#601 The Mystery of the Hairy Fingers

One of my challenges as I step up my athletic game is finding the time to train as I have some very tight time constraints on how much time I’m willing to put into my training.

So, in addition to finding micro-moments of training as part of my quick, regular breaks during the day (that don’t “cost” me any time!), I’ve been having fun “stacking” my training with family time.

For example, last Saturday AM I hit the track for an hour workout featuring a three-mile run (bookended by a mile and a half warm up jog and another mile and a half cool down jog) to MAF test my aerobic speed a la all of our Notes on Phil Maffetone’s books. (For curious souls: I can currently run an 8:20 mile at my maximum aerobic heart rate of 141.)

Now, I need to do some long training days but I don’t want to be away from the fam on Saturday mornings beyond the hour workout I currently do. I figured it would be fun to swing back home and pick up the kids and bring them to the Trail for the second part of my workout. So, that’s what I did. Eleanor walked (or, shall I say, toddled) the first 10 minutes then I put her in a pack on my chest and we headed up the hill with her big brother Emerson. Awesome 25-pound weight for the bonus 3+ mile hike!

Then, the next morning I asked Emerson what would make his day awesome and he said, “To go on a hike with you!”

Now, my morning hikes are kinda like meditation for me and I LOVE doing it by myself but I also LOVE the fact that he was so excited to do a hike with me so I said, “AWESOME! Let’s do this!”

Which gets us one step closer to the point of Today’s +1.

Emerson and I are having fun hiking up the Trail and then, on the first downhill part he starts running and when I catch up to him he says, “The Trail wanted me to run!” Hah! Awesome.

We continue running (he’s officially a trail runner) and make our last turn for the final descent. He slips a bit and catches himself. In the process he gets a bunch of weird things stuck on his hand. It hurts.

I take a closer look and, lo and behold, his fingers are covered with these little prickly things. They’re super tiny but there are a ton of them. I start picking them out of his hand and then I say, “Dude! These little guys make it look like your fingers are hairy!!”

To which we both start laughing.

Now, Emerson likes to listen to The Box Car Children audiobooks. Most of the titles for the series have the word “Mystery” in it. Like “The Yellow House Mystery” or “The Lighthouse Mystery.” That kinda thing.

So… I say that we should call our day’s adventure “The Mystery of the Hairy Fingers.”

To which we laugh even harder.

Then he says, “You should write about this in a +1.”

To which I say, “That’s a great idea. I wonder what it should be about!”

We contemplated the potential theme and lesson of The Mystery of the Hairy Fingers on our drive home. It wasn’t until later that day over dinner as we told Mom about the Hairy Fingers that I came up with the moral of the story.

Which, alas, brings us to the point of Today’s +1.

As we laughed about the Hairy Fingers and I praised Emerson for how quickly he alchemized discomfort and pain into laughter, I thought of some wisdom from Tony Robbins.

He says that, in five years, we’ll laugh about most of the things that are currently stressing us out in our lives. So, he says, WHY WAIT? Laugh now.

Yep. That’s Today’s +1.

Anything stressing you out these days?

Can you fast-forward five years and see that you’ll probably either have forgotten about the challenge and/or be able to laugh about it?

Let’s see if we can trim the time from suffering to laughter from 5 years to 5 months to 5 weeks to 5 days to 5 hours to … If we’re REALLY feeling as enlightened as a 5-year-old, 5 MINUTES.

The super-enlightened? Those heroes can turn pain into laughter in 5 seconds.

Hairy Finger high fives and let’s do this! 🙂