The fire in my lungs feels like someone is pouring molten lead down my throat. Its an intense, harsh, burn, screaming at me to stop the torture I am putting them through. Every time I gulp in a mouthful of this freezing cold mountain air its like a thousand needles being dug into my chest. I can taste the rawness in my throat, that bitter taste you get when you have pushed yourself beyond any reasonable threshold of endurance.
My lungs are not alone in their protests. My muscles tear at me, also burning like my whole body is on fire. the blood coursing through them is like like acid. By now, lactic acid has built up in every muscle in my body, and now they work against me, turning my limbs into dull weights which I have to force to move. I grit my teeth as I refuse to give in to my body’s demands. The pain is incredible, and sweat runs down my face like a river, soaking into clothing that is already sopping wet.
I should stop, a normal man would stop.
But I have never been a normal man.
And so I keep going. One more step, and then another, and then another. Hundreds to add to the thousands I have already taken this morning. I won’t allow myself to stop. Won’t allow myself to give in to the torture.
“There is no pain except that which I allow to exist.”
That phrase is written on my left shoulderblade in a mixture of Kanji and Hiragana. I had it done whilst I was still wrestling in Japan and studying under my Japanese teachers. They taught me that pain is simply a state of mind, and like any other function of the mind, it can be controlled, compartmentalised. That doesn’t mean that you don’t feel it - just that you put it aside to be released later.
You don’t let it stop you. You don’t stop.
It was dark when I left the house, only the first hint of purple in the distant sky to tell you that morning was on its way. The ground was covered in a thick frost, and the higher ground with a powder of snow. Montana was beautiful at this time of year - it was beautiful at any time of year truth be known - and I liked to run when it was quiet like this. It allowed me to focus. I love the stark emptiness of my adopted home. The wide open vistas, the sky which seems to stretch on forever, and the majesty of the mountains which have stood for eons.
That’s what I need to be like now; like that mountain. I need to be absolute, timeless, immovable. Forever.
I’d strapped my boots on tight and wrapped the wool jacket around my frame. I think some of my colleagues might be a little surprised to see me training like this. I’m sure they imagine that I have a high tech gymnasium with computer-controlled running machines and monitors, and more importantly, also with air-conditioning. And they’d be right, I do. But that equipment is more for show. The real training takes place out here, in the open. No machines, and no controls and monitors except your own will to carry on. This is a battle against myself, not against a computer programme.
The first ten miles, they were easy. A gentle gradient up into the foothills of the mountains. The ground was packed hard with the frost, giving my lower legs a workout as the boots pounded across them. I regulated my breathing, keeping it slow and measured. Nothing more than a warm-up.
But then I left the path, plunged into the forest and started to head up the mountain. After a mile or so the gradient increased, and so did the effort required. Another half a mile and I came to the end of the tree line. Now I knew what lay ahead; the journey to the peak of McGintley’s pass. Under normal conditions, coming up via the back way, it was a testing climb for most walkers. 3-4 hours of an intense hike, but doable.
Trouble was that I wasn’t going up the back way, I was going up the front a 3 mile scrambled course that is near vertical. Its near suicidal for either a lithe hiker, let alone someone like me who weighs 340lbs. To attempt it at all is questionable, to do it the way I was about to, well many would call it foolish.
Because I also wasn’t going completely alone. As I cleared the trees, I saw it was where I’d left it. The log is about 6 feet long, maybe 22 inches across. I’d guess it weighs about 200lbs. A length of rope is secured around it, just to give me something to grip. Its been to the top of this peak with me many times, and it will make the journey once more today. I hate this log, I hate it with a passion because every time I pick it up I know just how hard its going to punish me as I drag it to the top, and as I carry it back down again. This log has heard me scream in pain more than any human alive. I hate it for that.
This morning has been no different. I can feel it now digging into the muscle on my right shoulder, chaffing my skin raw even through the thick coat I am wearing. My left shoulder is already bleeding under the coat. I can feel the warm blood. My right arm is crooked around it to keep it balanced, and my fingers, red with the cold and with blood flowing from them, clawing at the soaking bark to hold on as my other hand scrabbles for grip on rock, grass, or anything else I can grab in order to maintain my momentum. It feels like I am carrying the earth, like every step will break my back. My head is throbbing as the veins on my neck bulge with the effort. I stumble, I cry out in anguish, but still I carry on.
Why am I doing this? Why am I punishing myself like this?
Because I need to be ready. Because I made Chris a promise that I would give him everything I had, and that means I give him everything before the match as well as during it. In a straight match I can out power and out muscle Chio Reto. With all due respect I can possible even out-strike and out wrestle him if it goes to the mat. But what we have signed up for isn’t a normal match. Its a Trinity of Iron match. Its 90 minutes of the most intense torture you will ever put your body through. I don’t just need power and strength. I need speed and I need endurance.
But I need something else. Something a hundred times more powerful than my physical body.
I need to be able to not stop when every fibre of my being tells me it needs to. I need to be able to walk in the flames and not care that I burn.
I need to not be a normal man.
I need to compartmentalize this pain, this suffering, this anguish. I need to use this torture, store it and lock it away.
I need to let it fester, let it grow.
Let it feed the dragon that lurks inside me.
And then at CXA Reunion, I need to release it on Chio Reto.
Subject: A cold Montana morning 
Tue Mar 15, 2011 8:38 am
