Failing On Your Way To Success

Work: day off. Rain. Mostly.

Ramblings: There is nothing new. Only restatements of what we already know. I confess, I’m a soft touch for an Ironman story. The winners are super-fit professionals with more focus than I will ever have. Admirable, but with as much relevance to my life as the NBA Draft. At the end of the hour, the TV coverage of the Ironman World Championship in Kona HW picks up the amateurs. Folks chugging in to make the time limit for 17 hours of continuous exercise. Still not relevant to anything I’m planning to jump off the couch to do, but such wonderful stories: a smoker who lost 50 pounds, a grandfather running for the first time with his marathoner granddaughter, a man dedicating the race to a cancer-surviving family member, and so on. No wonder I was a sucker for You Are an Ironman: How Six Weekend Warriors Chased Their Dream of Finishing the World’s Toughest Triathlon by Jacques Steinberg [Viking 2011] despite the hardback price.

In trolling for the date of the next telecast, I found a 2010 post from Tony Austin’s swimming blog, SCAQBlog. At the end of a post about a now-defunct ticket preference program, he says, “I look at them [a photo of his Ironman bib and jersey number] from time to time to remember what it took to allow me to get where I am today despite tremendous deficits. I credit that race and Julie Moss for convincing me that failure is temporary and that you can even ‘fail’ your way to success. I kid you not.”

Try, try again. Winners never quit. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. But this word choice got past my defenses. FAIL has such a note of finality. You fail a class. You fail a blood test. These are not things you recover from with a perky attitude. I berate myself as a failure often. Yet, here is this guy saying that one can fail and still succeed. Intriguing.

BTW, it’s not surprising that a restatement would get through to me, since getting excited about the shades of meaning between one word and another is what folks pay me for.

No, I haven’t given a review of the book. Either the title has you foaming at the mouth to contact your book pusher of choice or you’re wondering WTF.

Your favorite non-equine sports book?

Dreams Be Weird

Work: PM heat, exercise [pl]/EVE groom.
Report: extended plank for photo shoot. Stood like a champ.

Ramblings: Despite being comfy & safe in bed, I had a rough night. I dreamt that Rodney was boarded at a small barn by himself. He was turned out in a pasture with no fence (our dog got out last night) and his hoof fell off (a terrible story a blacksmith told me about weighted shoes). As I was trying to untack him & clean up his recuperation stall, suddenly the barn was full of strange horses, 2-3 to a stall, and Rodney had been moved to another barn. They kept telling me that everything was okay, that he was at Frosty’s barn. But no one would tell me Frosty’s full name or where his barn was (no idea where this came from). The part that stuck with me when I woke up was my rage and incoherence. I was furious. No one seemed to understand why. I would try to scream at people but could only manage a hoarse whisper. I never seem to be capable of working up a really good rant in my dreams.

My horse dreams are usually a room (yes, room) full of unjumpable fences, i.e. heading into a wall, or the bell ringing before my dressage test when I still have to tack up, find my boots, whatever. If dreams are random electrical charges/images that our brains sort into stories, why can’t we have holodeck dreams? Galloping clean around Rolex would be my choice.

Speaking of holodecks, reality is catching up. The future promises to be way weirder than our fiction, if not our dreams.

What is your weirdest horse-related dream?

Media Advisory

Work: PM heat therapy/PM groom & exercises [rp, wv,cx].
Report: amenable during but galloped off upon dismissal.

Ramblings for the day: A well-known essayist [David Sedaris? unusual Google fail], said that his family no longer tells him anything because they are afraid to end up in print. Writer A.J. Jacobs allows his wife to forbid but not kibbitz, “In the past, he has given me censorship privileges but never annotations or rebuttals.” The Guinea Pig Diaries [S&S 2009]

Fortunately for me, my family members/subjects/victims aren’t able to complain. As long as the paychecks continue to fund the carrot stream, I doubt they even care. All of which is by way of introducing a press clips section on the sidebar. May they be joined by many more. Gotta pay for those carrots.

Mathilda in USDF Connection, “The Tail End: Square Horses and Round Holes”, November 2008

Rodney in Horse Illustrated, “Horse Tales: The Horse Next Door”, February 2012

Plus the original monthly blog posts on the USEA website of Rodney in “Back to Eventing”. Sidebarred under Past Incarnations.

Who is your favorite essayist or non-fiction writer?

Where Does The Time Go?

Work: late-PM heat therapy/EVE groom.
Report: lots of activity, little to show for it.

Ramblings for the day: One cost of having horses in the backyard is long drivetimes. A trip anywhere other than the feedstore is two hours of driving. There went the afternoon. The other cost of having horses at home is the gradual erosion of personal habits. Therefore, one must add in time beforehand to make oneself presentable to reenter polite society. There went the morning. A long-winded way to say that this afternoon’s simple, one-hour meeting kicked the stuffing out of my day.

What is your best time management tip?

Fotography Friday: Texture

Work: PM heat therapy/PM groom & exercises.
Report: Did all 6 exercises [crossrail, weave cones, plank, reverse poles, crossrail, log], including 2-3 reps of everything but the first crossrail, despite it being almost dusk. In the morning, I was out of bed in plenty of time but got caught up in fiddling with the black hole that is WordPress widgets. Must get moving earlier.

Ramblings for the day: New feature since
a) a daily blog was not sufficiently overwhelming.
b) I am ardent fan of Thursday Night Basset Blogging by TBOGG. I couldn’t begin to tell you the man’s political opinions which form the bulk of his posts, but I like me some Bassets.

Caveat: I am not a photographer. I can manage a workmanlike Horse-Over-Fence shot for show coverage and I have supplied pictures for articles when the real photographers where off covering bigger things, e.g. the behind-the-scenes stories at Rolex. So this is by way of let’s see what happens. Apologies in advance to the sensibilities of any photographers in the audience. What photos I have sold are taken outdoors, in bright sunlight, on – I cringe to say it – autofocus. Technical capacity zero. I had a passing acquaintance with the workings of my film camera but have not advanced into the digital age of camera manipulation. Apparently there are 8 Things Every Camera Owner Should Know About Their Camera. Not only can I not do these, I don’t know where most of the buttons are. I want that to change.

[Kudos to Sunflower for refining the photography idea. Thanks to Images by Ceci for the camera link.]


Can you name all 6 common barn textures?
[Hover for answers]