I'm not sure I know other than some sort of perverse desire to see how hard I can push myself, to find out just what I am capable of.  I know I am never going to climb E9, or F9a+. I'm never going to run a 2:30 marathon or break 60s for 400m. But somewhere below those levels are my own personal limits, and I am pretty sure they are higher than I think - and that I am some way off reaching them. I also think I want the reassurance that I can be the husband and father that I want to be still pushing my own limits. If I was single with no children, an easy job and all the time I needed to train life would be easy, or certainly far less challenging - and therein lies the paradox: challenging is good; difficult is more interesting. 

This could be a product of my professional background, my city upbringing.  Maybe I have become institutionalised by a decade of chargeable hours targets, appraisal grades and business development goals. Or maybe this is just another facet of human nature.  Perhaps we are conditioned to have goals and targets, standards to measure ourselves against, barriers to break through. Whatever the reason, I know I always need something to aim for. 

This past winter my target was to ski twenty days. I managed it - just - even though some of those 'days' consisted of a snatched couple of hours skinning up deserted slopes after the last lift for a single run down empty pistes in fading light (on reflection they were some of the best runs of the season). On the running front my target is a sub-45 minute 10km, although annoyingly I know will soon be there so perhaps I need to aim higher. (That's the thing with targets, as soon as you know you can reach them they lose their appeal).  

On rock, I have a very specific goal in mind: a one-day ascent of the Comici-Dimai route on the north face of Cima Grande in the Italian dolomites.  Seventeen pitches of mostly overhanging rock up one of the six classic alpine north faces.  Its the equivalent of climbing four Old Men of Hoy stacked on top of each other, only steeper, more exposed in a remote alpine setting.  Every time my climbing partner (the fantastically named Doctor Potter) and I discuss the face we experience a mutual cycle of contrasting emotions: excitement mixed with fear and a healthy dose of uncertainty.  Neither of us know whether we will be up to the task.  But if success was certain, it wouldn't be a challenge. A goal that isn't challenging isn't really a goal, its  just another item on my to-do list. And I've got loads of those already. 

Change

Outnumbered.

I have been thinking a lot about change recently.  For me, one of the most inspiring aspects of Andy Murray's rise to number two in the world of tennis has been his willingness to change himself.  Only a few years ago he sat at number four in the world rankings, behind Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, and the seemingly unassailable Roger Federer.  Rather than a top four, it felt very much like a top three, outside of which sat Murray - ahead of those below him, but critically below the level of the three men who really mattered.  I even read an opinion piece in one newspaper suggesting how heartbreaking it must be to have dragged oneself to the absolute peak of one's tennis ability, only to suffer the misfortune of playing in the same era as the best player - if not the two best players - of all time. 

Murray, evidently, had other ideas.  He moved to Miami and started training like a demon through the winter months.  He worked on his strength endurance, reduced his body fat percentage, built some muscle bulk and changed his body shape.  He emerged as a new player.  The results since speak for themselves: reaching the final of the last five grand slam tournaments he's entered; reigning US open champion; a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics; a deserved rise to number 2 in the world.  He undoubtedly improved his fitness, his technique and - through the adoption of Ivan Lendl's coaching methods, his mental strength. But for me what is most inspiring is that faced with apparently insurmountable obstacles - essentially he was tall, skinny and too weak to compete with the best - he physically changed himself through sheer hard work to be one of - if not the - strongest, fittest and feared players on the world tour. 

It reminds me of what Dave Macleod once wrote around bouldering - climbing short routes generally of ten moves or less, sometimes on an obscure piece of damp rock a few feet off the ground. Bouldering is a sub-genre of climbing that has been described as both the sport's purest form and the world's most pointless activity.  For me Macleod captures perfectly the attraction of bouldering, and the reason why it can be so addictive.  He describes seeing a line of holds, and knowing that they feel impossible, yet wondering whether - no matter how unlikely - one day he might be able to climb them.  How he might spend weeks, months or even years increasing his finger strength, working on his technique, improving his core stability, reducing his weight - in short, changing himself, until he can climb the problem.  Of course, at the point of success, the euphoria is fleeting, and the desire to try something even harder, to change yourself again, soon kicks in.

Tennis and climbing aside, however, the main reason I have been thinking of change is because it is happening all around me, right now.  Iliya Carrie Phillips was born at home at 8:49pm on Saturday 22 June, weighing 7lb 12oz.  In the space of only a couple of years, Anita and I have gone from being a couple, to a couple with a child, to a family of four. I would say it all feels terribly gorwn up, but that would be a lie - I'm not sure I feel any more grown up than I ever have.  I do think we had both forgotten finer details of raising a new-born baby - the brutality of broken sleep, the stress of looking after a brand new and completely helpless human being, the constant round of feeding and changing, pooing and puking.  Of course this time round we have a delightful two year old in the mix as well.  But I can say without any doubt whatsoever that I wouldn't have it any other way. As Dave Macleod points out, if it wasn't difficult, it would all be too easy, wouldn't it?