WHOOP and there it is.
They said it would never happen. They doubted and naysaid, clicked their tongues and sucked their teeth in pure, open derision. “He won’t become fit,” they clucked. “He won’t give up a wayward life of booze, Carl’s Jr. western bacon cheeseburgers, embrace anything other than writing sick, spiteful, diseased surf journalism that nobody reads. Being rude and taking pleasure in being so. He won’t become fit.”
But here I am, a surf journalist soaring on the nylon wings of my WHOOP personalized digital fitness and health coach.
But mostly running.
I’ll be honest, my surgically repaired shoulder has been aching badly due not being properly rehabbed then thrown into a macabre convict-inspired pushup routine and so I have simply been running since legs are skinny but ok. The oldest human profession.
Running takes nothing, costs nothing, builds surf-important stamina, needs neither swell nor wind nor lack of wind nor wetsuit nor any such nonsense. Pheidippides ran in Ancient Greece, Asahel in more Ancient Israel. Runners have been running since the beginning of time because it can just be done and I’ve been doing it. First moving slowly and not far then more quickly and farther.
Legs pumping, sweat pouring, mind wandering to dangerous places.
Like, “I wonder how quick I could run four miles?” “I wonder how quick I could run one mile?”
“Could I run a four-minute mile?”
The four-minute mile, as any student of human achievement knows, is a gold standard. Once deemed impossible then broken by the great Britain Roger Bannister in 1954. It has been run by just over 1400 since but also gave birth to “The Bannister Effect” defined as “the phenomenon of one person showing others that it can be done and, thus, prompting others to believe and achieve.”
Bannister effected, WHOOP affixed, I figured I could bust because what is running if not will? And what is WHOOP if not inspiration? Thirty days into fitness, I purposed to see where I was at and headed to the park to leg a mile out.
7:16.
I ran a mile in seven minutes, sixteen seconds and almost died.
My exertion so off my own personal charts that WHOOP didn’t even measure it as “running” but rather “activity” and one of the monster “activities” of my older life. But…
…what’s disappearing three minutes and sixteen seconds?
I surf.
I am.
The oldest person to ever run a four-minute mile, by the way, is 41-year-old Irishman Eamonn Coghlan who kicked in at 3:58:15. He was an Olympian but also an Irishman.
Four-minute mile.
The key to the greatest cutback on the final section of Kelly Slater’s thigh-burning Surf Ranch in history.
Heading back out tomorrow, shaving time, developing story.
WHOOP and there it is.
