As the start date of a substantial hike (about 220 miles)
approaches, I have been contemplating various possibilities of failure relating
to physical challenges and exercise. When I did a similar hike two years ago, my
body didn’t fail me in any way, though I did experience serious blisters. My
companions and I completed the hike on schedule. But in between that hike and
this one, two of those companions had to curtail a long-distance hike because
of serious knee problems (too ambitious a distance on hilly terrain on their
first day). Their hike, in a sense, was a failure.
In other ways, of course, it was a success: the time enjoyed
in each other’s company and the impressive first leg of the trip. Failure and
success are relative, and with exercise, they can be two sides of the same coin.
In most of my weightlifting, I do a set of an exercise to failure. So not 10,
12, or 15 bicep curls, but as many as I can do until my strength gives out. I usually
plan the amount of weight in hopes of doing an approximate number—that is, I
don’t randomly choose a weight and shoot for the stars—but I nearly always plan
to fail. The success part of this is either a personal best number of reps or
the best effort I could give.
One potential failure that stands out in my experience is an
aborted cross-lake swim. Three years ago, some cousins and I decided to swim
across Lake Alexander in central Minnesota, where the cousins have a lake
cabin. We didn’t have total confidence we could make it across, but we felt
reasonably sure of ourselves. Others were boating alongside us, just in case.
Unfortunately, we had made it perhaps a third of the way to the opposite shore when
tornado warnings blared from the boat’s radio, forcing us to abandon the
mission and get back to the cabin’s storm cellar.
I have wondered several times since then if we would have
made it across, and I wonder if any of us will try it again. The lake is still
there. I go there about once a summer. Will the mood strike again to try, to
risk failure? In general I don’t think I take that risk enough. Although I regularly
set myself up to fail with my weightlifting routine, it’s really a safe way to
fail, by now well within my comfort zone. I should push myself to failure in
different ways, especially while I’m still fairly young and physically
resilient.
To return to my upcoming hike, I can only hope that the
training we have done and the general good health we’re lucky to have will prevent
knee problems, muscle strains, and any other injuries that would force us to
discontinue the journey. Since the hike will be in North Dakota, I’ll conclude
with a quote from someone who loved that state, Theodore Roosevelt:
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows
neither victory nor defeat.”1
1. From “The Strenuous Life,”
a 1899 speech to the Hamilton Club in Chicago, according to wikiquote.org.
