Standing all year

In 2017, I did not use a chair at my desk. Well, I did, but it was my coat rack. Standing at my desk all year taught me something very different than what I had set out to learn. Here's how it went....

Goal: Run the Indian Creek Fifties, a 50 mile Ultra-marathon on October 21st, 2017

Hypothesis: Stand at my desk all day to practice being on my feet for 8+ hours a day so that I am physically prepared to be on my feet for the amount of time it takes to run 50 miles

Notes from the Experiment:

It was tough for the first three months to make it through the entire day standing. I had to work up to the full 8-hour day.

One day I’d make it to 2pm and have to lower my desk and sit the rest of the day. I’d announce my daily achievement to the general audience of work-mates around me (case in point Kim Dykstra, pictured above, gets to hear random thoughts on a daily basis). It'd go something like this:

“Hey guys, I made it to 2pm today”.

“Bosco, what are you talking about?”, they'd say.

I'd respond, “Just trying to stand all day”

The next day, I’d focus on making it an hour longer --- making it to 3pm, then an hour longer, then finally making it all day without sitting and announcing "Hey guys, I made it through the entire day today".

I learned what shoes worked and which ones didn’t. (Heels are tough, anything with a wooden bottom shoe is tough, my running shoes are the best) I learned that although it was tougher to focus on long-form tasks within excel, any deep dive into data or reading at my computer, that conversations with people who came to my desk were easier—more fluid, I multi-tasked less, was less distracted and more focused whilst conversing.

If nothing else, the standing helped make me confident in my physical ability. By May 1st, I was standing all day. Some days, I’d run to work, stand all day and then run home. In the final weeks before my race, I convinced myself that the most important thing was my mind. If I could work to create more habits around my mental capacity for believing what my body was capable of, then I’d put myself in the best possible position to succeed.

Results:  I learned that, although I had set out to simply practice the physical capacity for being able to stand for 8+ hours, I ended up gaining the mental capacity for believing I could, which has made all the difference.

And, I did. I finished the 50-miler (which thanks to Sherpa John, ended up being a 53-mile race because he said "I added an extra 3 miles for you guys today for free")

A couple days after my race, I found out a woman won the Moab 240, outright. Her name is Courtney Duawalter and she won the Moab 240 by 10 hours. She beat all the men and all the women and came in 1st place overall and the next person came in 10 hours after her. What?! Crazy.

During her post-race interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, she talked about her focus on mental preparation leading up to the race. (I recommend the episode in it’s entirety) The specific example she gives, that I loved hearing, happens at minute 2:58 in the show. She begins to talk about how for this race, she said she focused on trying to tap into her brain and how the mind can help us overcome so much. That she believes when the body says 'no more’ physically, she practiced how to switch gears into making it a mental focus.

So great, right?!

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Today, walking into work on day 1 of 2018, staring at my desk, I thought.......“Well….might as well keep standing”. 

Now I’m pondering….what other new habit can I practice all year and what will I learn?