A thought, to a feeling, to an action
I was delighted to start - and to finish! - the Ojai Valley Century bike ride today.
101.7 (yeah, I chose to ride to/from the start at Libby!) miles of sheer joy. You know, 6 hours on a bike gives me time to settle in to the thinking, development, and even experimentation process. In the past, I've written about such thought experiments as riding up Dennison Grade thinking about phone numbers only to realize that I'd ridden MINUTES slower than ever before...
Today, I found myself "mentally developing" answers to this question:
What gets in the way of people performing at their best?
Then, while at a stoplight somewhere in Oxnard ("But wait," you say, "I thought this was the OJAI century ride!" Hey, where do you think they came up with the 100 miles!?!?) I realized I'd come up with something I knew intuitively but had never said aloud.
("Ok, wait Jason, you TALK to yourself on the bike?" Hey, you ride over 100 miles and see what silly things YOU do in about the 4th hour!)
Anyone can have a thought. Some of those people have a feeling to match that thought. An a few of those people are motivated to act on the feeling they had as a result of having that thought.
Then I started wondering, could I ACT without the feeling? I mean, could I go right from thought to action? So, I stayed with it for a while. And, at that stoplight I mentioned above, I decided to try. Think - don't feel - and act. So, when the light turned green, I started riding with a group of two other guys.
We were moving along pretty quickly, riding at around 2:45/mile (a mile in about 2 minutes, 45 seconds) and it was tough. There was a bit of a headwind, so I inched up and rode right on the guy's wheel in front of me.
And, the road went on. And, in my mind: Think/Act, Think/Act. Then it started.
My legs started burning, and my breathing was getting heavier. I looked at my heart rate: I was pushing 160. (At 70 miles in to the ride, with the hill from Santa Paula to the summit, and the ride back into Ojai still approaching, I didn't know if I could keep it up.)
So, I started to fall back. I figured I'd drop the mileage to about 3:30/mile or so...I "thought" I could keep that. Then, all of a sudden, a car blasted by us, the driver leaning on their horn with all their weight as a blur of metal whooshed by. I felt it...the little twinge of frustration (ok, a bit stronger than that!) and all of a sudden, I was back on the wheel of the guy in front of me, riding with full gusto. I stayed there for miles, all the way until we reached the aid station in Santa Paula.
So, I'm going to explore this a bit more this week...the Thought, that leads to a Feeling, that pushes me to Action.
Oh, and here I am just above Lake Casitas...it was an amazing day!
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Comments (5)
That's 101.7 miles more than I rode today! Although I did get some cow video today coming soon... Great story, Jason.
Comment #1 Posted by: Tyler | June 2, 2007 09:59 PM
Thank you Tyler...there WERE some Ojai locals on the bike ride, people I met for the first time on the ride! Oh, for anyone interested you can put it on your calendars now:
May 31, 2008
There are three rides to choose from:
Metric Century (60-ish miles)
Century (100-ish miles)
Double Metric (120-ish miles)
Comment #2 Posted by: Jason | June 3, 2007 05:23 AM
You never cease to amaze me, Jason. Congrats on your ride. I am curious, why did you want to eliminate the feeling step? Seems to me like we spend too much time circumventing our feelings in this culture as it is... for instance at University of Santa Monica we're told that one of the the most common mistakes of inexperienced therapists is taking people into their heads (the mental level analysis) instead of giving them time to express/explore the feelings. Now obviously that's a very different situation from your bike ride, but it just leads me to wonder: is there an advantage in physical competition to thought/action instead of thought/feeling/action? What would you use as a feedback mechanism instead of feelings? (I can think of some great answers here myself, but would like to know yours.)
Comment #3 Posted by: Lisa | June 3, 2007 08:48 AM
Lisa,
Definitely more to come on this (watch my blog!), but for now here is where I'm comin' from:
I live in a faster and faster-paced world. Results matter, how we get there...well, all too often that is bypassed. The process, someone will say, is only to get to the end.
My brother (and over 2,000 other IBMers) was let go last week. He'd worked for the company for 8 years, built an amazing reputation, and knows more than some of the geekiest computer guys I know - and, he's only 30 years old!
So, as I was riding, I wanted to test what it was like, this "living without a feeling" exercise.
Now, as I wrote in this mini-essay, I found it was the "negative" feeling that gave me energy. This morning, at 3:30 when my dog woke me up letting me know she had an upset stomach, it was the "positive" feeling that moved me to action.
"Thinking" to myself that she would have done anything for me led me to the "feeling" that I should try my best to do what I could for her. The "action" was to go on a 90 minute walk (yes, starting at 3:40am) down Foothill Road, down into town and back.
No... I know I can't bypass that "feeling" step, but it was an interesting experiment to try and "feel" what it's like out there in the corporate world I work and play in!
Comment #4 Posted by: Jason | June 3, 2007 02:23 PM
Jason,
This is an very interesting subject. Thanks for sending me the link. In your description of your think/act experiment you mentioned, before the horn (BH) incident, that you noticed the burn of exertion and started thinking of the rest of the race ahead. After the horn (AH), I heard that, you went at least as hard for farther. Did you still feel the burn? Were you still thinking about the rest of the obstacles between you and the finish line? Or did the feeling consume that awareness and those thoughts? Were you more present to the situation BH or AH?
Comment #5 Posted by: Gabriel | June 7, 2007 01:16 PM