Stoke. Encourage or incite (a strong emotion or tendency). Stoked. Excited or euphoric.
In the skateboarding world you will hear these words pop up a lot. We get “stoked” when we see someone do an awesome trick and then we want to try it. Or we try to “stoke” skateboarding and get other people to come out and skate with us. Example: “Dude, I was so stoked when you ollied off of that bank that I just had to try it myself.”
I was thinking this past weekend that these words really do fit well into the Lift Heavy Run Long community. Actually that’s probably an understatement. These words could fit right into our mission statement. If we had a mission statement. Do we have a mission statement? I’ll have to check on that. 🙂 Anyway, it’s right there in the tagline of the podcast on iTunes: “Inspire. Be Inspired.” That’s our thing, that’s what we want and that’s what we hope to do. Inspire or be inspired. Stoke and get stoked!
We come up with crazy ideas. Run 100 miles, complete a triathlon, deadlift 400 pounds, or maybe even learn how to throw a hammer. Maybe we want to go compete in some kind of competition. We sign up and we go do it. We might even bring a camera and a microphone. The sure thing is that we are going to have a lot of fun and make lots of great memories.
It seems to be infectious too because once we sign up, it seems to always snowball. Other people see what’s happening and they want to get in on it so they sign up too and join the fun! You can’t help it really. It’s fun to watch people do cool stuff, and once you do you want to have some of that fun too.
I remember the first time I took Wilson out to run on the trails. We all ran and he kinda stayed behind and did his own thing. When we finished, we waited and waited for for him to finish. We started to worry. I was terrified. I just knew he was going to come out of the woods and come punch me right in the face. It turns out he made a wrong turn, and ended up running like 13 miles or something when we had just set out to run like 6 or 7.
He wasn’t mad though. In fact, I think that’s when he got stoked on this trail running thing. It wasn’t long after that he signed up for the 50K at Sylamore. Even when he did that I was worried, but he made it work. I was stoked, and I want to stoke that fire in more people for ultra running and CrossFit. I think that’s what we are all about. Inspire. Be Inspired. Stoke. Get Stoked. Whatever you want to do, get fired up about it. Get stoked.
-Rev