Good post, Brian.

How old are you? Reason I ask, is that the windmills we choose to tilt at are fairly tied to age and stage of life. I'm fully with you in theory about extending your physical abilities into uncomfortable and even dangerous places- hell, I'm a wilderness elk hunter!- but at age 48 I'm forced by the realities of physiology to choose my battles a bit more.

My head thing is a separate issue; that just is what it is. I can report that sort of thing really gets you where you live. It's one thing to have an injured ankle; it's another to have an injured "you". Anyway within the context of pushing boundaries I have to manage the risks as well, and acknowledge reality...

heh heh.... here's an example of that (not). I did a solo backpack wilderness mule deer hunt fall of 2012... so about 11 months after I got hurt. The people at the cognitive rehab place I'd been going to were very much against it... my wife was leery... but you gotta live, right? The pack-in started at 9400 feet and there was no trail. I was heading to a GPS marker given to me by someone else who'd hunted there and I chose a bad way to get there. Hey, looked good on the sat-maps! Anyway, at one point I had to rope my pack and rifle down a cliff, then climb down after them. And so it went. VERY rugged area- here's a pic:



At any rate.... I love to "get uncomfortable" but as you and others have said, pace lines probably aren't the place to do it.

As a side note it was on that trip that I discovered how HEALING highly aerobic activity is to a brain-injured person. It was transformative. A clear turning point in the whole ordeal.