"Hey Coach"

There are people in life whose wisdom, helpfulness, teaching, and mentoring I value so much that I've ceased to identify them by their given name. Instead, they have become "Coach", "Sensei", "Sifu". In my mind, this is who they are, as much as they might also inhabit their own name, they also inhabit this title like a name. Indeed, when one day I received a phone call from my Wing Chun instructor, he simply opened the call by saying "This is Sifu". Of course. There is no one else who inhabits that name in my world. He simply IS Sifu, and not just to me, to hundreds of people, people who look up to him and honor him. Similarly, my college swim coach will always and forevermore be the one person to me who is just Coach.

So imagine my amazement and delight as, over the years, I've become simply "Coach" to many of my swimmers and athletes. In my race Sunday, which had several out-and-back sections where you could see your fellow competitors, my swimmers hollered out "Way to go, Coach" and other words of encouragement as we passed. At the outdoor pool that just opened this week, I swam with the group - just as another swimmer, not on deck with a workout. Yet still they greeted me with "Hey Coach" and parted with "Goodbye Coach".

To me, this is probably the greatest honor anyone has ever said to me in my life. It means more than any award, ribbon, or plaque ever could. If I go to my grave having passed on a fraction of the encouragement, thoughtfulness, and mentoring that my coaches, senseis, and sifu have given to me in my life, I will be extremely happy.

It May Seem Difficult At First...

I can't express how much I love this quote. Sometimes, as capable adults, we forget this very simple fact: everything is difficult at first. Maybe that's why parenthood is so great, we get to experience something that we don't remember much of: the learning process from the ground up. There's a reason that baby's first steps are a Kodak moment. But we forget how much time and energy go into mastering even those "baby steps": strengthening the core muscles by first pushing up, then sitting up, then crawling, strengthening the legs by pulling up on furniture and "cruising", walking around and holding onto things, letting go and standing and trying to balance, falling down on your bum and doing it over and over and over again.

It's hard to keep this in mind though, even though it's a lesson I learn over and over again. I recently took up playing the piano more than casually again, mostly because we finally got rid of our old out-of-tune upright and got a digital piano which is beeeyoootiful (and in tune). I don't know why I thought I could just sit down and sight-read and play easily, but guess what? Learning a new piece is difficult, and takes a lot of work. I need to sit down every day and practice (yes mom, just like you told me!) Lesson learned. Again.

I spent last night at our Wing Chun (Kung Fu) class. The drills we are doing are completely unfamiliar to me, and very different in almost all aspects from what we do in Karate. Where Karate is hard, meeting force with force, Wing Chun flows around. Where Karate is straight, Wing Chun is circular. It's so.... difficult! But as I posted awhile ago, I think everyone should be incompetent sometime. It's good to face the difficult, as long as you don't let it frustrate you. Sometimes that's a tall order, and often we stick with things we're good at because, let's face it, it's nice to feel competent and it's often uncomfortable to feel incompetent.

In the swim classes I teach, I occasionally get a person who thinks that mastering new skills should be easy. For some it is, but I do try to dispel this myth on a regular basis. Learning something new can be hard, and if people get that, they're willing to work for it. The person who continues to believe it should be easy will not last long, nor will they ever achieve competence, let alone mastery, of a new skill. Conversely, embracing the fact that it can be difficult, that it probably will be difficult, can give us the will to continue trying until we prevail. That is, until the next difficult thing comes along.

The Gift of Now

I learned an incredibly valuable lesson this week, from my teenager no less.

It didn't start off feeling like a valuable lesson though. It started off feeling more like a pain in the ass. Maybe that's how all valuable lessons start.

It was 4:30. I had just dropped off my daughter at her dance class, taken the dogs for a walk in the pouring rain, and was picking my son up, heading for a 5:00 karate class, ready to practice together. Partway to the dojo, we realize his backpack with his karate gi is not in the car. Great. I turn the car toward home, we are going to be late for class, but probably not by more than a few minutes. We get home though, and his backpack is nowhere to be seen. He comes back out of the house with a shrug.

On a whim, I ask him if, just possibly, it might actually be in the trunk of the car? Lightbulb moment. We've been driving around town with the pack in the car all this time. Sigh. Back in the car, back on the road to the karate dojo. Now we're definitely going to be late.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the dojo. Not really funny, more like amazing. The sky started turning orange, then pink, then bright purple. Then, I kid you not, purple rain started falling from the sky. I have lived almost 47 years and it was the most amazing sky I'd ever seen. Like the aurora borealis in the middle of the day - lighted sheets of rain dancing around the sky in amazing sheets of color. And of course, as a photographer, I'm going nuts because A) I'm driving on the freeway, and B) I don't even have my camera. You'll have to settle for my description and this bad photo we shot out the windshield.

At this point, I'm going nuts and I pull in to a local park and run like crazy for the high ground, hoping I can at least capture it on my phone. By the time I get to the top of the footbridge, of course, the sky has faded completely to a dark blue. The incredible photographable Best Sky of My Life is gone. I walk dejectedly back to the car.

But here's one thing that most parents know: having kids is like having little Zen teachers with you every day of your life. My son says "Well, at least we got to see it."

Bam! Yes. Yes we did. I got to experience that amazing sky. Maybe I don't get to sell a photo of it to National Geographic. But I was here on this earth to see it. And I'll never forget it. And here's the kicker. The real kicker....

If he hadn't forgotten his backpack, we would've been in class. We never would've even known it existed. This incredible miraculous bit of everyday wondrous beauty would've just occurred and we would've been none the wiser.

I'm so grateful for my forgetful son. I'm grateful for his teenage wisdom. And I'm happy to have had the Gift of Now.

Everyone Should be Incompetent Sometime

That is, I think every adult should try something completely new every few years. If you don't, how would you get to experience that moment when you realize that you know absolutely nothing. Or worse, that everything you know is wrong, all your instincts incorrect, your movements backwards and inside out. Every time you experience this, you gain countless amounts of empathy for every person you have to deal with in your life who you might otherwise be inclined to view as  incompetent themselves. Instead, you realize that we all have varying degrees of knowledge about different subjects, and at any given time in the situation of the moment, you may be the master, or you may be the newborn, helpless and incomplete.

As a black belt in karate, I could be basking in the feeling that I have Achieved Something. Arrived Somewhere. Hold some vast store of knowledge that I didn't hold before. Of course, most anyone who has achieved the rank of black belt knows that it's just the opposite. It's more like holding open a door to the vast yawning abyss of all that you don't know in your martial art. It's a dawning realization that even your entire lifetime would not be enough to master all of the skills encompassed in your study. That you have barely scratched the surface.

On top of that, my son recently convinced me to join him in studying Wing Chun, a form of Kung Fu. Now I should point out that all of my training in Karate prepares me to be absolutely incompetent in Wing Chun. I would probably be better off if I had no martial arts training whatsoever. When I'm punching, my Karate instinct is to bring my hand back into the chamber position and then fire it off using my hips and whole body to throw a big old punch, focusing on a fist that is parallel to the floor with the striking surface being the first two knuckles.

Which of course is absolutely nothing like a Wing Chun punch, which uses a vertical fist, no chamber, no big hips, short and fast, nothing of what I already know. And likewise the other strikes and blocks in Wing Chun are very different from what I have studied, leaving me basically feeling like I did on my first day as a white belt in Karate - a newborn, knowing nothing, an empty vessel. Or worse, not even an empty vessel. I first have to empty myself, which is much harder to do than you'd think.

Still, I'm loving this new focus, this new way to turn myself inside out. A new opportunity to still my mind, to unlearn and to learn anew. And when I take it back to my Karate classes, I find myself better prepared to understand what I am studying there. My focus in preparing for my 2nd degree black belt is a "package" of 10 kata (or forms), and these kata are all influenced by White Crane Kung Fu, which is different than Wing Chun, but shares some similarities. In essence, I'm learning the origins of moves that were folded into Shudokan karate many years ago.

As I study both arts, I find myself wrapping back around, like the tails of the yin yang symbol, into a place of understanding. A hard art, a soft art. An intercepting fist, a redirecting touch. Both effective in their own way, both with a place in my body and mind.

I'm learning to be empty, and I'm learning to be full.

The Ability to Break Through Our Ceiling

The oppressive grey fog that has blanketed us this week could be seen as a metaphor. There are times in life when we can't see a path upwards, when our goals feel obscured, we feel boxed in, pushed down, unable to move. All too often though, the grey matter that stands between us and our visions and dreams is quite literally all in our heads. So how do we find a way to break through, up and out to the sunny vistas that we desire for our life?

A run this weekend with my hubby gave me pause to think about how firmly we see our barriers above us, and how yet they are often the thinnest of layers, easily broken through with a little effort.

We started out in the grayest of gray cloud banks, the forest air literally dense with frozen water. In places, the trail was a skating rink of black ice, in other areas it was blanketed in fallen ice crystals from the trees above. But as we steadily worked our way up the ridgeline, the thick mist began to lighten, then to positively glow with a lovely pastel radiance. The air around us became luminous and the snow reflected the pale light so the ground beneath our feet felt like it was glowing.

All of a sudden above us through the trees, beams of golden light shot out through the mist. Although we hadn't planned on it, I knew we needed to take a detour from the trail and head upwards to the top of the butte. Hubby was not so convinced. The trail was treacherous, and as it got steeper it became increasingly impossible to navigate. But I knew that where there were sunbeams, there must be sun, so up up we went.

Sure enough, once we arrived at the top, we could see that we had broken through the layer of grey and were now on top of an ocean of clouds stretching in all directions across the valley below. What had once seemed like an impenetrable ceiling was now beneath us. Although the frigid air below had chilled us to the bitter bone, we stripped down to t-shirts at the top and basked in the warmth like lizards. Sadly, we were on a timeline, so we had only a few short minutes to enjoy the top. I inhaled deeply, taking in the defrosting earth, the unmistakable smell of green growing things, warm dirt. All the way down into the fogline, I sounded like a yoga practitioner gone bonkers, trying to savor those smells before they were frozen into so many impenetrable crystals.

So, when the grey closes in around you, and the walls above feel too thick, what gets you to break through? For me, it's often my training. It might not feel like it at the time, but every time you push your boundaries, you  in turn become less bounded. When you know that your limits are malleable, you can make yourself work all the harder to move them back.

Even on this run, the fact that we had run before, run many winding trails up and down the ridgeline, enabled us to decide on the spur of the moment to run up the mountain. Running up a mountain is not something everyone can do. Most folks would be gasping and wheezing after a minute or two of such effort. So our prior hard work paid off in allowing us this moment of freedom above the clouds.

When relatives, co-workers, or friends express doubt or dismay over your training, it's nice to remember that there are these wonderful times when it pays off in spades. When the grey ceiling that everyone thinks is immovable can actually be broken. By you.

No Winter Lasts Forever

Today while hubby and I were absolutely freezing our last toenail off on a bike ride, and cursing the weatherman who cheerily predicted high temps of 48 when it was just short of ice crystal formation, we happened to bike by an old farmhouse out in the country. It looked familiar, and in fact it was. Just this summer, we got so overheated on a ride on a 98 degree day that we stopped and soaked our heads in the sprinkler that was going on their lawn.

It's hard to believe we could ever have been that hot. Truth be told, we were probably far too close to heatstroke. But at this moment, in the frigid December air, it was almost impossible to remember what a broiling mid-summer afternoon feels like, and back in July or August I'm sure it was equally hard to remember what it could be like to be so cold.

As the end of the year approaches, and I think back on the year gone by. There were days when it felt like all the earth was spinning my way, and others when I bumped up against one frustration after another. When you're at either extreme, it can be hard to imagine the other. But all of those days together make up a year - the hot ones, the cold ones, the hard ones, and the easy ones.

As we head into the year to come, I can see some scary days ahead of me. I'm writing up a resume, something I haven't done since 1988, applying for some jobs that I may or may not get. My son is going to his first day of college in a little more than a week. My daughter is auditioning for a big role she really wants. My husband will face his first Ironman. I will prepare to test for my 2nd degree black belt. I may face a surgeon's knife if I ever want to run again. And there will be trials and tribulations that I can't even imagine right now.

On those days when it all feels overwhelming, I hope I remember this old farmhouse. How it can be frosted over one day, when not so very long ago it was a cool oasis on a long strip of blistering hot blacktop. I hope I can hold onto the knowing - that even if today is hard and the obstacles seem insurmountable, that just a little while later, the world will look completely different again.

Countdown to Ironman, Weeks 31 & 30: Social Awkwardness or Why I Train Alone

When you picture an Ironman, you picture the lone warrior, running solo down the road; the lone cyclist pumping up the hill against the sunset. But the truth of it is that most of us train in groups much of the time. And even though our event will take place as a solo effort, it will be spent in the company of thousands.

Sometimes I seek out that group training, and enjoy the camaraderie of a bunch of athletes all pushing themselves to the limit. My Masters swim group is a terrific bunch of folks who keep the boring back-and-forth of a pool workout from being anything but fun and challenging every time. But other times I'm reminded of why I avoid group situations and mostly train alone.

I think I've mentioned here that I'm a very visual person. I discovered years ago in a French class when we watched our first French movie that when a character turned their back to the camera I couldn't understand them at all. That's when it dawned on me that I was lip reading French instead of actually hearing it (which probably explains my appalling accent). Eventually I figured out that Italian was a much better language for me, no silent consonants and lots of extravagant hand gesturing.

Eventually it dawned on me that I actually have some sort of auditory processing disorder and that I mostly lip read in English as well. This might explain a lot of social awkwardness, especially in loud or chaotic environments like parties. People who meet me for the first time in such places will invariably tell me later that they either thought I was silent and stand-offish, or that I was too talkative and boorish. That's because I have a very difficult time actually understanding other people when it's noisy, so I either talk non-stop or I don't talk at all. Neither is a great approach for being friendly and polite.

So fast-forward to yesterdays group bike ride on trainers, a recipe for social disaster for me. It's largely a group of folks that I don't know well. Everyone has their hands on their handlebars, facing the same way, so I'm either looking at people's backs or their sides. Other folks are chatting, but I have a hard time understanding what they're saying, especially with the music and the sound of tires on trainer flywheels. At first I don't talk at all, then when someone starts talking to me I talk too much. I come home feeling like such a heel. Maybe other people feel the same way in social scenarios, but somehow I always feel very alone when I meet new people like that.

Sometimes when I coach my son's robotics team, I listen to the team members interacting and realize that this type of computery, engineery, roboticy brain goes hand in hand with some of the same things that I experience, and I remember what I was like at that age. Sometimes these kids talk too much or too little, talk over the top of each other. I can see their brains going a million miles an hour behind their eyes, just waiting to deliver this amazing bunch of information that's in their heads and not always listening to each other. I hope that as their coach, I can help facilitate better communication and listening skills, and I can empathize with their difficulty in this area. And maybe I can give a little love and forgiveness to the awkward teenager I once was and the sometimes awkward adult I am now.

The Need

There are times in life where my workout might feel like something I want to do, or maybe something I know I have to do but don't particularly feel like doing in that moment. And then there are the times when it's something I Need to do, with that capital "N" on Need.

I don't deal with chaos well. I'm really an introvert of the worst kind. I could possibly be a hermit in another life. It wouldn't bother me to be marooned on a desert island for awhile (as long as I had a couple of good books, and maybe some goggles and a beach towel). I don't know how I ended up being a homeschooling mom, a coach, married to an extreme extrovert who just about busts at the seams if I'm too overwhelmed to talk with him much, and now coaching my kids' robotics team, volunteering at the theatre where my daughter's been acting, etc. etc. For a deserted-island-hermit-type, I'm really in over my head right now.

Which means my workouts have been great. The more I need them, the more intense I can just push and push myself and the better it all feels. Yesterday I rode for an hour and a half, and went for a 40 minute run without blinking an eye. I remember a time when doing a sprint triathlon seemed like an impossibility. Then came a time when a sprint triathlon was a short workout day. Now an Oly triathlon is just another workout day. It never fails to amaze me what the human body can adapt to, and not just endure but actually come to crave. When I watch my cat go out and just run around for the heck of it, I realize that it's really our birthright to be able to extend the full range of our body's abilities and feel good afterwards, to not just want it but to need it.

Eagerness, The Next Level

After our karate belt tests, Albert Sensei who runs our dojo always has everyone sit down for a pep talk. You never hear the kids moan or groan about it either because he's such a dynamic and engaging speaker and what he has to say is always meaningful in a personal way. Yesterday he was talking about levels of commitment - Obedience, Willingness, and then Eagerness. He stressed that he wants all of us at the dojo to not just be willing to practice karate, or participate in anything in life (even taking out the garbage) but instead be eager to do it.

It got me thinking about my mindset and how it affects my training. For years, I was such a reluctant runner. I only ran because I had to in order to compete in triathlons. I was somewhere between obedient and willing to do it, but I was never ever eager. I would even tell people that I only ran because they had no Swim/Bike duathlons. Then a couple of years ago I decided I really wanted to become a better runner. I asked good runners and coaches about their favorite drills, I checked out books like Chi Running, and I really put some effort into my runs. I did hills, I did strides, I did form drills. And you know what? I not only became a better runner, but I really began to like running. I became, in fact, eager to go for a run. Now that I'm suffering through the rehabilitation of my sprained ankle, I've even found that I've missed running.
















There are so many areas of life that one can work on the eagerness factor. Last night, my husband and I cooked a meal together. To say I'm a reluctant chef would not be overstating the case at all. I actually love to cook and am really pretty good at it (my grandfather even owned his own restaurant, so I must have some cooking genes in there somewhere), but I hate deciding what to make and I hate the mess it makes in the kitchen (that's my engineering brain talking there). But we've decided that, in honor of our upcoming trip to Italy, Saturday nights will be "Italian Night" in our house this year. I checked out the Everyday Italian cookbook from the library, and last night Wayne tackled making a grilled seafood salad (with squid and scallops) and I made a mushroom risotto that was quite heavenly. And we really enjoyed ourselves, you could even say I was eager to get cooking! We all went to the store together and picked up fresh ingredients, stuck an Italian language learning CD in the player and repeated "buona serra" to each other as we cooked.

This week, my aim will be carrying this eagerness forward into all areas of my life. There's no real point in doing anything grudgingly, when you can actually enjoy it (even running, or cleaning up after our Italian feast.

Meet Coach Joy

When I was in Florida during the week preceding Ironman Florida, I had several conversations with other athletes (regular ol' age-groupy type athletes like me, not like Elite, headed-for-Kona-podium types) where they made pronouncements like "Oh, my coach says I have to do a 20 minute run today." or "My coach says I'm not supposed to swim until tomorrow." and sometimes even followed up by the question: "What does your coach have you doing this week?"

My answer: "Whatever the hell I want to!" If the water is blue and perfect and flat and the sun is shining, she wants me to go for a swim. If I feel like I really need to see the first part of the bike course in order to feel good coming out of T1, she wants me to bike. If my legs feel like they need a little shaking out, she wants me to run. See, my coach is Coach Joy, and she wants me to train in a way that brings me...well...Joy!

Really, I got to feeling like I must be the only person doing an Ironman without a personal coach. And the only person not consulting my charts, heartrate monitors, glucose levels, anaerobic thresholds, and god knows what other things they've come up to measure on triathletes. Now don't get me wrong, if these things really float your boat, if it keeps you motivated and totally happy to consult the numbers, the graphs, the periodization bibles, etc. then I think that's all good and fine. But it seems like for so many people, it just looks like it stresses them out. They worry too much, and some of the joy leaches away from what is really an amazing thing - the ability to move your body through space under your own power with grace and speed.

I admit it, I've been thinking about getting a coach this year. It seems like kind of a strange thing to do after 21 years in the sport, but I've come to recognize that I've still got some speed left and could be faster if I actually maybe say planned my workouts with some sort of organization and goal in mind. But my fear is that if I hire Coach Jim with all of his numbers and tables, Coach Joy might just abandon me. If I start focusing on just becoming faster, I'm not sure if I'll get as much out of it as I do right now.



















Last night I took a wonderful bike ride. I had gone out to the river with my kids and a friend and her kids and she agreed to drive them all home while I took my bike. So I got to ride on roads I'd never been on, and since the bicycling map I just bought to replace my old one turned out to be blank on the actual map side (I need a refund on that one), I just had to go by instinct and hope that the roads would connect where I thought they would and I'd be able to find a route home (I did). It was 7:30 and the sun was slanting in from the West across the fields and everything looked golden and lovely. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to get home in which time I consulted not a watch nor a monitor, but just how my body felt and how hard I wanted to push myself up and over the big hill between the river and town. If, instead of enjoying this lovely ride, I was stressing over the fact that I was supposed to be doing sprints on a flat course or hill repeats or a long slow run or something, I'm not sure if I would've enjoyed it as much as I did.

And that brings me to my theory: Anything done with joy gives you 200% of the benefits of the same action done without joy. Two people could consume the same meal, say a gorgeous Italian dinner with sausage and pasta and a garden salad. One person is savoring every bite, tasting the sun and the soil from the grove that grew the olive oil that they dip their bread in. The other person is worrying about how many carbs are in the pasta. I think the food nourishes the first person's body twice as much as it nourishes the second, even though it has exactly the same nutrients, calories, vitamins, and minerals. I believe exercise is the same. A workout done with joy gives you twice (or more) of the benefit of one done with stress. A workout you want to do can double the results of a workout you feel you have to do. So there may come a time when I'll hire Coach Jim with his times and tables. If I want to qualify for Kona in a few years, I might just give him a ring. But for now, I'm sticking with Coach Joy. Let's see.... what do I feel like doing for a workout today???? The sun is shining and the outdoor pool just opened. I think I'll swim!