Tiger Mode

forever chasing a feeling in every corner of my life.

9 • 11 • 18  hanoi, vietnam

A little insight into the title of this blog (may or may not be inspired by a tiger mural I found (see picture) wandering around hanoi, my new home for two weeks).

If high jump has taught me anything, it’s that picturing success before you achieve it, picturing prs before you clear them, only screws you up. It leaves you in the wrong headspace. Leaves you chasing numbers and praise and trophies and everything external. When it comes down to it, it’s just you, a red rubber track and a fiberglass bar. And when I put on my competition tunnel vision, all I’m chasing after is a feeling. A feeling of my spikes grabbing the track in my turn–like tiger claws digging into packed earth–holding me in my lean, defying gravity. A feeling of my last two steps, a quick, sweet “boom, boom” rhythm ringing in my ear. A feeling of flying through the thin air space between myself and the bar. A feeling of being so light and so free it’s as if the joy bubbling in my chest–an uncontainable, wild force–lifted me up and over the bar itself. That’s what matters. That’s what I picture. The joy in doing, not in finishing. Coincidentally, those magical feelings often line up with a pr. So it’s hard to maintain that tunnel vision. It’s hard to keep those feelings and those results seperate. But they are. One is flying through the air and one is sinking into a sweaty foam mat. One is during and one is after. And it’s the during that gets me to the after. So I (try to) focus on that.

Running is undeniably harder. It’s harder to find joy in the doing when the doing is so painful. But again, thinking about the after, the time, the prs, the qualifying–even the feeling of pride the next day knowing you gave it your absolute freaking best–doesn’t help me. Those are all great things that I enjoy, but to get there I can’t think of them before they happen. Like in high jump, it feels like I’m jinxing myself. Instead I have to somehow find love in the doing. And in an 800m, that’s really fucking hard. Sometimes I screw up. Sometimes I fail to take joy in any part of the doing. But it’s beautiful in its own, pain-filled way. During a good race, my high jump tunnel vision cranks up to the nth degree. All the noise, all my teammates yelling at me, coaches encouraging me, fades to the background. My whole body goes numb. All I can hear is my breath, the rhythm of my pounding feet and the girl behind me. Usually I get so sucked in that by the third lap, I don’t even look at the time. It’s irrelevant now. It’s just me moving forward, trying to maintain. On a good day, that’s all there is. No negative thoughts, although no positive ones either. Just blank numbness waiting for the page to be filled, the race to be run. Being right there. In the doing. Tiger Mode. Unleash the beast.