Hello,

Sometimes I am amazed by the amount of water loss occurred on the Grind. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I weighed myself before I went down to do the Grind and weighed in at 233.4 lbs, and then after the grind 229.2 lbs. That's four pounds of loss in a single Grind! Amazing. Really shows the need to stay on top of hydration and drinking lots of electrolytes to replace what you are losing - especially if you are doing multiple grinds in a day.

Yesterdays grind was feeling great... until the third quarter. I was probably on pace with my personal best time but then somewhere in the mid third quarter I hit a wall. Suddenly my legs were dead tired, my breath couldn't come fast or deep enough and it was mentally tough to keep going without taking a break. I think I probably pushed too hard in the first two quarters and with the high temperatures (in the upper 20's if not 30 degrees Celsius) it wore on me. Still finished with a respectable 51 minutes, but it didn't feel good. Also once I start to go fast I notice my breathing rate and quality go down hill and I don't find myself as efficient. I guess that's the importance of all those slower grinds where I focus on that and train my body to do those things subconsciously.

This morning's grind was better, felt pretty strong, didn't push it, finished with a time of 53 minutes. A friend lent me 'The Secret' as an audio book, so I threw it on the Ipod and tried Grinding while listening. It went pretty well! This might be a new trend for me and it focuses your mind on something other than the grind. Also the Secret's message is one of positive thinking, the power of thought and using your thoughts to achieve your goals - the law of attraction. I kept thinking of ways I could use these techniques on the Grind... now I need to put them into place. Mostly it's about keeping good thoughts - instead of saying 'I'm so tired, I can't finish' or 'I won't get my best time', think about the good things, 'I'm enjoying this, being outside, exercising' or 'This is making me stronger now, improving my fitness' and 'I can beat my times if I want to'. We'll see if it helps!

I made it to McKinley status on the Grind Timer... that's 33 grinds (today was 34) and bascially means I've climbed 5 out of the 7 highest summits on the continents. You can visit Jason's post from a couple days ago to see the entire list of summits and their grind equivalents - www.thegrousegrinder.com .

Jason's now considering doing the Grind backwards... god help us all!

;)