Swimmer

My mom likes to tell a funny story about when I was born. I had such big shoulders that when I was about halfway out the doctor said "Look at those shoulders, this one's a football player for sure!". Except of course I was a girl. He was close though. Not a football player but a swimmer was born.

The water has always called to me. As a child, I dreamed I was a dolphin who'd been born into a human's body. I read Jaques Coustaeu and watched his TV specials, I cried when I listened (over and over and over) to John Denver's song "Calypso", the only song that moved me to tears. My parents knew that if I got into a pool, or river, or lake, or ocean, that they would have to drag me out by my heels to get me away from the water, and one of our most memorable family vacations was spent at a hotel complex in San Diego that had seven swimming pools. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Unfortunately, I lived in a reasonably small town and there was only one swim coach for both the city team and the high school team. A grumpy man with a loud shout and constantly-blowing whistle, he did not so much inspire as berate his swimmers into performing. I dropped off the city team after than one season, tried it again in high school and only made it a week or two. I always swam for pleasure, but did not seem to be destined to become a competitive swimmer.

Luck was on my side though, because in college I took a swimming class for credit that was taught by the assistant University team coach. He convinced me to walk onto the swim team, and I met the head coach who would turn out to be the single most influential person in my life, outside of my parents. After taking one look at me, he said "Shoulders. Feet. You're going to swim butterfly."

"But coach, I don't really know how to swim butterfly!"

"That doesn't matter. With shoulders like those, you're a butterflier." And so I was. That photo is me at age 20. No kidding, those are butterflier shoulders.

My love for sport was born. My coach insisted we all do a triathlon as cross-training and I found my true passion there. But although I've had twenty years now as a triathlete, running and biking as well as swimming, I will always be first and foremost A Swimmer.

Some people say biology is destiny and from a sports viewpoint I can't argue with that. This year I'm trying to become a faster runner, but one look at my body and you can see I'm optimized for water, not land. For starters, I have an extremely short torso. I can stand with my hips level with a friend who is 5' tall and we're the same height, yet when I stand up I am 5'7". I pray that high-waited pants never come back in fashion, because my waist is roughly one inch below my bust and I look like a total gomer if I ever tuck a shirt in. When I was pregnant, I looked like I was carrying a missile silo because the baby had no place to go but straight out. Along with my lack of torso, I have massively long and flexible arms and legs, capped by enormous hands and feet. I wear the same shoe size as my husband, and a full glove size larger. I can span an octave + 2 easily on the piano. Hands like shovels, feet like flippers. I trip over them running, but I can kick 50 yards in 55 seconds. Couple those long arms, shovel hands, and flippered feet with the fact that I can rotate my shoulders 360 with ease and bend my arms around like a pretzel, and you've got one swimmer's body.

My children have inherited much of my physique as well. My son at age 10 can already borrow my shoes. Yep, never let it be said I didn't give my kids a solid foundation in life (that's actually my dad's joke, he used to say that when I'd complain about my big feet). My son's shoulders actually got...ahem.. stuck during childbirth. Luckily for him, he's a boy. Boys with big shoulders are complimented, punched roundly on the shoulder with a "he's a big tough guy" kind of bonhomie. Big shouldered girls are another story. Actually, I was fortunate to hit teenagerhood in the eighties. Those of you who lived through that era of big puffy-shouldered jackets and blouses know what I mean. I just took the shoulder pads out of every shirt and jacket I bought and was happily in style for a few years. But in general, shoulders like a linebacker are not what every girl dreams of. My daughter has inherited my shoulders and I am very cognizant of the words and messages she hears about her body.

It starts so young. Carrying around my solid bruiser of a baby boy, I got no end of compliments: "What a sturdy fellow you've got there.", "That kid'll be a bruiser for sure.". Carrying around my sturdy infant girl, I got "Aren't you concerned that she's a little too chubby?" I'm not kidding! The messages we get about big strong bodies start in infancy, and that to me is sad. So when my daughter mentions that she has big shoulders, I say "Yep, you've got a really strong body like I do, and I bet you'll be a great swimmer too!" (she already is, and I can't get her out of a pool without pulling her out by her heels like my parents experienced with me). I don't tell her "you've got a figure like an oatmeal box" , which is what I was told at a young age.

And truth be told, it's not a bad thing, these big shoulders, these long legs, the hands that span an octave+, the feet big enough to ski on. I know I will never break 6 minutes in a running mile in my life, but I'll see you on the other side of the lake in no time.

Guess I Shoulda Gone to the Awards Banquet Afterall

I got this in the mail today!

After the Ironman, my family really just wanted to spend our last day in Florida together, so we hung out by the pool and walked on the beach, and I just sort of skipped the awards banquet. Afterall, Ironman had all of my time for the last 6 months, and I figured my family deserved at least one carefree workout-free day in Florida together. I had all but forgotten that I entered as an Athena as well (it was almost a year ago when I filled out the registration), so I didn't realize that I probably placed in the category until I got this 2nd place plaque in the mail today. I'm glad I made the decision to race as an Athena, and not just because I got this cool little shellacked bit of wood and metal, but because I think there are a whole lot of women out there who hear the words "150 pounds" and think "fat". Or think that if they weigh that much, they could never be an athlete.

I remember being at the airport the day after the Ironman. My husband was having a bit of a laugh at my expense, because I was probably the only Ironman in the airport not wearing the finishers shirt. Not really because I didn't want people to know I was a finisher (as if the limp wasn't a dead giveaway), but more because I managed to get a huge shirt instead of a medium, and, well, I have some aethetic complaints about the grey-and-orange motif. So there I was with my two kids, just looking like your average mom-at-the-airport, and all the Ironmen around me were telling their stories to each other. They all looked buffed, athletic, and about 8% bodyfat. As I listened in on the stories, I gradually realized that I was faster than almost all of them in the race. Not that time matters, really, when you're becoming an Ironman. It doesn't (unless of course you're Carole Sharpless getting chased down by Hillary Biscay and nabbing 2nd by a dozen or so seconds). But it was one more reminder that body size and body type are no indicator of athleticism (I don't know how many times I have to get slapped in the head with this before it sinks in). I'm an Ironman. I'm an Athena. I'm an athlete!

A Glossy Lie

Nine years ago, I was standing at the finish line of the Portland marathon, waiting for my husband to run across the line. Now, he's a pretty fit guy: at the time of the marathon he was 32 years old, 5'9" and about 170 pounds and one could easily picture him on the cover of one of those glossy sports magazines that always seem to feature buff youngish people looking vibrantly athletic.

The eye-opening thing that day though was the people who crossed the line in front of him. People of all ages, shapes, and sizes, people who ran faster than my fit poster-boy husband. There were dumpy grandmas, gangling teenagers, middle-aged executives, and a notable woman with a bust so big that it made me uncomfortable just to watch her run. That day, a realization dawned on me, something that had been kept from me all my life, something that is largely kept secret from all of us:

You don't have to be thin or buff or athletic-looking to be incredibly fit.

I know it sounds simple, but this one piece of information keeps so many people from believing that they are athletes, that they even could be an athlete. The fact that this concept is kept from people means that so many don't step out the door, don't even try. This idea affects even the lives of real, true athletes every day. I remember my neighbor once said to me, after I lost about 5 pounds (my usual amount) in the final stages of training for a half-Ironman "Wow, now you are really starting to look like an athlete!" Yes, starting to look like an athlete. Despite the fact that I had been running, and often placing well in triathlons for 17 years at that point, I was starting to look like an athlete. Why? Because I got a bit skinnier.

I am used to this, of course. I'm a big girl. I've always been a big girl. I was "a fat kid" in school, though looking back at photos, I was far from fat. I was stocky, big-shouldered, big-boned (much like my own children). I was also muscular, but that doesn't count if it means your waist or hips are bigger. So I did not self-identify as someone who could be an athlete, nor did others see me that way. I have always loved swimming, so I tried out for the swim team. The coach said I was "lazy" and would never be a good swimmer (there's also this myth out there that chubby or fat people are lazy, which is often far from the truth).

And even to this day, I deal with surprise, even from other athletes, that I am as fast as I am. I stood on the beach of a triathlon start one day and listened to three athletes behind me malign the Athena category (the female equivalent of a Clydesdale race category - to enter as an Athena, a woman has to weigh more than 150 pounds) as the "fat chicks division". They probably didn't know that the athlete in front of them (me) was registered as a bona fide fat chick. In fact, I beat the weight requirements for the category by a good 10 pounds. And that was also the last they ever saw of me, except on the run, coming toward the finish line, I spotted all three of them still heading out. In another race where I was entered as a Pro, one of the other Pros caught me just before the finish line and said (really!) "I can't believe you're this fast." In the Ironman last week, a couple of fit and hardy male athletes that I had met earlier were out on the run course when I caught up to them. We chatted for awhile and then I prepared to move on. One of them grumbled about having three hours left. When I said I was on my second loop of the run course, their jaws all but dropped.

Now I tell all of this because I think it's a vital message for people out there to get. So many people don't start exercising because they think they can't. Maybe their body type will never be thin, maybe they'll never get rid of that post-baby tummy or heavy calves or thick chest, or whatever their natural shape may be. I've seen plenty of people cross finish lines with those things. All of the fitness magazines out there give us a not-very-subtle message: if you look this way, you're fit. If you don't, you're not. I call it the Glossy Lie. Some of those people in the glossy photos are probably fit. Some of them are taking steroids and EPO and all kinds of other drugs in order to get that way. Some of them are starving themselves or throwing up or taking laxatives to look that way. Some of them are not fit at all. Some dumpy middle-aged woman out there crossing the finish line at the Portland marathon may be fitter than all of them.