Build Community by Doing Long, Hard, Boring, & Monotonous Work
It's a silly workout.
It’s long. It’s hard. It’s boring. It’s monotonous.
And, I love it.
Well, in line with Tony Horton, “I hate it…but I love it.”
I made the announcement in the early part of November that our Masters swim team, T2 Aquatics in Naples, FL, would be doing the 2nd “Annual” 100 X 100 Thanksgiving workout. This year’s version was unofficially called Burn the Bird as we were doing it the day after Thanksgiving.
The Premise: 4 lengths of the pool—100 yards—done 100 times on an interval of 1 minute and 30 seconds. Swimmers who couldn’t make the 100s could do 75s. If someone couldn’t do 75s, they could do 50s.
No matter which way you slice it—100s, 75s, or 50s—it’s 2 hours and 30 minutes of long, hard, boring, and monotonous work.
The Goal: Create a collective entity—a community—targeting the same goal.
This year, to make the offer even sweeter, I told them I would bring coffee and doughnuts for after.
A little extrinsic motivation can sweeten anything for a group of intrinsically-driven people.
The 100 X 100 workout was something that a swim group in Minnesota put on for swimmers every year on Thanksgiving Day. Since my wife and I were new transplants to Naples, FL last year around Thanksgiving time, I was craving anything that felt like home—something that felt like tradition.
For me, that’s the best part of Thanksgiving — the traditions.
So, I suggested to one of the T2 Aquatics coaches that we should do the workout.
To my surprise, he thought it was a great idea.
He put the idea forth to a bunch of self-motivated swimmers who arrive at the pool four times a week to jump into the water by 5:30am and they, too, liked the idea.
The momentum started to build.
On November 25th, 2020 we did the 1st T2 Aquatics 100 X 100 workout.
Sometimes traditions are born by taking a risk and offering something uniquely new to a group: even if it’s long, hard, boring, and monotonous work.
This year I had been looking forward to the workout for weeks. But, as my dad said in his last sermon before he retired, “the best way to make God laugh is to make a plan.” We recently put our 10-month old son in daycare. After a few weeks of snot, a persistent cough, and a fever of 102, we took him to see the pediatrician.
Official diagnosis: Daycare funk.
While he smiled through the weeks of being sick, my wife and I faired less well when it hit us the week of Thanksgiving. We exclaimed on numerous occasions, “what in the world did he bring home!?!”
As my wife and I were getting ready for bed on Thanksgiving night I looked at her after fruitlessly trying to blow my nose and said, “well, this seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago!”
When the alarm went off the next morning, the thought of the work that was in front on me was overwhelming. The dose of NyQuil the night before was making the coffee work extra hard. So, I texted my friend, Tim:
“Hey, let’s do 100 X 100 the day after Thanksgiving.”
He quickly texted back, “Jennifer already said to me this morning ‘will you be this grumpy all day?’”
Well, maybe it wasn’t just me.
There was solace in that: knowing that the long, hard, boring, and monotonous work in front of me was heavy on someone else’s mind.
So, I headed to the pool.
When I got there, people were starting to gather around their typical lanes.
“Ready for this?” I asked.
“I was cursing you when I woke up this morning, Reed!” Kim said with a smile.
The anticipation of the workout was having the same effect on everyone and yet, like me, people kept showing up. There were some out-of-town folks. There was some locals that don’t normally come. I looked down the pool and there were over 30 people ready to jump in the water at 5:30am the day after Thanksgiving all set in their own way to Burn the Bird.
And then we just started.
We would hit certainly meaningful markers and people would make comments or do certain things: every 5, every 10, time markers, the halfway point, 20 to go, 10 to go, 1 to go.
Everyone had their own way of breaking them up.
There were hoots and hollers.
There were cheers.
There were little games being played to get through the monotony.
And there was camaraderie—community—simply because there was a collective entity targeting the same goal.
T2 Aquatic Masters swimmers post 100 X 100 on November 26, 2021.
And, in the end, there were doughnuts and coffee.
Simple doughnuts and coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts because that’s what’s available in Naples, FL. Had my wife and I been in the Twin Cities we likely would have brought some unique doughnuts from one of the many unique little places that the Twin Cities has to offer. But, Naples, FL is a different entity.
And, it really didn’t matter where the doughnuts or coffee were from.
It didn’t matter that it was simple, plain old Dunkin’ Donuts.
What did matter was that there was a group of people who had just accomplished some silly workout—a workout that involved long, hard, boring, and monotonous work—that they had been thinking about for a few weeks.
And, in doing long, hard, boring, and monotonous work—and seeing it through to the end— there were stories to share.
So, we all stuck around for a bit longer and shared those stories with each other. And, in the process, strengthened a community—and an odd tradition—that is meaningful to each and every one of us in some unique way.