Unscared of Hills

I used to be scared of hills on my bike. I'm not anymore. So many cyclists are worried by hills, but I've finally made my peace with them, come to embrace their challenge, and even love them. The only reason I can think of is just that I've done a lot of them in the last few years.

Crossfitters like to use the word "Unscared". I like it. It's stronger than "unafraid": Being scared of something is just a notch worse than being afraid of it Maybe it's a bit better than being terrified, but "Unterrified" doesn't have the same ring to it.

So I was scared of hills. When I first started riding around here, there was this Big Hill on one of my regular rides. I always dreaded that Big Hill. I knew it was coming, steeled myself for huffing and puffing my way to the top, and was relieved when it was over.

Here's the MapMyRide.com hill profile for that ride:

That Big Hill in the middle is about 75 feet tall. I used to have to stand on my pedals to get to the top.

Here's one of the rides I did recently:

The hill you climb (twice!!) on this ride is over 3,000 feet tall. Yeah, no kidding. A 75 foot hill used to have me quaking in my bike cleats, and now I can toss off 6,000 feet of climbing in a day and still get up the next morning and go for a run.

How did I come to love hills? It's been a gradual attitude adjustment on my part. Firstly, somewhere along the way I stopped being scared of just plain old working hard. When you see a hill, you know it's going to be hard. Assuming it's not so steep that you're in danger of falling over (I have worried about that on a couple of them), the worst thing that will happen is that you will go really slow, it will be hard, and it will take a long time. That's not so very terrible, once you get used to the notion.

Secondly, I decided to prepare for the hills I would encounter in racing by doing even harder hills in training. One year I trained for a Half-Ironman that was reputed to have a 14% grade. So I went out and found a hill with a 15% grade, and went up it repeatedly. By the time I got to the race, I knew I could do it. I was Unscared.

Lastly, this year in training for the Leadman (two weeks away, but who's counting, right?) and training for last year's Ironman Coeur d'Alene, I knew I would have to do a lot of climbing in my training rides, so I've sought out the hilliest rides around, deliberately. Going out and looking for hills to do sounds crazy, but once you start embracing them, hills lose the terror factor and become your friend. I'm still not the fastest hill climber on the block, but I can do them and I'm no longer scared.

And when you get to the top, you get to look out over the universe, see down to where you started out, and know that you earned that view.

The Antidote to Discouragement

Whenever I get down or feeling sorry for myself, I find that the best remedy is to seek out something or someone inspiring to remind me that, as Richard Bach says "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours".  Here is this week's remedy. Contracting polio at a young age, Dergin Tokmak learned to walk on his hands, and after seeing a movie about breakdancing, became a dancer. He integrates his crutches and incredibly strong upper body into his amazing dance moves. This is well worth a watch, and reminds me that whatever is getting me down in the present moment is simply something I have not yet set my mind to overcome.

Blah, said Toad

Frog and Toad was one of my favorite books as a child, and then again as a book to read to my own kids. There are so few books for small children that don't want to make me scream internally when reading them to my kids (Bite me, "I Love You Forever").  But Frog and Toad is different. I think every state of life can be summed up by one Frog and Toad story or another. When I'm feeling down in the dumps in the middle of winter, I think of the story where Toad is at home hibernating under the covers and Frog keeps trying to wake him up. Toad just says "Blah". That's how my January has gone so far.

I don't know if it's the short daylight hours, the fact that our "holiday" was filled with activity and house guests, the walls of the house closing in on me, or some other random thing, but I've felt just Blah these past couple of weeks. I have to say, it gives me a lot of empathy for people who struggle with depression on an ongoing basis. It's really not fun.

Luckily, my workouts have not been suffering, I've been "gettin her done" as they say. Punching the clock, putting in the miles. Not really enjoying a lot of it, but doing it anyways. When it's cold or windy or rainy, it would be easier to pull a Toad and just pull those covers back over my head.

Couple the "Blahs" with the usual anxiety of the Robotics season - will our team get their act together, can I help them make it through the season, is there something I'm forgetting that will cause them a setback? and you also get a recipe for insomnia. Which I'm sure doesn't help the blahs. There's nothing like that feeling of staring at the ceiling at 3:00 am with a million things running through your head to really make your next day unproductive.

So what can I say that's useful out of all of this? Maybe that when you're feeling like this, it's more important than ever to have routines in place. Routines that you set down in good times, in easy times, can carry you through the hard times. If you're already grocery shopping for healthy food on a weekly basis, then it's not that hard to just keep doing it. If you're already exercising, getting to bed at a decent hour, and taking care of yourself, then at least if you just keep on keeping on, you can make it through. If you don't have those routines in place and you fall into a dark time, it's very hard to start doing something good for yourself at that point.

So here I am, Toad-like, blinking at the light and plodding on with life. I know I'll make it through. I know in another couple of months when the weather is warmer and the schedule is easier, I'll be okay again. Just wake me when it's spring.

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get......Singing???

I'd like to say that this weekend's lake swim was wonderful, beautiful, peaceful, and fun. The sun was shining (after weeks of hideous rain, that alone should've made rainbows come out my ears), the lake was smooth, and I had eight of the funnest people in the world to swim with. I wish I could say I enjoyed myself, but I can't.

Even after twenty-five years of triathlons and open-water swimming, I can still have a day in the water that leaves me feeling panicked, exhausted, cold, and gasping for breath. I can honestly say that this was one of the toughest swims I've ever done.

And I really didn't expect that. Not at all.

Maybe it was the fact that the water was super cold. Like take-your-breath-away cold. Maybe it was that my bad arm was achey from Thursday's karate practice where we did a lot of joint locks. Maybe it was the fact that I ran out of iron pills and forgot to buy any more so my anemia has been creeping up on me. Maybe it was all that. But I flailed, I gasped, and for an hour of swimming I fought that panicky TURN AROUND NOW brain directive.

So how did I get myself through it? By singing cheesy Turn-of-the-(19th)-century songs. I grew up in a family that had an old-fashioned Melodrama theatre in a touristy Gold Rush town. So I know all the words to Daisy, Daisy, 5'2" Eyes of Blue, or I'm Looking Over A Four-Leafed Clover by heart. I can sing harmony on Down By The Old Mill Stream, or dance the Charleston to Dark Town Strutter's Ball. I pulled them all out of my head and more as the minutes scrolled by and one arm after another followed each other into the water, and I told myself in my head not to panic every time I breathed and it didn't seem like I was getting enough air.

I've never been so relieved to stand on the shore. Most of the time, I love the water so much you practically have to drag me away, but this time was different. In sports, we all face moments like this. Times when we really just want to lie down and quit. We all have to reach deep inside for some mental reserves to make it through. But that's when you know you're really an athlete, when you face the fire and keep on going.

Here's hoping the next lake swim will have me singing a different tune!

I Am Not Climate Controlled

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. That's the way the song goes. As humans, we strive for comfort. That's why we have recliner chairs with cupholders. No, with coolers built-in. That's why we have "room temperature" and down comforters and towel racks that heat your towels. Not that I have those, mind you. My towels are usually clammy from being dumped on the floor in a heap by whatever child took a shower last and "forgot" to hang them up. Simply a dry towel would be a luxury around here. Did I mention that I really hate soggy towels?

So why should we make ourselves uncomfortable? Why should we go out in the pouring freezing rain when a room temperature room beckons us homeward? I think it's a good idea to occasionally push ourselves to be uncomfortable (and I don't mean just using soggy towels). To experience a greater range of existence than a narrow band of clean, dry, climate-controlled living. What is it like to feel the rain on your face? Dripping down your back? A cold breeze across your neck? Your feet sloshing through ankle deep puddles? It's a sensory feast that's not entirely as unpleasant as it sounds. Just like our muscles aren't very strong if they're only worked in a narrow range of motion, our brains and our mental resilience don't get worked very hard in today's easy existence. Perhaps it is worth building up a great range of tolerance to stimuli outside the range of normal.

When I'm out in the less-than-ideal weather and I feel my brain starting to get into complaining mode, I use a technique of sensory "noticing" that helps me focus on what I'm really feeling instead of just being miserable about it. I start with a series of open-ended sentences and fill them in as I go:

"I hear...."
"I smell...."
"I see...."
"I feel..."

So on a day like today, it might go something like

"I hear birds in the trees"
"I smell wet leaves and fir needles"
"I see the three golden leaves left on a bare tree"
"I feel a light breeze coming from the east"

When I get to the end of my sensory inventory, I start over again at the top, marveling at how things change as I go along. Sometimes we barely even notice our surroundings, especially when we're too busy wallowing in misery at the fact that the weather had the gall to rain on our Sunday long run. When we turn our attention outward instead of inward, what might at first seem simply miserable can turn into an opportunity to actually fully experience the world around us.

The next time you're tempted to just go to the gym when the weather outside is frightful, stretch yourself a little and see what it feels like to suffer the elements. After all, we can always come home to that delightful fire (or hot shower, or warm cup of tea), a luxury that most humans throughout time have not had.