I take requests

In an email chain going a little further into my 80/20/10 theory Paul says..

"This would make an excellent blog post"

Here it is. ;)




Here is the exact spot I started thinking about the 80/20/10 theory.

I sat for 20 min on this clearing and talked myself into acceptance with stopping here and turning around. The summit bid takes a dramatic turn for the most difficult portion of the climb right here and I "knew" it was going to be "impossible" for me to make it. After a long spell of thinking I came to realize this exact spot is a place I've been a thousand times in my life. It is so easy for me to outperform the bottom 80% it shouldn't even be fair to them.

You could put me on an island with 100 random people and give us all a task and bet you last dollar on the fact that I (at any point in my life) will finish in the top 20%. Easy money bet.

But that day was different I somehow became aware of the idea of how much of a relative cop out it is for me to always stop here. Like I said it's very easy for me so in a way I've done a lot of things that were ironically "equal" even the bottom 10%...they were not trying very hard either. :(

Not sure if it was the elevation or other factors but I slowly decided I could not stop here. I didn't really think going on would result in making the summit I just had to go further for further sake. I just really didn't want to be 80% guy anymore...I was getting pissed off to be honest, and not about this climb but past endeavors that I should have probably done better at. I had accepted besting 80% and giving myself a little high five all too often. I could have stopped at that clearing knowing that the story of climbing to 13,000 feet would be enough to get that normal 20% spot I was used to. Even the rare 10% of people I would meet up with would not be enough to bother me because I could still take comfort in performing better than most. That day I decided to just go further....that's all just further.

One thing led to another and I made the summit.

I'll say this much, and it's the most important thing I took from the entire experience:

I did believe in the clearing that me making the summit from there on that day was impossible. I was sure of that and accepted it as fact. An hour or 2 later I was looking down at the previously "impossible". That is the moment where something changed for me watching myself do the impossible. Had I thought I might be able to do it I could not have accomplished the same thing.

I believed it was impossible for me and then I did it anyway. Maybe is was all the senses working that amplified it and literally standing on top of it was more than symbolic.

So there it is...the start of my 80/20/10 theory.

14ers are not the thing of course it could have been anything, it was just my thing. 14ers are not EPIC events...it was just epic for me at that point in time. It's all relative.