The Dote #1

Hey Friends!

This is the first official send of this newsletter. If you didn’t read the “welcome email” you got when you signed up then you’ll probably be confused about what this is.

“The Dote” is just a newsletter I’m starting to keep in touch with my friends. No agenda, no schedule, no expectations. I just want to stay close to people who are important to me.

I hope it turns into conversations, connections, trips, or anything else, but for now, I guess it’s basically a long-form social media post.

Ok, there’s also a second reason. Writing is cathartic for me, but cripplingly intimidating to share. Putting myself out there is scary. Who cares about what I have to say about anything?

Well, I’m hoping my friends do, so here it goes. Props to all of you for being here.

A few little “anecdotes”:

Life Dote: The Spartan

Let’s talk about something that makes me sound manly. I ran a 21k Spartan Race last month, pretty much on a whim.

I never seriously thought I’d run a half marathon, let alone without preparing, but a friend Michael offered a free Spartan Beast ticket through his work the Monday before the event. If it had been a normal half marathon I would have said absolutely not, but the fact that I would be running on mountain trials and attempting 30 obstacles meant I could sufficiently obscure my time so no one could compare me to friends like T or Bryce, who recently ran triathlons and half marathons at a pace I couldn’t hold for more than 2 miles.

I finished in 6:17 after passing 29/30 obstacles (stupid spear throw), climbing almost 4k feet of elevation, and consuming tons of strange salts, bars, chews, and goos (I did not follow T’s “nothing new on race day” advice).

Not sure I’d do the 21k Spartan race again, but I had a great time. What it really made me want to do was a Hyrox. I’m saying it here in writing: I will be doing a Hyrox in 2025 and I’d love to do it with friends! The ideal way to do it in my mind would be to pick a cool location to travel to (Chicago, Dallas, Mexico?) and spend 4-5 days at. We get an Airbnb, run the race, then chill and hang out. Who’s in??

Family Dote: First camping adventure

At the beginning of summer and in an ambitious outburst, Hannah and I promised the kids that we would go camping this summer. We didn’t have a tent, sleeping bags, air mattresses, or any camping accessories. We didn’t even have flashlights. Not to mention I knew nothing about reserving a campsite. Turns out my Scout leaders had always taken care of that stuff.

We found a reservation for a Thursday night at Redman campground up by Solitude, packed up what we had, and did a Walmart pick-up order for the rest (including a tent) on our way up.

The weather was beautiful, the campsite was tranquil, and the kids were pumped. There was a babbling brook right next to us, we cooked s’mores on the fire, and had a great time. What we did not have was a way to inflate our air mattress. Or a non-sloped spot that could fit our behemoth 12-person tent (Walmart substituted our 10-person for a 12-person last-minute). Han and I slept on the ground with the kids and I had to get up six times in the night to pick up someone who had somehow slid all the way to the bottom of the tent and flipped upside down. So…pretty normal night of sleep for camping, I guess.

We had a blast and will do more camping in the future. Lesson learned for next time: If you’re gonna do one night, might as well do two. The marginal increase of effort to camp for a second night is insignificant compared to the effort to just get to the campsite at all.

Fitness Dote: Russian Squat Program

After the Spartan Race, what surprisingly hurt the most was my bicep tendons. My legs recovered quickly, but my biceps throbbed and ached any time I lifted anything. I thought I would be recovered after taking it easy for a couple days, but when they still hurt after a week I decided I needed to rest them completely.

About the same time, I came across some research that encouraged me to increase my max back squat. I was researching olympic weightlifting strength programs (as I do) and read about back squat to snatch and clean & jerk ratios.

My 190lb max snatch is nowhere near 66% of my 365lb max squat, but my reasoning was that if I needed to rest my arms for a week or two and if a higher back squat would make me better, then I should just work on increasing my back squat.

Enter the Russian Back Squat Program. There are thousands of squat routines meant to build your 1RM. Most of them are pushed by an influencer with a questionable coaching background or a coach who needs to make money. Except the Russian Back Squat Program.

The program is a simple, publicly available 12-week program, tested by time and by thousands of athletes. It prescribes heavy squats 3x per week based on percentages, and it’s supposed to increase your 1RM by 5% by the end. I found a PDF of the reps and percentages, then turned it into a spreadsheet to track for myself.

As of writing this I am 12 sessions in and amazed at what I’ve been able to maintain. Half the time I start the workout I think I’m going to fail, but I haven’t missed a lift yet.

My real goal by the end of the year is to be able to snatch 205lbs, so I’m hoping this will help me get there!

(And also, my arms are fine now, but I’m still going to finish out the program)

Well, that’s probably long enough for a first email. Can’t make this too intense on the first send. Thanks for being here!

-Stephen