Men's Voices - I
Pete Tiarks; Walking the Wall
As you probably know, we’re a collective of men (*plus one Sarah) of a similar mindset - military, fighters, ultra endurance athletes.
We’re a selfless, well oiled, incredibly high performing, elite team
— Leon, Co-founder
Kellogs’s don’t do testosterone for breakfast but if they did, it’s probably what we’d have a bowl of each morning.
If it wasn’t for one word, this group would be another bunch of confident Bro’s arseholes.
*Sarah isn’t a plus one really. She’s the same as everyone else in the group. It just sounds like we’re not including her if we call ourselves a ‘men’s group’. We are a ‘men’s group’…we just happen to have one woman in it!
Selfless
Selfless; easy to say and nigh on impossible to do.
It’s a good job we’re not afraid of setting ambitious goals - the double Bob Graham is our latest attempt at the near impossible.
Because that word ‘selfless’ is the linchpin of what we do…it’s important that we don’t just post a highlights reel of all our physical endeavours.
To that end, we’ve asked the guys to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily be keen on doing…like talking about themselves on camera.
We’ve also asked them to write…creatively, vulnerably, openly…hopefully they’ll learn something about themselves in the process but more importantly they’ll help the unknown reader understand themselves that much better.
All of this is with a view to pop the lid on what ‘we men’ are thinking on the inside, in order to help other men. Could we even help younger generations of young men coming into manhood?
“I’m really getting into stretching…you should try it!” — A guy in his late forties advising me in my early twenties to get into stretching…which of course I nearly fell on the floor laughing at.
Without further ado, here’s Pete Tiarks, with Team Poles & Crocs very first submission for a piece of creative writing…
Walking the Wall
About twelve years ago I was going through a little bit of a life crisis. I'd just decided not to be an academic, I was struggling to find a different career, and my first kid was on the way. At about the same time, my dad suggested we walk Hadrian's Wall.
It was either a very lucky coincidence or, more likely, a typically discreet offer of help from my dad. Over the course of the walk, I got to talk to him about all my worries, and while we didn't make them go away (I took one job rejection on a call just outside Carlisle!), they did seem more manageable by the time we reached the end. Just by talking it through we'd managed to reframe them, so they looked a bit less like looming catastrophes and a little more like problems you could break down one step at a time.
It wasn't that I hadn't talked to anyone about this before. It wasn't even like I hadn't talked to my dad about this before. But walking and talking was a lot more effective. If it's already obvious to you why that would be the case, you can probably stop reading now, and wait for the next post where I actually start talking about Poles n' Crocs, and running the wall, and how those things were useful to me. But if you're sceptical, keep reading. To get any use out of an ultra-running group dedicated to mental health, you need to be down with the premise that heading outdoors to walk and talk is a useful thing to do. In the rest of this post I'm going to try and explain why I think it is.
I can half-recall from a Huberman podcast that there are all sorts of scientific reasons for this, mostly to do with the connection of the visual cortex to the rest of the brain, and how the visual perception of movement through nature causes relaxation etc. etc. So apparently the science just does say that walking is a good way to get talking. And intuitively this feels right: it's easy to tell yourself a just-so story about how, by getting out in nature, you're getting back to your animal roots. But I'm not actually an expert in any of the science, and I find functionalist evo psych stuff pretty silly. So instead of focusing on that, I'm going to offer a subjective explanation of why it works for me, and why it might work for you. So...
If you're anything like me, a lot of what stops you talking things through is the tendency to overthink. If that sounds familiar, then you'll also know that 'overthinking' can come in a lot of different flavours. The first go I have at talking through whatever is bothering me, I'll probably worry about what my problems say about me as a person. Having a problem - let's go with my example of not being able to get a job - feels like having a weakness, which feels a lot like having something wrong with me. If I can't get a job, it's a pretty short step to wondering what this says about me, and how much use I am to the world. And even if I know that talking it through may help, I might pay an awful lot of attention to how I'm presenting the problem. Particularly if I'm talking to someone I respect. That sort of caution can quickly become paralysing: either I don't talk, or I'm being so careful about what I'm saying that I never get to the heart of the problem.
If I get over worrying about how my problems make me look, I can still spend a lot of time examining the problem before I actually want to say anything about it. Is what I think is bothering me what's really bothering me? I'll often decide to ponder it a little bit more before I open my mouth and commit. Having pondered, I'll likely get on to a new train of thought that seems relevant. There's a fair chance I'll just start talking about that new thing, much to the confusion of my listener, who hasn't been part of the inner dialogue I've been having with myself. They can't see how what I'm talking about relates to my issue, and so they're not going to be much help addressing it.
Eventually, at some point, I'll probably remember all the things that are on the day's to-do list that I should now be doing (or, more likely, I'll remember that I really need to get round to writing a to-do list). And at that point, the conversation is over.
Now that I've set the issue up this way, you can probably see how walking around in the outdoors helps with it. In the first place, it means that I've got some dedicated time: if I need to answer that email, or book a dentist's appointment for one of the kids, or whatever, then I'm just going to have finish the walk first. Until then, I might as well be talking.
Having set myself a walk to do is calming on a slightly deeper level as well. The best way I can explain this is by saying that the anxious part of my mind that wants to overthink things is like a guard dog; if there's something around that makes it feel threatened, it's going to start yapping. If I'm going to smuggle all this uncomfortable talk past it, I need to throw it a bone, and finishing the walk is a pretty good bone. The dog doesn't need to worry about whether I'm being productive either. The walking is one of the things on my to-do list, and I am at least doing it.[1] If I talk as well, I am now being super productive and doing two things at once!
Finally, there is just something weirdly egalitarian about walking together. Whatever else each of you are to the world, while you're walking you're both doing the same thing, at the same pace, with the same purpose. My dad is great - we're close, and he's always talked to me as an equal. But even in this best of circumstances, the walking somehow made it easier to believe that anything I said was going to land the right way.
So, my point is that the talking helped, and the walking enabled the talking. I remember us both being surprised by how hard the walking was, though. I'd conditioned myself for fights before, and done the running for it. But the business of just being on your feet continuously for eight hours a day, over the course of a few days, was tiring in ways I hadn't really anticipated. It was enjoyable, and it was great to have some son-father time but, by day five, when we made it to the finishing point - the Kings Arms in Bowness - we were sore, and tired, and well and truly ready to spend the next day doing something other than walking.
We were also feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. We'd planned the route and stops, stuck to that plan, and ended up completing something that felt reasonably difficult. So we were a little deflated when the landlord told us that the last guy to stay at the Kings Arms after finishing the wall had run whole thing in under twenty-four hours.
I'm not sure when I decided I needed to do that too. I can't believe it seemed like a sensible - or even feasible - thing to do that day. There was a moment, at some point after my hips started to feel better, where I thought: "Fuck that guy. How hard can it really be, anyway?"
Best Regards,
Pete Tiarks Poles & Crocs Team Leader
[1] Weirdly, this works even though the main reason the walk is on my to-do list is to distract the dog. I guess the dog's not that bright.
Running up mountains and stepping into rings isn’t half as terrifying as beginning the process of opening up.
Please give the lads your encouragement and comments of support! We just might get some momentum going with you behind us!
David Venus Poles & Crocs CEO
Great read ! ❤️