Day One, Not One Day

What 100 kilometers reminded me about injury, identity, nutrition, and starting again.

This weekend, I finished the Tour de Fuzz 100K, a 100 kilometer cycling event through Sonoma County, for the fifth time.

It wasn't my fastest ride. It wasn't my strongest ride. And if you looked only at the numbers, there probably wasn't anything particularly remarkable about it.

But it may have been one of the most important rides I've done.

Because somewhere across those 100 kilometers, I was reminded of something I had lost over the last year and a half.

Progress doesn't require perfect circumstances.

It requires a starting point.

And I think I finally found mine again.

WHEN PROGRESS WAS EASY TO SEE

There was a period of my life when progress was everywhere.

Coming out of COVID, I decided to make some changes. I joined a men’s nutrition and training program, lost 37 lbs and started rebuilding my fitness.

That became something bigger.

I got back on the bike. I started running trails. I found Spartan racing. And somewhere along the way, training became part of my identity again.

At the peak of that stretch, I completed 17 events in a single year. Bike events. Century rides. Trail races. Spartan races.

There always seemed to be another event on the calendar.

And each one represented something.

Go farther. Get faster. Find a harder course. Take on another challenge.

Training wasn't something I was trying to fit into my life anymore. It had simply become part of who I was.

Then, in 2024, I got injured.

And everything changed.

What I initially hoped was something I could solve with rest became months of frustration. I backed off. I rested. I tried again. I backed off some more.

For roughly a year and a half, I kept trying to manage the problem without fully confronting what was actually happening.

Part of that was optimism.

If I just give it more time...

If I stop doing this...

If I modify that...

Maybe it'll settle down.

But if I'm being completely truthful, part of it was avoidance.

I didn't want the diagnosis.

Because a real diagnosis might come with an answer I didn't want to hear.

Eventually, I got one anyway.

What I'm dealing with appears to be two separate injuries: a torn and partially detached labrum in my hip and what my medical team has described as a sports hernia involving damaged connective tissue around the pelvis.

I'm now looking at the possibility of two surgeries.

And potentially months of recovery.

The exact timeline is still unknown.

For someone who spent the last several years measuring progress in finish lines, miles and increasingly difficult events, uncertainty like that is a difficult place to live.

MY "FALL FROM GRACE"

I've jokingly referred to the last year and a half as my fall from grace.

I'm beginning to realize I may be the only person who sees it that way.

That's been an important realization.

When you've built part of your identity around being capable—the guy who can keep going, take on the next event, finish the distance—losing some of that capability does strange things to your head.

I experienced that shift very directly through the Celtic Spartans – a group of lads brought together under the shared desire of completing their first Spartan race. I built a simple program around consistency, accountability and doing hard things together. What started as race preparation became something much bigger: a community,. A tribe.

But as my injury got worse, my role within the group began to change. There came a point where I simply couldn’t keep up with them anymore.

So instead of trying to lead from the front, I started finding other ways to lead. I spent less time struggling to train alongside them and more time coaching them.

Coaching these guys has been one of the most rewarding things I've done.

I've watched them get stronger.

Faster.

More confident.

I've watched them attempt things they wouldn't have considered months earlier.

And as a coach, that's incredibly fulfilling.

It also proved something important to me:

The program works.

But not simply because of the workouts.

The real power was the group.

Lads pushing lads. Showing up because someone else was showing up. Doing a little more because the guy beside you was doing a little more. Holding each other accountable without needing to be asked.

The training created the opportunity. The group created the momentum.

And over time, that momentum produced results.

Watching that happen was incredibly rewarding. It was also forcing me to confront something about myself.

My role had changed, and knowing why didn’t make it any easier to accept.

For a guy accustomed to wanting to be first across the line, one of the fittest guys there, one of the people pushing the pace—that was hard.

I was proud of them.

And it bothered me.

Both things were true.

It took me some time to reconcile those two feelings.

Eventually, I had to ask myself a difficult question:

Do I need to be the best athlete in the room to have value as the coach?

The answer seems obvious when I write it now.

Of course not.

But living it was different.

THE GUYS NEVER ASKED ME TO PROVE IT

Something else happened along the way.

The guys knew what I was dealing with.

They knew I was injured.

And never once did they make me feel like an imposter. Never once did I feel like they were looking at me thinking, This guy can't even do what he's asking us to do.

Quite the opposite.

They bought in.

They trained hard.

They supported me.

And they became capable of things they handy believed they could do.

Their belief in what we were building helped me start believing in a different version of myself.

I had spent a lot of time thinking I needed to be at the front to prove that I belonged there.

The guys never asked me to prove it.

That realization opened another door.

Maybe being "in the fight" doesn't always mean being the first person across the line.

Sometimes it means helping somebody else get there.

I desperately want to compete at my old level again.

I want to race. I want to push. I want to see what I'm still capable of.

That hasn't changed.

But watching these guys progress has taught me that there is tremendous meaning in helping other people discover what they're capable of too.

That's a different kind of progress.

And I'm learning to appreciate it.

THE LEVER I LET GO

This weekend’s ride reminded me of something else.

Nutrition matters. A lot.

That's hardly a revolutionary discovery.

I'm a certified nutrition coach. I know this stuff.

But knowing something and consistently applying it are very different things.

Somewhere during the injury, I allowed myself to disconnect nutrition from performance.

The thinking wasn't particularly rational, but it was something like:

I'm not racing.

I'm not training like I used to.

I'm not doing the events I used to do.

So what am I fueling for?

That's completely backwards.

Nutrition isn't something that becomes important once you're fit enough to compete.

It's one of the things that helps you become capable of competing in the first place.

And it's even more important when circumstances aren't ideal.

Proper nutrition leading into an event matters.

Fueling during an event matters.

Hydration matters.

Recovery matters.

But beyond events, nutrition affects how we feel, how we recover, our body composition, our energy, and our ability to handle whatever training we are capable of doing.

That ride reinforced that for me in a way another textbook never could.

Sometimes we don't need new information.

We need to remember what we already know.

WAITING FOR "ONE DAY"

Which brings me to where I am now.

I don't know exactly when surgery will happen.

I don't know exactly what the recovery timeline will look like.

I don't know when I'll run another Spartan.

I don't know when I'll be able to train exactly the way I want to train.

And for a while, I think I subconsciously treated those unknowns as reasons not to begin.

I'll get serious about nutrition when...

I'll rebuild my training when...

I'll lose the weight when...

I'll start pushing again when...

One day.

But that ride changed something.

Because I realized I don’t have to wait. I can do something now.

Maybe I can't train exactly the way I did several years ago.

Fine.

What can I do?

I can ride.

I can work within my current physical capabilities.

I can improve my nutrition.

I can prioritize sleep.

I can hydrate properly.

I can improve my body composition.

I can continue coaching.

I can learn.

And when the medical situation changes, the plan can change with it.

That's the part I think matters beyond my own story.

We have a tendency to imagine progress beginning under ideal conditions.

When work settles down.

When the kids' schedules get easier.

When the injury heals.

When January arrives.

When we lose a little weight first.

When life gives us enough room.

But life rarely clears the runway for us.

There will always be something.

So maybe the answer isn't finding the perfect plan.

Maybe it's building a plan capable of changing.

Start with what you have.

Start with what you can do.

Then adjust.

DAY ONE

That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to build a program for the person I am right now, not the athlete I was several years ago and not the athlete I hope to become after surgery.

I'll test it on myself.

Training within my capabilities.

Nutrition.

Sleep.

Recovery.

Mindset.

And I'll adjust the plan as circumstances change.

I'll document what works.

I'll document what doesn't.

And hopefully there will be something useful in that process for somebody else who's standing at their own starting line.

Because your starting point doesn't have to look like mine.

Maybe you're injured.

Maybe you've never exercised consistently.

Maybe you used to be fit and life got in the way.

Maybe you're overwhelmed.

Maybe you've simply been telling yourself you'll start one day.

I understand that better now than I did before.

This weekend I rode 100 kilometers.

I'm sore, tired, humbled—and strangely excited.

Because for the first time in a while, I'm not looking backward wondering when I'll become the person I used to be.

I'm interested in finding out who I can become from here.

I don't know exactly what the next year looks like.

But I know what tomorrow looks like.

Day One.

WE LEARN. WE ADAPT. WE EVOLVE.