Win the Hour

When our daughter was born she was seriously fussy. Like purple-faced-screaming-for-hours-on-end-inconsolably fussy. Colic, reflux, whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. What I knew would be hard (bringing home an infant) started to seem impossible, and I plagued myself with questions of "What if it's like this for months?" "How will we survive feeling like the living dead?"

My husband's solution: Win the Hour

Pulled from a book on Navy SEAL training he had been reading in his abundant free time (read: pre-arrival of said screaming infant), Chris explained that all we had to do was "win the hour."

For those not familiar with SEALs, the training is notoriously brutal (not surprising), and the third week is aptly named "Hell Week," described by the Navy Seals website as "5 1/2 days of cold, wet, brutally difficult operational training on fewer than four hours of sleep." If that doesn't sound sufficiently terrible, they helpfully add:

Trainees are constantly in motion; running, swimming, paddling, carrying boats on their heads, doing log PT, sit-ups, push-ups, rolling in the sand, slogging through mud, paddling boats and doing surf passage. Being still can be just as challenging, when you’re standing interminably in formation, soaking wet on the beach, or up to your waist in the water, with the cold ocean wind cutting through you. Mud covers uniforms, hands, faces – everything but the eyes. The sand chafes raw skin and the salt water makes cuts burn. Students perform evolutions that require them to think, lead, make sound decisions, and functionally operate when they are extremely sleep-deprived, approaching hypothermia, and even hallucinating. While trainees get plenty to eat, some are so fatigued that they fall asleep in their food. Others fall asleep while paddling boats and have to be pulled out of the water by teammates. Teamwork and camaraderie are essential as trainees alternately help and encourage each other, to hang in there and not quit.

What is one of the hallmarks of those who can survive Hell Week? Those who can survive mentally, not getting bogged down by the thought of all the impossible training ahead, but knowing that all they have to do is "win the hour." Make it through the next hour, that's all you have to do. Don't think about the next one, don't ask how you're going to make it through tomorrow, just focus on this hour. All you have to do is get through it.

Bizarrely, this was comforting as the parent of an infant - and sure enough, the hours passed, then the days and weeks, and our purple bundle of terror turned into a happy, amazingly mellow baby.  I found myself pulling back the "win the hour" motto recently, when my aunt (an active Air Force colonel) asked me to run a half marathon with her. At the time, my longest run post-baby was 5 miles, and the half was only 6 weeks away, but a "win the hour" mentality helped make the idea of 2 hour training runs less indomitable. The run was last weekend, and we had a great time - beat our goal time - and put a bug in my ear to maybe train for a marathon. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's to not get too wrapped up in thinking about all that a marathon entail. All I need to do is win the hour.