Ok, so your first question is probably "What is NESS"?
The National Endurance Sports Summit hosted their 2nd annual Summit this past weekend at Princeton University. It is a chance for athletes and interested persons to come together from across the country for a weekend of inspirational presentations, panels, and clinics about the transformative power of endurance sports to make a difference in one's own life, community, and world.
I totally took most of that from the handout, I am not that loquacious!
So, I arrived about 10 minutes early, but they weren't letting anyone into the building until 8, which was when we were supposed to start checking in, so no one was ready to check us in. They let us go into the first clinic without checking in so that we wouldn't miss anything.
The first clinic was proprioception with Shane Eversfield. Shane was amazing, he explained everything so clearly and taught us some useful balance and stretching exercises geared towards runners. Shane is an Ultra Endurance athlete who favors Tai Chi. He is also the founder and head coach of Zendurance Cycling. I now have a few stretches and exercises to do before every race, as well as every morning.
Next was Mindful Running, a Round Table group that started with Meg Waldron leading us through a meditation exercise. I'm not gonna lie, I really enjoyed it. My mind wandered a couple times, but I managed to keep it reigned in. Afterwards we all talked about our experience with the person next to us. My person was Kat Longshore, who was one of the presenters. She was awesome and we talked about being more mindful every day. She followed me on Twitter afterwards so now we are BFFs.
Then it was on to Vinnie Tortorich, a former celebrity trainer. It was supposed to be fact and fable in fitness and health. He started with making a Periscope video, which I'm in, where he told us all these questions people were asking him. Watch the video though, and there were no questions asked. Hmmmmm then he told us about his life and how he got started, and I kind of thought he was a jerk. Then he talked about his battle with Leukemia, and then he said we could ask questions. Ummmmmm so no talk was actually ever done. I was not a fan.
Next was Going Further for a Greater Cause. The original write up gave me the impression we would be learning about fundraising. It was more of a commercial for these four people who started foundations of their own. Seriously. These people were super impressive, and I was in awe of them all, but it didn't really help me at all, so I was confused about the purpose, other than giving them a chance to ask us all to help them out. One kid has run like 20 marathons, including one on every continent. He is 11. He has raised a bunch of money for people that have treatable blindness.
Ok, lunchtime.
My fellow Ambassador and I went into town and had some amazing burgers, and talked about the 2nd half of the day. Most of the seminars that were geared towards runners had been on Saturday and I noticed that we were the only people there that weren't with one of the presenters. They all seemed to love talking to each other, but I wasn't feeling very involved.
We decided to try one or two more before we called it a day.
We got back just in time for the first discussion of the second half, The Psychic Side, Untold Stores from Endurance Sports.
Ummmmmm
Okay, the moderator started off saying that sometimes we have preconceived notions about the way we feel about things, and that we aren't willing to stray from our beliefs. I totally agreed and was feeling optimistic. Then he said he was going to hypnotize the whole room, which was an epic fail, but also kind of interesting. He had one of the organizers come up and repeat words over and over and then asked us to write the words down. They were all about sleep and relaxing. He never actually said the word sleep though, but most of the room wrote that word down. I'm guessing it was the power of suggestion, which is kind of cool.
Then he opened up the floor to anyone who wanted to talk about a moment in their lives when they felt divine intervention. A bunch of the other presenters started talking about it, and then it was time to move on.
We decided to move on out to our cars and go home. It just wasn't for us. I really want to go back next year, though, and attend on the first day when it really gears towards runners.
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