A Summer Without Racing

So with that first and last hurrah, my racing season is officially done for the year. I haven't gone a summer without racing since I was pregnant with my almost-9 year old. I've promised my hubby that we'll take this summer and focus on bike touring with the kids, gardening, building a front porch onto our house, and getting everything ready for our bike trip in Italy in the fall. It's not like I'm complaining or anything, but I'm not quite sure I'm going to know what to do with myself. It's one thing not to race when you're pregnant, big as a beachball and too uncomfortable to run ten paces, it's another thing altogether when you're feeling froggy and full of energy.

I definitely have no plans to stop swimming, biking, and running. But I've always used my races as a focal point for my training. I'm not the kind of person who can go to a gym and hit the treadmill and exercise just for some nebulous goal like "staying in shape" or "having a good body". Good health, good shape, and great fitness are all side-effects of the triathlon lifestyle in my book. Hubby has started running with a running group, which is great for Mr. Talkative, who really loves having the company out there on the road, but it's not my thing. Still, his group is doing one of those 200-mile relay thingies and I'm going to be on their team for that. Which means I'll have to at least keep enough running fitness to go three 6-mile legs in the altitude (it starts at 7,000 feet) and heat of August. And swimming is never a problem because I so love swimming outdoors in the summer. My parents had to drag me by both feet out of any body of water larger than a puddle when I was a kid and I haven't changed much since then. And of course, we'll be on the tandem bikes all summer. So I guess I can make it through.

But you know, when I'm reading all of the triathlon blogs I love to follow, I'll be jealous of those race reports rolling in through the summer months. There's something so beautiful about testing your body out against a course and the other athletes out there. I don't know what it is, because there are many times when it doesn't feel all that terrific in the moment, and you're asking yourself why the heck you're not still in bed, but in the end I'm always grinning when I cross that finish line. I'll let you know how my withdrawals go...

The Meat is Rotten But the Vodka Is Good

When I was taking computer science classes in college, we read about a language translation program that had been developed. To test it, they ran some standard phrases through different languages and then back to English, and the results were hysterical. One that I still remember is that the phrase "The flesh is weak but the spirit is strong", which got translated into "The meat is rotten but the vodka is good." All humor aside, the original phrase could easily describe my triathlon yesterday.

Yep, I definitively proved that you really can't train to do an Olympic triathlon well on only about 5 hours a week. If you only swim once a week, have only done one bike ride over 25 miles this season, and have only a couple of 6 mile runs under your belt, guess what? An Olympic tri is going to hurt like hell. Interestingly enough, since I do a lot of other sports like karate and volleyball, and actually train about 15 hours a week total, my cardiovascular system was just fine. My heartrate never moved out of the aerobic zone, but my sports-specific muscles just couldn't respond the way they would've if I had been training properly.

Even the swim hurt. Now that's a new one on me! Usually I love the swim, it feels great to be out there in the lake and I just cruise along having a good time. But with coaching Team in Training taking up my other pool night and my Saturday morning Master's swim time, I've only been swimming Monday nights. Obviously. Not. Enough. The bike ride was gorgeous, but plainly just hurt. And people passed me on the bike who never pass me on the bike, {sigh}. My feet, still frozen from the 60 degree water and chilly morning bike ride were completely numb as I started running. I had to walk much of the first mile to let them thaw, because I was running oddly and my injured ankle started really hurting.

Now the good news is that this race, The Duck Bill Thrill is really a lovely little early season Olympic distance here in the Pacific Northwest. It was mostly local athletes with a few driving down from Portland. The field was overall quite fast, with mostly experienced athletes (the kind who get out and train in our lousy spring weather) making their early season appearances. The course was just gorgeous. The bike ride is rolling, with bubbling creeks, lake views, and even a ride through one of the area's many covered bridges. The run is also rolling, after a straight section right across the reservoir's dam. It's pretty and forested and I think ordinarily this would be a great course for me, rolling hills usually make for a strong race for me when I'm in decent condition for it.

All told, my time was relatively terrible: 2:49, when my end-of-season Oly last year was 2:28, yikes! But I didn't do too badly overall - 2nd in my age group and something like 12th or 13th woman. So this course is definitely not a super fast one, especially this early in the season and being wet on the hills and corners meant the bike course was slower than it could've been. The swim course was definitely marked long, and I think the run course was a little long too.

So overall, a lovely race, a gorgeous course, and one I should definitely put the time in to train for next year. I think I could really enjoy this race instead of having it, in the words of the John Cougar Mellencamp song which was, not surprisingly running through my head during the race, hurt so bad.

My New Lake Buddy

Last weekend was my mom's birthday, so we met up with her halfway between her house and ours (about an hour and a half drive for each of us) at the lovely Umpqua river. The great thing about my mom is you'd never know she's 67 years old, certainly not by her energy level! We met up, went for a beautiful hike to a waterfall, then we found this cute little reservoir and she pulled her kayak off of her car and took the kids kayaking around the lake. Mackenzie decided he wanted to try it out on his own and she let him borrow her kayak. He proceeded to pretty much monopolize it for the rest of the afternoon. By the end of the day, he was moving a kayak to the top of his next birthday list.

The fun bit was when I went for a swim and he kayaked alongside of me. He was quick to point out that one advantage of getting him his own kayak would be that whenever I want to do open water training, he could paddle along next to me. I have to admit, it was really fun to swim and watch him smoothly maneuvering through the water next to me. My mom is all for the idea. Being a mom (and I do understand now!) she always worried about me going out into these lakes by myself and swimming. You know, the Loch Ness Monster might eat me or something. And my hubby who is much more of a mother hen than I'll ever be pretty much feels the same way about it. So I've taken to scanning CraigsList for a Swifty kayak like my mom's, and maybe I'll have a little buddy to head out on the lake with me this summer!

So, here's to my mom: 67 years young, a hiking, kayaking, fun-filled dynamo of a lady. She's inspired me in so many ways, and she's a great friend.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Long Course Mornings

5:30 am, the alarm goes off. What to do, what to do.... hit the snooze, turn it off, get up and go swim.... It's hard to believe, but I got up to go swim! Now, you have to know that I don't swim in the early morning, it's an aversion developed in way too many college swim workouts at ridiculous hours in the Ante Meridian. But my friend K. talked me into it, wooing me with word of fifty meters of outdoor long course pool awaiting us.

Actually, it was glorious. Starting before the sun comes up, the steam rising off of the pool and all of those arms flashing through the water. The bottom of the pool looks periwinkle blue in the early morning light (is there anyone else who can't say the words periwinkle blue without cracking up over Brad Pitt's hysterical turn as Mickey in the movie Snatch: "And she's terribly partial to the periwinkle blue, boss.") I'd almost forgotten how fun it is to count 100's in just two lengths instead of four, and how nice it is to smell the fir trees in the early morning air and watch the flash of sunrise sparkle off of the water drops. Yeah, it even made the 5:30 wake up call worthwhile.

The Pressure Cooker

Bonny commented here with this question, and I think it's a really good one to think about so I'm posting it here for pondering:

do you have any advice for a 15yo girl who has trouble performing under pressure?

Her ability is REALLY *there.* Obviously developing still. She's only 15 LOL. But she doesn't do well under pressure. I think that most of her obstacles are mental ... and I'd love to see her work through some of this (and I know that any help she gets isn't going to heard if it's from her mama ...)

I've been actually thinking on this topic a fair bit lately, since all of my Team in Training folks are quickly approaching their Big Day and I've heard from more than one of them that nerves are starting to become a factor. I have a very distinct memory of the first time I felt really good and nervous and my mom told me I had "butterflies in the stomach", an expression I had never heard before. At the time, all I knew was that I hated the feeling, as I suspect most of us do. I also knew that I myself didn't perform well under pressure. As a kid, I could play something absolutely perfectly in practice and get all worked up and blow it in a performance. It took years and years to realize that becoming nervous under pressure can be a good thing once you learn how to channel that energy into the right direction.

In general, the folks who have the most trouble performing under pressure are perfectionists. We struggle because we so want everything to be just right. It can be an awesome trait to have, because perfectionists often work very hard at whatever they're doing, and can really blow you away with their abilities. On the other hand, perfectionism can be crippling when we let it get in the way of just doing something, even if it's not done perfectly. I love some of the things The Flylady has to say about this, especially her little mantra about housework done imperfectly still blessing the house. You can really extrapolate that to just about anything - anything we do imperfectly is still a blessing. It's hard for us perfectionists to recognize that, however. As a kid and a teen, I could occasionally be seen to fake something, anything (illness, injury, dog eating my homework) to excuse the fact that I hadn't done something perfectly. It can take many years, or even decades maybe for us to learn that it's okay. We can just do something. That's why I love bowling. I totally and utterly suck at it, and what's even better: I don't care. Bowling is the first thing that really saved me from perfectionism.

If we can get past a fear of making mistakes, then we can start channeling our nervous energy into the kind of energy that carries us through a race or performance. One technique that I use to direct that energy is that of positive visualization. In the days or weeks leading up to an event, whenever I become nervous about it and get that butterfly feeling, I stop and take the time to visualize myself performing in the event exactly as I would like myself to. If it's a race, I visualize myself feeling strong and smooth, moving through my transitions with ease, feeling relaxed and loose on the course, moving across the finish line with energy left to spare. The real key in visualizations for me is to make them as specific as possible. I really use my imagination to see everything exactly as I want it to go.

Another thing I find really helpful is to have little mantras that I repeat to myself. One from my competitive skydiving days is this little conundrum: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, therefore slow is fast. That keeps me from getting amped up and wasting energy in random directions. Another mantra that I use whenever I start letting myself get whiny about whatever situation I'm in is: It's a privelege and a gift to be here today. So you're running and it's a million degrees outside and you have a blister and your Accelerade is sloshing around in your stomach and you want to puke?? Well, it's still a privilege and a gift to be doing that. It is, it really is. Sometimes it takes a few times of repeating that one for it to sink in to my brain though, LOL. Sometimes I have to remind myself of the passage in The Hiding Place where Corrie's sister Betsy says a prayer for the fleas of the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Now there's a book to remind one of what to be grateful for.

So these are the things I'll be talking over with my TNT folks in the upcoming weeks: letting go of perfectionism, creating positive visualizations, using mantras to remind ourselves of what is really important. Hopefully some or all of those will be helpful.

And This is Why I Coach

This last week I've done marker sets with my swimmers, both my Team in Training group and with the Swim Conditioning folks I'm teaching. It's always so very cool to see how much people improve and how excited they are! One of these years, I'm going to video every swimmer when they start with me, and then video them again six months down the road just so they can see the difference. I see it from the pool deck, but it's tough to put into words and "you're doing great!" just doesn't do it justice.

One of my TNT swimmers took two minutes off of her 500 yard timed swim in just a few weeks, another just blew right past his estimated time in the triathlon we both did this last weekend. Two of my guys from Swim Conditioning dropped 10 - 15 seconds and 5 - 10 strokes from their timed 100 yards! One of my guys there is now swimming a 1:25 for 100 yards, and his first 100 with me was 1:57. Now this is the reason I love to coach, when I can really help someone make a difference like that. Of course, it takes a whole lot of dedication and hard work on their part, and I'm just excited to be there helping them out with the details and technique.

I Run in the Heat and Hubby Does a Bun

Last weekend we had frost and snow levels down to 2800'. Today in my first tri of the season, it was 95 degrees (probably more on the nearly-shadeless run course). No time to train in the heat since it has been unseasonably chilly, but I ventured forth anyways with one of my Team in Training members, Steve who was doing his first tri ever! To give credit where credit is due, I could only do this race today because my ever-fearless hubby took our daughter to her Dance Team photos. This meant he had to do her hair and makeup. I can see all you men out there cringing now!! Plus, we don't call her the Diva Girl for nothing, she actually called a friend over to do her makeup (not trusting The Dad) but he managed to get her ready for her four costume changes and two hairdos. Now that's a man!

As for the race, it was a sprint, and since I've got an Oly next weekend the plan was to just train through this one. Nevermind that this plan has never ever worked out for me (the last time I did this, I gave myself a major quadricep injury just a couple of weeks before a marathon), reigning it in has never been my strong suit. But I'm older and wiser now, right? Well, I'm older at least. So I was shooting for a 1:15 as a reasonable time that should leave me fresh enough for next weekend's race. Surprisingly, I hit very close to this time with a 1:14:23.

This was a nice little race, the kind that just takes me right back to my first triathlon ever in 1986. Some sawhorses and metal bars set up in a parking lot, a few volunteers taking down your race numbers on corners (no timing chips) and a home-made banner for a finish line. Beautiful! I was excited to see Steve able to take advantage of such a nice homegrown race for his first, I think it's much more relaxing than facing a large and aggressive crowd of racers. Though there were some very fast folks here, it had a very friendly feeling.

Most of the race felt great for me. My swim was right on target, my 12.5 mile bike was on some of the most beautiful rolling green-hilled country roads I've ever seen (and with a gentle breeze, the temperature felt mercifully decent on the bike). My bike was 36:30, which is a great early season sprint time for me! The run was flat and should've been fast but my body just shuts right down in the heat. The muscles are willing but the brain-body connection is not. My first mile was about an 8:15, the 2nd was a 9:00, and I think the last was around 9:30. Not pretty, but I finished. I didn't stick around to see them sort all the results out as they were having troubles. I think I was 5th woman overall and probably 1st or 2nd in my age group.

Next week the temperature is mercifully going to go down to around 75, which should feel great!

A Big Blue Lake Beats a Bouquet

Hubby is not a Hallmark Holiday kind of a guy. I think another wife might even get disgruntled at the lack of bouquets, cards, or other trinkets. But the thing I really love about him is he knows me so well, he always finds the perfect gift. Like a Mother's Day camping trip where he says the magic words "Why don't you bring your wetsuit and we'll go to the lake." So Mother's Day found me on the edge of this gorgeous lake on the Oregon coast, not a boat to be seen, ready for my first open-water swim of the year.

I can't say it wasn't cold. While we're supposed to hit the 90's later this week, the night we went camping the freezing level dropped to around 2800'. The water was not exactly toasty but it was swimmable, which is all that really counts. I managed about 40 minutes before my toes refused to bend anymore. Of course my daughter, who has the impermeable skin of an eight year old, was jumping in wearing nothing but a pink bathing suit. I remember swimming in the ocean off of the Oregon coast at her age and never feeling cold, but now I can say I fully understand why my mom refused to join me - she didn't have a wetsuit of course!




















So after my swim my kids had a captive mom in a wetsuit, in a lake known for it's newt population. This time of year the little buggers are all hiding out in the weeds in the shallow parts (probably trying to keep warm) and I was dispatched to try an capture one or two. Not trying to brag too much, I do have to say that I have quite a reputation among my kids and their friends as a Newt Capturer. I have the requisate amounts of patience and can be still long enough for them to practically swim into my hand. So into the weeds I went and emerged with a newt or two for holding. The Oregon rough-skinned newts are actually poisonous. A small fraction of the poison found in the skin of an adult newt is enough to kill a human. Now as far as I've discovered, the only verifiable newt-related death was an intoxicated man from a coastal Oregon town who swallowed a newt on a dare. Still, it's not a good idea to handle one if you have any broken skin on your hands, and I always get my kids to wash their hands so they don't accidentally transfer newt poison to their noses or mouths.

All in all, it was a wonderful water-and-newt-filled Mother's Day. And at home the kids made me home-made cards (my favorite kind) and Asa drew this on the driveway for me:

Eureka, the Perfect Bar!

I've been looking for a very long time for a good real-foods energy bar that wasn't high in soy (which I can't eat due to only having half a thyroid gland - soy is a thyroid inhibitor), or powdered whey, which I think is of nebulous health value. Also a bonus would be made from actual whole foods, preferably organic, even better if it's raw. I've tried all of the different bars out there and finally found one that meets all of these criteria, plus tastes absolutely awesome!

So meet The Pro Bar. It's: delicious, organic, whole raw food, vegan, non-GMO and in short just about perfect. And it comes in flavors like Superfood Slam, Cran-Lemon Twister, Koka Moka, Cherry Pretzel, Maple Pecan, and my total favorite, Cocoa Pistachio (and several more flavors)... yummmmm!

Now my only caveat is that I haven't tried it out during intense exercise yet. Raw foods are often harder on the stomach in high-stress situations, so I may have to revert back to the always-digestible Powerbars during races (I once lived on Powerbars for three days above 15,000 feet while mountaineering when I couldn't choke down a single other thing, so I know this for a fact: I can always eat a Powerbar). But for all other times, this will be my bar of choice. The hardest thing is to leave them in my backpack for workouts and not just snarf them for lunch. Yep, they're that good!

Cool Treats for Warmer Weather Workouts

Here's a terrific, easy, nutritious post-workout treat for the hot weather to come. Take two cans of pineapple and one can of coconut milk and throw them together in a blender. Whirl them up and pour into a container and put it in the freezer. Voila! Instant pineapple coconut gelato. If you need it a little sweeter, you can throw in a tablespoon or two of your favorite sweetener, but I've found that it doesn't need much. It's got a great consistency due to the coconut milk, but mostly tastes like pineapple. Yummm! The problem around here is the kids eat it up before I can even get to it!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Endorphins and bicycle wheels go hand in hand in my life. There's something incredibly joy-producing about being on a bicycle for me, especially once the weather gets warm enough to ride in shorts. Oh the happiness of not being bundled up like an arctic explorer just to go for a ride. It's a mystery to me why that "runner's high" so rarely happens when I'm running, but pops out almost the moment I get on a bicycle. And it doesn't seem to matter what kind of bicycle it is - tooling around town on my junker, or out on a tandem ride with the kids, or on my lovely piece of rolling titanium tri-bike (the one my daughter dubbed "Hi Ho Silver"). It seems that any bike will do. I can wax nostalgic about past bikes, too: my college cruiser, with one gear and pedal-backwards braking. I bought it for $25 and spray-painted it red, rode it for four solid years and then sold it for $75 because cruisers had just then come back into style.

Going into a bike store is like heaven and torture at the same time. I could probably use about five more bikes - a touring bike for sure, a much-cooler updated cruiser with comfy seat and town gearing, a recumbent just because they look like fun, a road bike just in case I ever take up riding with a group, oh the list goes on.

So this week the warm weather came out, presumably just for another teaser because now it's cold as an icebox again. I got to do the first real brick of the season with some of my TNT teammates. We did some hill repeats and then an easy run. Went out on a longer ride with another TNT teammate and enjoyed my favorite rolling route along the river. There were these huge black clouds threatening us, which had me worried because I had forgotten to bring any sort of jacket at all, and lately when those black clouds show up they dump either buckets of hail or torrents of water! But a fortunate little blue hole appeared above us and followed us for the entire ride, only to close up as we reached the end when it started to hail. Lucky! I'm woefully underprepared for my first Oly distance race this year in (gulp) 3 weeks, but with the weather and my crazy schedule this winter/spring, I'm just going to have to tough it out and survive it, I think.

Wishing you happy pedaling this week!

Get Your Swim On For That Spring Sprint

Here's a good main set for working on speed for a 500 - 800 yard swim in one of the spring sprint distance tris that are popping up like daisies this time of year...

3 x
{2 x 200
2 x 100
2 x 50}

I did this one tonight, and tried to make the 100's add up to less time than the fastest 200, and the 50's add up to less than the fastest 100. Then I tried to make each of the three sets a little faster than the last. It looks like a simple set, but it turned out to be fairly tough in the end!

The Evil Fairies Are At It Again

I don't know how this happens to me, it isn't the first time the evil fairies have visited me but this time they've gone too far. I have a card I use to get into the club where I teach swimming. I put it in a small pocket on the outside of my backpack. This pocket only has three things in it - my card, my lock & key, and my iPod. One day, I go to get out my card at the front desk and it's not there - it's very obviously not in this pocket. This pocket only carries three things, and the card is not one of them at this point. I look everywhere for it - in pockets, in the washing machine, in my bike panniers, on my desk. It's nowhere. For a few weeks, I sign in on the shameful "missing card" sign-in sheets at the front desk, hoping it will just magically turn up, but I eventually admit defeat and get another card, for which I'm probably charged $5 or so out of my ridiculously tiny paycheck.

So I've been using my new card for a couple of weeks now and yesterday I go to the club and pull out my card, and two cards come of of the pocket together - my new one and my old one, as if I'm a magician pulling a bunny out of a hat. The only logical explanation are that there are tiny evil fairies whose sole mission in life is to torture me with stuff like this. I mean, I know I'm slightly disorganized and a little cluttery and messy, and I do lose things from time to time only to find them later in a completely different place. But this time I can't help but feel that they're mocking me. There's no way, NO WAY I tell you, that this card was in that pocket before yesterday. The evil fairies are probably somewhere sitting on a mushroom and toasting each other with dandelion wine this very instant, laughing at my expense.

How to Scare the Heck Out of the Swim Coach

So I'm on the pool deck, coaching my Monday night Swim Conditioning class, and something on my radar screen just goes off. I look over at the hot tub and my heart stops cold. There's a body floating motionless in there. Semi-casually, so as not to freak anyone out, I hold the class up a minute and walk briskly over to check it out. As it turns out, it's just a lady who enjoys relaxing in the hot tub in kind of a dead-man's float position. Whew!

I'm always amazed at how quickly that radar reacts to small changes in the environment, especially around the pool. I pulled a kid out of the hot tub once that I wasn't even consciously aware was there. I was lap swimming and almost not of my own volition I vaulted out of the pool toward the hot tub. My subconscious brain had noticed that there was a kid there, and then there wasn't. He was under water and his mom (sitting just a few feet away) had not noticed. With the bubbles on, you couldn't even see him under the water. Scary! I guess once a lifeguard always a lifeguard. Sometimes when I'm at the pool in the summer with my kids, I find myself counting noses in the pool and keeping track of the bathing suits: "1,3, 7, 9, kid in red suit...yep... blue trunks....pink ponytail...orange duckie....11, 14...." and I won't even notice I'm doing it.

So my heart is back to normal now, and at least you know if you ever swim or even float prone in the hot tub on my watch, you're safe.

Jonesing For A Swim

I needed to swim tonight like a junkie might need a fix after a week of going straight. I love biking, I like running, but swimming is my habit and when I get as stressed as I was today, I need my fix dammit. So although my to-do list was ten feet long and growing, I took the time to get in the pool and now I feel almost sane. By 6:00 am tomorrow morning, we'll be headed for the airport to Atlanta to the FIRST World Robotics Festival. We've got five kids, two robots, a ton of spare parts, research project presentations, pit table decorations, team t-shirts, trading cards and give-aways, and of course the kids' iPods, Nintendos, laptops, books, and other assorted paraphenalia. I don't think Hannibal carried this much stuff across the Alps, and he had elephants for pack animals. We only have a couple of parents to do the job. Wish us luck, and cross your fingers that the hotel has a good pool. I'm gonna need it!

Cadence and Old Punk Vinyl

Running cadence is one of the least debated bits of running technique. Unlike a forward lean or midfoot vs. forefoot vs. heel striking, running books, coaches, triathletes and runners themselves are almost unilateral in their praise of running cadence and insistence that every runner should be running at a cadence of around 88 - 92. I have been working on my running cadence for a couple of years, and have posted questions about cadence at places like the Trifuel forums, normally a font of wisdom on all subjects to do with triathlon training. What I've heard back is unilateral praise for the merits of high cadence. Even when I've asked questions about whether or not this is feasible for slower runners or for some of the heavier Clydesdale-class athletes I've been coaching, the answer has been that a high cadence is good across the board.

Unfortunately, this advice hasn't matched up with my experience, which is that for runners who are slower than about 10 minutes a mile, a high cadence is very hard or impossible to achieve. And it's not a matter of just practicing it more, it just doesn't seem to work. At the triathlete coach's seminar, Dave Scott was talking about cadence and I asked him this question. He said that over about a 9 minute mile, runners usually can't sustain a cadence of 90. Just one more little nugget of wisdom that I gleaned from that training. As I said earlier, this stuff has been percolating through my brain as I've been training and coaching and these kernels of insight have been popping to the top.

For me, the cadence issue has been both a saviour and a bugaboo. A saviour in the sense that developing a higher cadence finally has enabled me to run off of the bike effectively in my sprint and Olympic distance races. I can keep about a 8 minute per mile pace in these shorter races and the high cadence and shorter stride has helped me transition from biking to running more smoothly with much less effort on my legs. So all of the high cadence work I was doing has been very helpful in that regard. But on my slower paced runs (I'm about a 9-minute miler for a half-marathon, and 10 minutes per mile at the marathon distance), I struggled with implementing the higher cadence. It always seemed to drive my heartrate up, and I could never reconcile the higher cadence with the heartrate needed for the longer distances. So what Dave Scott said rang completely true from my own experience - the 9 minute mile is about where I lose the ability to keep my cadence high. Finally, some cadence advice in running that makes sense to me! This will also help me immensely in coaching my newer runners and Clydesdale runners, for whom a 10 minute mile is still a distant goal.


So with all of this in mind, I set out on a tempo run this week, and was searching through eMusic.com for a useful set of tunes to bolster my higher cadence. I came across this album, Someone's Gonna Ger Their Head to Believe, which was perfect. As I was listening through the album preview, a wave of good old nostalgia washed over me. This album is a compilation of most of the best early American Hardcore punk, brought together on an album called Someone Got Their Head Kicked In, from the seminal punk year of 1982. They've combined it with most of the best tracks from another compilation, 1984's Something to Believe In, and ended up with an album containing many of the best US Hardcore tracks ever layed on good old-fashioned vinyl. I have both of these albums somewhere in my moldering vinyl collection, but I'm not one of those folks who still have their record players. So to find it easily downloadable in an MP3 format on a day when I needed a jolt for a tempo run was a Godsend. Youth Brigade, Aggression, Battalian of Saints, Bad Religion, Adolescents, Social Distortion, Seven Seconds - this album is definitely a soundtrack of my teenage years.

Our city's weekly newspaper just did an article on the re-emerging trend of House Concerts. When I was a teen, they were in full swing in our town, and I was happy to note that the article mentioned my old house as one of the early venues for house concerts in our town that has apparently renewed itself as a music venue. Three friends and I rented a house we called "The Greenhouse" (not surprisingly, for the paint color) in 1985 and nailed mattresses over the basement windows. Our band practiced there and a number of the best hardcore bands in the world played there over the year or so that passed between signing the rental contract and getting kicked out for having a bunch of homeless kids living in our basement. It's funny to walk downtown and see a marquee for bands like NOFX and remember selling tickets at my own back door and begging people not to drink beer on the lawn facing the street.

So my tempo run was bolstered by fast tracks and good memories, and the mystery of why I can't hold that faster cadence on my distance runs has been solved. On Tuesday I leave with my kids and our robotics team en route to the World Robotics Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. This might be the last missive from me until we get back a week from now. Until then, rock on....

And They Win By A Spike....

First volleyball game of the spring season last night. I had to sit out all last season because of that blasted sprained ankle, and was more than a little trepidatious about playing on it. It felt really tight at first in the Achilles, but loosened up and didn't bother me at all after that - hooray! First game we took easily (I can't believe all my serves went in), second game we totally lost (15 - 5, how is that possible), third game came down to rally scoring and only a few minutes left, and we were tied up and it went back and forth until we won it on a spike... by me! Hooray, I can jump again! One more sport I can enjoy once more, four months is a long time to take off from something this fun.

Working From the Core

For years, I've been talking with my swimmers about trying to swim from the core, instead of from the arms and feet. Although we use our core muscles for power in almost every other sport (think of a golfer winding up a swing, or a quarterback twisting that arm way back for the Hail Mary pass), when people swim they often tend to be rather flat in the water, moving only their arms and legs. If they're not flat, they're over-rotating their hips to the sides (often influenced by the Total Immersion method) along with their torso. These styles are the equivalent of giving Barry Bonds a baseball bat and asking him to either hit without moving his hips at all, or asking him to move his hips parallel to his shoulders. In neither case would he be able to muster up enough power to send one out of the park (stand up and try it with an imaginary bat if you don't see what I mean).

So I've believed for a long time that the power in a swimming stroke comes from twisting that core, and while the hips will twist too, to a certain extent, rotating them too far will take some of that power away. The human core is like a gigantic spring of muscles which can store a lot of energy once it is twisted and then unleashed. The bummer is that it's hard to describe this to people and have them just get it and be able to translate it to their swimming stroke.

One of the most exciting drills I learned last weekend was something that I think will really help swimmers feel this concept. We were doing a drill that's something like paddling on a surfboard - arms are flexed at right angles and you're paddling with a very flat and short stroke, with no rotation of the torso at all. One of the things this works on is setting that high elbow catch as well (two birds with one stone here). With the next step, you add rotation of the shoulders, but pretend there's a coffee cup balanced on your hips that you don't want to spill. That lets swimmers feel their torso rotating independently from their hips. Just using these drills the other night with my swimmers, many of them were able to have one of those great "aha" moments where they could feel the muscles they needed to be moving in order to start generating power from their core instead of just from their arms. I love it when that happens.

If you watch videos of great swimmers, like this one of Grant Hackett, you can see the rotation of the upper core, independent from the hips that I'm talking about, and how much power comes from that rotation.

Still Digesting

I spent this last weekend at the Team in Training coaches seminar, given by Dave Scott. It was a pretty intense 2 days of workshops, hands-on technique coaching, and a lot of information. I'm still digesting it all, but you can probably expect to see things start popping out here in this blog that I learned over the weekend. The swim drills were the part I was most excited about, and I wasn't disappointed there. I came away with some new tools for helping my swimmers understand better stroke mechanics. Oh yeah, and I got a killer quick tour of all the wonderful Washington D.C. sights, including an early run down to see the sunrise over the Washington and Lincoln monuments. Unforgettable!

Training With Kids: Part 1

After reading The Dread Pirate Rackham's interesting insights into Training With 5 Year Olds, I thought I'd riff off of that and offer up a few bits of wisdom (or not, you decide) I've discovered over the years of training and racing as a mom with young kids.

Early Years (0-3):

Accessories Are Your Friends

When friends at our church offered to throw us a baby shower for our first-born, the only thing I really wanted and needed was a running stroller. I'd already gotten a heap of cloth diapers, we'd planned to have the baby sleep with us, and with a pair of boobs already in place there was no feeding equipment necessary. So they had a money tree and bought us this great running stroller. Later, we added a Burley bike trailer and a Rhode Gear Limo bike seat to our stash and I was ready to roll with the baby. Unfortunately, the baby had other plans, which brings me to....

Be Flexible

Our son was one of those "extremely high needs" babies that you hear about and secretly wish won't happen to you. Never slept (so neither did I), hated the car seat, the stroller, the bike trailer, and anything that didn't involve being bounced up and down in the sling or nursing 24 x 7. We learned later that he had Sensory Integration Dysfunction (the world was too loud, too bright, too rough, too scary for the little guy) and also food allergies. So our world was turned upside down. Being flexible was the key to getting anything accomplished at all. For many months I couldn't swim - he would start screaming in the daycare at the gym and the ladies would have to come and get me out of the pool. Running sometimes worked out, sometimes not. Sometimes I had to take him out of the stroller and nurse or bounce him once a mile. Being flexible helped me find creative ways to workout whenever I could grab a minute, and I completed my first post-baby triathlon when he was 10 months old, so it all worked out in the end. His needs got met, mine got met, and though I wasn't the active mom-on-the-go I'd pictured myself to be ahead of time, we both were fine. Our second baby was happy as a clam at the gym, in the stroller, or wherever we wanted to drag her along, so things were actually easier with two kids than they were when I just had one. I found that a lot of working out with a baby is finding ways to work with the particular baby you happen to have!

Title Nine Sports Rocks

You might even be too young to know what Title Nine refers to (Google it, girlfriend), but this is hands-down the best place to buy running bras online. When what your husband might happily refer to as the "Boob Fairy" visits, it can be downright upsetting for an athlete who is not used to worrying about the Bounce Factor. Title Nine has a 1, 2, and 3-barbell rating system for bounce control, and sells everything from the Superwoman bra to The Last Resort bra. Don't worry, these things do go back down in size (husbands can get disappointed now), though they may never return to their pre-baby size.

Get Your Workouts In While You Can

When our 2nd kid came along, I got smart and bought a bike trainer and an indoor elliptical machine, so I could work out if they were napping, or I could put on a video for them and get some exercise time in. I would run in the mornings, the evenings, whenever my husband was available for kid duties. We moved to a new town and I started biking everywhere with the kids - trips to the library now doubled as a workout. You might think that miles around town on an old beater bicycle don't count, but I've discovered otherwise. Looking through my last season's journals, I never logged more than five hours on my road bike per week, but managed a 1:09 Olympic distance bike time and a 2:52 Half-Iron bike split, mostly due to a lot of bike commuting and tandem riding with my kids.

There Will Always Be Another Season

As trite as it might sound, babies grow up very quickly. At times, it can sure be frustrating to try to train and compete as a parent of very young kids. But looking back, I'm glad that I made the switch to "triathlete lite" during those years when my kids were babies and young toddlers. It went by all too fast as it was, and while I kept my feet wet with swimming, biking, and running whenever I could, and always did a couple of tris a season, I didn't really turn my head back to getting serious about tris until they were about 5 and 8 years old. By that time, they could ride bikes beside me while I ran, and each of them has done their own triathlon now so they know what it's all about.

Oooooh, Uggghhh, First Brick of the Season

How is it that I can forget every year what it feels like to run off of the bike? I ran for 30 minutes after Saturdays 1:00 Team in Training bike ride, and that first mile was a killer. A couple of years ago I learned that high cadence on the run off of the bike makes a big difference for me in getting through that first mile and luckily I kept that in mind this time around and I always feel better after that first 8 minutes or so. It will be a short and fast Tri season for me this year, probably one sprint and one Oly distance tri is all I'll be fitting in this spring. So I can concentrate more on speed than long distance for the first time in a few years.

More On That High Elbow Catch

Here's a great video that demonstrates the high elbow catch with Sheila Taormina. Another one show's Ian Thorpe's high elbow. And here's a great swim technique video that touches on several points (including the catch) from Dave Scott.

A Swim Workout To Be Eager For

Since starting as the Team in Trainng coach, I've missed my Saturday morning Master's swim workouts, so I have to be content to just do the Master's workout on my own steam when I go in to swim (not nearly so much fun, I have to say).

This weeks' was a good one though. If you want a tough set that will keep your technique tight, try this out:

6 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Focus on technique
5 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
4 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
3 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
2 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique

Total: 2500 yard main set. I really enjoyed this set as I felt able to swim the fast 100's with really good technique and not let it degrade over the course of such a long and hard set. The good news is that my swim times are continuing to improve. Though my right ankle is still not anywhere near 100%, I am back to a good pace for my fast 100's, stillabout 5 seconds (per 100) off of my pre-injury pace, but much better than a month ago!

It's encouraging to see the speed trickling back in, and although my shoulders are still sore after every swim workout, the new "barrel catch" I mentioned in this previous post is coming along nicely and I can feel the power there that I know will grow over the next six months as my muscles adapt. I can now pull with the pull buoy at a 1:26 average pace, where I was never able to go below 1:30 before (my kick is still a big part of my stroke, I guess I'll never be a true long distance swimmer!), and I think that's all due to that new catch.

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.

So, How Lucky Am I ??

When I joined this amazing sport of triathlon in 1986, I was just occupied with trying to stay on my bike without falling over in my toeclips, and finishing the run without walking. Meanwhile, on the international scene, Dave Scott was busy winning his 5th Ironman. Ten years later in 1996 as I temporarily hung up my running shoes during the summer of my first pregnancy, he was coming out of retirement for the 2nd time to place again at the Big Show in Hawaii. He's definitely an icon in the sport, and someone who is still actively competing but also coaching, consulting, commentating, and speaking about triathlon.

He's also the National Advisory triathlon coach for Team in Training, and he'll be conducting the coach training session that I'm going to in two weeks! So, how lucky am I?

And by the way, I'll be a nervous wreck come the end of this month - the training is all the way across the country in Washington D.C., and will be the first time ever that I've gotten on an airplane and flown away from my babies. Okay, well they're hardly babies. My big guy borrows my shoes and just got braces, my not-so-little gal grew an inch this month and regularly updates my iPod with bands I haven't even heard of. But still. Yeah, they'll be fine. I'll be a wreck. Luckily, I have the fact of getting to go learn how to be a better tri coach from Dave Scott to keep me cheered up!

Power Juice

Everyone around me is sick, getting over being sick, or starting to get sick. So here's my power drink for the week:

1/2 glass carrot juice
Fill rest of glass with water
Stir in 2 tsp. pomegranite syrup
Dump in a packet of Emergen-C to make it fizzy and high in Vitamin C

Yumm!! My kids think I'm crazy, but I think it's pretty darned good. I'm also cooking about 5 cloves of garlic in everything I make this week. Hopefully the combo will ward off the bugs.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can

You remember reading that corny story about the Little Engine Who Could when you were a kid? My son was so into trains that I read any book with a train theme to him approximately 10,000 times. So I read "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" many times over those years. Yesterday in karate we were doing pushups and our sensei had us yelling with each pushup "I...am...a...future...black...belt" over and over. The ol' Power of Positive Thinking gig. Sometimes we can let ourselves believe that this kind of stuff is "just BS" or really doesn't work. But lately I've seen the results of positive thinking in a big way that confirmed what I've known anecdotally throughout my life.

Just recently, the kids on my robotics team have shown me all over again what kind of power you have when you refuse to be told you can't do something. I have to admit, as they dreamed big about going to the World Championships, there was that nagging adult voice in my brain that said "Don't let them get their hopes up too high or they'll be disappointed." So I tried to be the voice of reason, I tried to tell them that the odds were big, we were one small, relatively new team out of 10,000 teams worldwide. It was all stacked against us, but I was all for them trying. But they knew better. Somehow, they knew that they could do this. When I gathered them together at a local ice cream shop and told them the exciting news, there was no outburst of surprise. They blinked a few times and then smiled. They knew. They knew they could do this all along. I was the one who was not with the game, and that's a great lesson for me to take away. We can do so much more than we think we can if we refuse to let ourselves be limited.

This week, I checked out the DVD of Rudy from the library for our family to watch. If you love sports, any kind of sports, or cinderella stories, you've got to check out Sean Astin in this role. It's not a recent movie, but it's the true story of a kid who really wouldn't take no for an answer. From a blue collar family, he dreamed that one day he would play football for Notre Dame. Despite economic & educational obstacles and his own short stature, he refused to stop believing in his dream, and you know, he accomplished it too.

When I think about my Team in Training team members, the obstacles they're facing and overcoming on a daily basis, it inspires me. I love getting phone calls like the ones I got this week from team members: "I swam and it felt effortless!", "I ran for over an hour, can you believe that!", and all of this just because people think they can do something as amazing as a triathlon!

So yes, when my karate sensei has us all hollering about being a blackbelt, I'll yell it out "loud and proud" as they say in class. Because I do believe it. I can already see that black belt out there in my future, just like my kids could see that world championship in front of them. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

A Trip to Seattle and Some Amazing News

We took a short trip to Seattle this week for my sister's birthday. It was beautiful there, reminding me of what a lovely city Seattle is when it's not raining. The snow-covered Olympics and the glassy blue Lake Washington greeted us as we spent a day wandering around the Woodland Park Zoo. I got to run with my sister - it's great to have a little sis' who is active and fun to hang out with. An hour's run gave us plenty of time to catch up, and was the first time I've run more than 4 or 5 miles since my ankle sprain. I had to walk up the steeper hills due to some lingering tenderness in my Achilles tendon, but otherwise was fine!

While we were there, I got this amazing phone call from the woman in charge of Oregon's FLL Robotics program. She told me that the kids' robotics team (that I've been coaching) was nominated to go to the FLL World Festival! They'll be competing with 84 other teams from all over the world (of the 10,000 FLL teams worldwide) in Atlanta, Georgia in mid-April. This will be just an amazing opportunity for my kids and the rest of the kids on our team as well. We are so excited!

It's not looking like this will be a year of triathlons for me. In fact, it's looking like it will be an extremely light tri season with everything else we've got going on. Maybe that's okay though. The last time I took a season off was 1999 when I was pregnant with my daughter, and after 9 years maybe it's time to have another little break.

Foggy Run

The city was wrapped in a deep fog this morning when I headed out to run with our TNT team. The fog was so thick rolling in from the coast over 40 miles away that you could taste the kelp and the sea foam and the ocean. Traffic lights over deserted streets glowed red for long distances and the chill seeped into my bones and didn't come out for an hour or two after I got home.

Still, the thing that stays with me after every workout with this team is the inspiration. Watching people work hard for a goal, hearing their stories of why they're training or why they want to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, it always warms my heart to the very core. Even on a day wrapped in fog.

So, My Husband Was Punching Me Again

Actually, there was a lot of punching going on, and yelling, and a bit of kicking too. And for this, we got a babysitter? Yep, date night at our house: extra karate class. Tuesday and Thursday evenings the class is taught by the husband and wife who run our dojo, and it's an excellent class. The kids sometimes come, but sometimes don't feel like going more than three times a week. So last night it was just hubby and I. Mostly, I'm not paired with him since we're different belt levels. At the start, I was paired with a young teen who is very very talented at karate, fast on his feet, and very serious. We did this extensive sparring drill to warm up and I was breathing hard he asked me a couple of times if I needed to slow down. Hah! I didn't tell him that at that heart rate, I could go for another twelve hours. These young kids might have speed, but they don't have the endurance of an Ironmom, LOL. But I had to work darn hard to beat him to the punch. Now my feet have blisters from all that turning on the floor. DH and I also got to practice together for awhile - elbow techniques, bunkai, and sparring.

We actually have gone out to dinner together this week, and also to a movie. So beating each other up isn't the only kind of quality time we spend together ;-)

Quote of the Day

"Many people cannot excel, even though they practice a lot, because they lack ability. But the fact that they have made a lot of effort means a great deal. The winner in the match is not always the winner in life." -- Toshiro Daigo, 9th Degree Black Belt in Judo.

When I run, I must keep this in mind...

Oh, So That's It!

I was talking to my Master's Swim coach and begging him to watch my stroke. Ever since I modified the "catch" part of my stroke, I knew it would take some time for my arm strength in that specific maneuver to catch up and let me swim efficiently again. But it hasn't seemed to be clicking and I've been slower than ever in the pool. It's been pretty discouraging to tell the truth, because I was hoping that this year I might just participate in a swim meet or two, something I haven't done since college. But I'm slow, slow, slow in the water and everything just feels wrong. I wanted him to take a look and see if he could tell me what was going awry.

Before I could even find a time to get in the pool with him though, he mentioned my ankle injury and asked me if I thought that was the problem. I didn't think so, but on Monday when I swam, I paid close attention to what was going on with my feet. As it turns out, my ankle flexibility on the right foot is almost nil, I'm getting almost nothing out of my kick on that side. Consequently, my arm stroke is all lopsided with propulsion coming with one of my kicks, but not the other. This makes my stroke surge and retreat, giving it a very choppy feel. Additionally, I'm only pushing off of the wall with one foot, completely favoring my other ankle, so I'm getting half the glide off of my turns that I normally do. No wonder I'm swimming so much slower per 100!

I'm so much happier now that I know what the trouble is. I've gotten used to my running being compromised by my ankle, and with over a month off I'm just easing back into that. But I hadn't realized how much it impacted my swimming. Now I know I just have to give it some time. But I wouldn't have realized any of this without my swim coach asking me to give it my attention. So now I just have to have a bit more patience for awhile, and I don't think I'll be sprinting a 100 at a swim meet any time soon!

They're Killing Me! But It's Okay....

So Saturday was my first day back to running after my ankle injury. We had a Team in Training group run, and I figured I would hang out with the run/walkers and give it a good trial to see how it felt. My running coach though had different plans: hill repeats! Up this hill that overlooks downtown. Fortunately, the ankle feels fine, but oh my aching quads and hamstrings now. That's probably not the best way to "ease back into" running.

Then today our karate sensei hammered us with an abdominal workout from hell, somewhere over 300 reps of various ab exercises. I know really strong abs are imperative for karate, and I actually try to do ab work about 5x a week anyways. But taking a class that's used to doing 30 - 50 reps and ramping them up to 300 in one day is a bit of a shock.

Still, I am impressed with what my body can now do. I was remembering how with both of my pregnancies my abdominal muscles split apart right down the middle. You could lay a chalkboard eraser in the trench down the middle of my stomach where they're supposed to meet up after each of my babies was born. I have a very short torso, so my babies just stuck straight out when I was pregnant, and the ab muscles just separated to accomodate that. I had to start with very slow crunches - one or two only - supporting and holding together my abs with both hands. To come from there to being able to knock off 300 reps with the young people in the karate class feels just great.

I was also reminiscing with our Team in Training crew about how I couldn't run a mile after my 2nd kid was born. It really is true that with incremental improvement, we can do amazing things. Just running a bit farther each time, walking a bit less - it really does all add up. I just know our whole team will do great on race day, because I know they can do it. I've been from there to here, and I know they can too.

Faves & Raves

Favorite Pre-Workout Breakfast: I thought I had posted this one up before, but couldn't find it looking through my archives so here it is (maybe again, maybe not!) Since we have our own chickens, we have tons of lovely eggs all the time. I like eating a high-protein breakfast, since it keeps me from the carb-crash later in the morning, but I get tired of just eggs. I love oatmeal, but it doesn't seem to stick with me very long, within an hour or so I'm hungry or just feeling low in the energy department. So this is my solution:

Robin's Breakfast Oatmeal Custard:

1 Cup Organic Steel Cut oats
2 Eggs
3 Tbs Milk
Cinnamon and Nutmeg to Taste

Cook up the steel-cut oats according to directions. While the oats are cooking, which only takes a few minutes, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon & nutmeg. Pour the cooked oats into the egg mixture in a microwaveable bowl (make sure you use a big enough bowl as this mixture will puff up as it cooks). Stir in any (or all) of the following:

Dried cranberries
Raisins
Chopped Dates
Dried unsweetened coconut
Walnuts or Pecans

Bake in the microwave for 4:30 (cooking times will vary, but it will get solid looking all the way through). Serve with milk.

Rave: A friend of mine who was training for the Eugene Marathon got hit by a car in a crosswalk two weeks ago. That's bad enough for any ordinary human, but for an avid runner to have a broken leg or two is doubly agonizing. As athletes, we know how dangerous it is to run anywhere near large two-ton hunks of moving metal, but we don't often have a choice. Remember to wear reflective gear and blinkies in the dusk, dawn, and nighttime hours. I believe my Illuminite jacket and headband saved my friend one night - we were on bikes and the car that was going to smash into her only stopped once its headlights hit my jacket - the blinkies on the front and back of her bike were not pointed in the driver's direction at the time.

Fave Music on my iPod Right Now: Aman Iman: Water is Life, by Tinariwen. I'm not always a fan of world-beat music, but this band definitely catches the ear and holds on to it. Formed in 1982 in Moammar al-Qadhafi's camps of Tuareg rebels, these musicians take musical roots from their own traditions, and combine it with bluesy guitars for a totally unique sound. The lyrics are mostly in French and Tamashek, but the beats are unescapably good, and the theme of their music is independence for their people.

Fave Book On My Nightstand: The Warrior's Path: Wisdom from Contemporary Martial Arts Masters Despite the cumbersome title, this is a gem of a book with photos and words of fifteen martial arts masters who have dedicated a lifetime to their practice. Many of them were born in Japan in the early part of the 1900s. All of them have decades of wisdom that anyone striving to better themselves in any practice can appreciate.


Favorite Quote: From the above book: "You can easily recognize whether the archer hit the target or not. But this is not what we should be judging for success. Did the archer tackle kyudo with an empty mind, one that will create a healthy body and healthy mind? That is the Way that kyudo is seeking - whether the archer has contributed to a healthy society. Of course there are targets to shoot, to aim for, but hitting the target is not the final goal. In kyudo we say "Shoot at your heart" -- shoot at your conscious thoughts. You yourself must recognize whether you exerted the utmost effort toward the target. How many arrows were shot is not important -- the contents of those arrows is what counts." -- Nobuyuki Kamogawa.

I am absorbing much from this book that is relevant to my own martial arts training, but also to triathlon and other sports, and to my endeavors as a teacher and coach to others.

And Another

Since my ankle sprain is still keeping me from running (though I did a very very chilly bike ride with my Team in Training team this Saturday - 36 degrees before you figure in the very brisk wind chill, and sleeting rain!), I'm in the pool a lot more these days. Here's another great distance swimmer's workout:

Warm up and then:

6 x 500, Descend x 3 on 8:00 (or interval of choice). 2nd set faster than 1st.

When I do these, I aim to do the first one at a total cruise, then medium, then pretty fast. The second time through, I go about 15 seconds faster on each one than the first time around. By the time you're done, you should feel good and thrashed!

Triathlon Swim Workout

I coached the morning master's this week (5:15 am - eeeeouch!). The workout I put up is a great one for any distance swimmer looking to improve their time in anything from a 500 to an open water mile or more. After a good warmup, this is the main set of 2,000 yards.

2x the following:
=============
50-50
50-100
50-150
50-200
50-250


The first time through, you go easy on the 50's, and really work the longer distances - they should be swum at your distance tempo pace, the kind of pace you would swim a hard 500 at. Take 10 sec. rest after the 50's, and 20 sec after the longer distances.

The second time through, you swim the 50's hard, and the longer distances at your long distance pace, the pace you would set for a 1500. Take 20 sec. rest after the 50's, and 10 sec after the longer distances.

Kicking Off With Team in Training

We've officially kicked off our Team in Training triathlon season, with two run workouts and a bike fit/road repair clinic. Although I've felt very frazzled as the beginning of the Team in Training (TNT) season overlapped with the State Robotics Tournament (where the kids did very well!) So I had one very insane weekend where everything came together, and now I should be settling out into just doing the TNT coaching thing. So far, we've got a team of 10 people setting out to do an Olympic distance tri, and it's been great getting to know the team members.

My ankle's still on the mend, so I've been riding my bike with the team as they run, but hopefully by our next run workout in two weeks I'll be able to hobble along. I'll get to coach our first swim workout this Wednesday, and that's the part I'm most looking forward to, but am also the most nervous about since usually when I've coached bigger groups of people it's been Master's swimmers, who all pretty much know the drill. I definitely want to help everyone on the team meet their goals and I know for many of them that means making it through the swim.

Hopefully by the time Wednesday rolls around, some of the snow that's been falling here will be melted. I think we're going to hoof it down the hill tomorrow and catch a bus into town for our Karate class, since my car is definitely snowbound unless I want to throw the chains on. So for today, this is what my hill repeats looked like:

At the Worst Possible Moment

I've got my first Team in Training triathlon team run this Saturday, and my robotics team's State Championships on Sunday, and I've managed to badly sprain my ankle this Monday. So, no running for me for awhile, and all of the stairs at the Robotics tournament are going to be quite a challenge in this splinty thingie I'm supposed to be wearing.

And how did I injure myself, one might ask? Diving for a volleyball? Running that 10th mile? No, I was taking a photograph. The challenge of the day on my 365 Days of Self Portraits photography group was to take a photo that tells a story. So I took this one and injured myself in the process. Ah, what we do for art.

Beauty in Motion

This morning I was playing volleyball at our club, and the tall guy on the other side of the net went up for a spike. As I was moving toward the place where the ball was going to rocket at a 120 mph, it suddenly hit the net and ricocheted off in the other direction. As I put a fast-stop on my lunge and turned, I saw out of the corner of my eye two of my teammates in oddly choreographed high-speed motion change directions to deflect the new course of the volleyball. In that blink of an eye, it occurred to me (as it has so many times over the years) what a wonderful machine this human body is - how responsive, how complex, how fundamentally miraculous. If you think about the internal chain of events necessary for even this one small motion - the eyes perceiving the direction and velocity of the ball, the muscles tensed, the brain computing speed and direction and plotting where the ball will land - and then think how quickly your body can change and respond to a whole new set of inputs, well it's pretty humbling. So often in our bodies, we concentrate on what they are doing that's not to our liking. They gain weight, they get wrinkled, they dehydrate, they don't snap back for that workout we wanted to put them through. But we rarely take the time to appreciate the miracle that we've been handed.

Sports give us back the miracle. At least they do for me. When I'm out on my bicycle, I'm often glorying in the sheer beauty of flying along the road under my own steam. When I can still leap or dodge or remember a complex set of moves, it's a wonderful thing to me. That's really the gift of sports in my life.

I'm so thrilled to start sharing that gift again with others. We had our first information meeting for Team in Training this week, and getting to meet some of the people who will be on my triathlon team was really exciting. When I think about being able to help people meet their goals, cross a finish line they didn't think they could make, open up a whole new world of fun and appreciation of what their body and mind can do, it's something I am looking forward to. But I'm also really nervous. These folks will be depending on me. Organizational skills are not my strong suit. I'll be responsible for getting them to a point where they can swim a mile in an open body of water. This week is going to be a very tough one to get through as I try to get everything organized. Fortunately, I've got an awesome team of assistant coaches (experts on the bike and run respectively) to help me out. But ultimately, the success of these people is my responsibility. With the kids robotics team State Championship tournament also looking up next weekend, time will be short and I may not be blogging again until it's all over.

Until then, I'll be falling farther behind on reading my favorite blogs, watching presidential debates (thankfully I'm recording them) and even finishing a sudoku puzzle here or there. Life will get crazy and then it will smooth out again for awhile. It always does.

First Faves & Raves of the New Year

Fave Food: Dates, stuffed with cream cheese and pecans. I like to make these for parties, but they're great after-workout snacks as well! We have a local organic creamery that makes awesome cream cheese, cultured with acidophilus and all that good stuff. Yummy!

Fave Music To Work Out To: ChangesOne by David Bowie. One of the first pieces of vinyl I ever bought, I was in our little local corner market the other day and the gal that works there was playing it. So I had to find it on CD. You just can't resist moving to tracks like Fame, Rebel Rebel, Sufragette City, Jean Genie, and of course Ziggy Stardust!

Fave Activity: Hiking with hubby and the kids, any day it's not raining lately! We took a New Year's Eve hike up a local butte in a lovely break of good weather and it was just gorgeous up there. Quite unfortunately, I managed to get poison oak! If you've read my blog for awhile, you know this happens to me all the time, but rarely in the middle of the winter. Argh.

Fave Workout Tip: That Holy Grail swimming move. Still working on it, I've been using the big rubber bandy things at home to simulate the movement of the catch and build up some muscle power. I have to say I think it's working. I swam our traditional New Year's morning workout (108 x 50 yards on the :45 interval) without much trouble, despite not putting in much pool yardage at all in December. I think that's largely due to more power in my stroke.

Rave: By the time I get to vote in the primary elections, out here in Orygun, we'll be winnowed down to just a few candidates. I understand why the system is the way it is, but I don't have to like it.

Fave Quote to start off the New Year: “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” -- Benjamin Franklin

No Resolutions Here

I don't do New Year's Resolutions. I know it's practically an American Institution (not sure about the rest of the world) and I've been asked a dozen times this week what my resolutions are, and my answer's the same every time: nothing. I've thought a little bit about why that is, and I think for me the answer is that it's more of a daily process than a yearly one; and that resolutions are not as useful in my life as goals. A resolution carries the implication that one will do this thing or else, and that if the resolution is somehow not accomplished, one has failed. I refuse to accept the language of failure. In fact, one of the big reasons that I unschool my kids is that I can't state strongly enough (at least not in polite words) my dislike of our society's win/lose, succeed/fail mentality. I tell my kids all the time: mistakes are opportunities for learning and growth. To resolve to do something is different than to have a goal to do something. A goal is a target you're aiming at. Goals are measurable, achievable, and if need be, alterable. How many times do you hear people resolve to do such nebulous things as "get in better shape", "exercise more", "eat better", etc. ? If I have a goal to complete a certain race, then for sure I don't need to resolve to exercise more. I'll exercise more in order to achieve my goal.

While my goals are a bit in flux for this year's triathlon season, I've got lots of other stuff on the plate to fix my attention on. I've got goals for my photography and writing, for my Team in Training coaching, for the kids' robotics team I'm coaching, and for getting our family ready for a big bike touring trip this coming fall. When the right races present themselves, I'm sure I'll sign up and then I'll have my triathlon goals in place as well. And the rest will sort itself out.

On the Journey To Swimming's Holy Grail

You might recall that I've been working on swimming's "Holy Grail", the high-elbow catch. Recently we all showed up for Master's swim practice in the morning and the pool was closed for repairs. Our coach took the opportunity to show me an exercise you can do in the gym (or at home with exercise bands) that allows you to build the muscle memory and strength into your arms to accomplish this maneuver. The idea is to keep your upper arm flat and elbow high when you start the catch, and you can verify that you're doing this with a mirror while you perform this exercise.

I'm sorry for the crack in the mirror right in the middle of my arm in these photos, but hopefully you can see what I'm talking about.




















Reaching forward like your hand has just entered the water.



















Make sure as you pull your hand toward you that your upper arm stays parallel to the floor and your elbow remains high. You can repeat just this part of the catch over and over until it feels natural to your muscles.

















If you want, you can rotate your hips to the other side and follow through with the rest of the stroke. I like to do five catches, then a full stroke, and repeat that. You can add weight or thicker bands for resistance.

And yes, that's me as the Black Knight above (you Python fans will know from whence this scene hails. One of my 365 Days of self portraits.

It's just a flesh wound. I'm invincible!

Recipe Makeover: Yummy Holiday Cookies

I took the following recipe (which is scrumptious in its own right) and made a few substitutions to make some reasonably healthy cookies that everyone in the family loved.

First off, I substituted coconut oil for half the butter. Since the cookies are coconut anyways, I think it actually enhances the taste. I doubled the eggs (because I often do when I use more whole-grain flours - it helps bind them together more and helps them rise more). For 1/4 cup of the flour, I substituted flax seed meal, and used whole-grain flour (Spelt/Wheat mix) for the rest. I upped the coconut from 1 1/2 cups to 2 1/4 cup. And I substituted xylitol for half the sugar.

Here's the original:

Coconut-Cranberry Chews

Ingredients

About 1½ cups (¾ lb.) butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon grated orange peel
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 large egg
3¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ cups dried cranberries
1½ cups sweetened flaked dried coconut

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, with a mixer on medium speed, beat 1½ cups butter, sugar, orange peel, and vanilla until smooth. Beat in egg, until well blended.

2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to butter mixture, stir to mix, then beat on low speed until dough comes together, about 5 minutes (see notes). Mix in cranberries and coconut.

3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place about 2 inches apart on buttered 12" x 15" baking sheets.

4. Bake in a 350°F regular or convection oven until cookie edges just begin to brown, 11 to 15 minutes (shorter baking time will yield a chewier cookie; longer baking time will yield a crispier cookie). If baking two sheets at once in one oven, switch their positions halfway through baking. Let cookies cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then use a wide spatula to transfer to racks to cool completely.

Leaping Into the Unknown

This is looking like it might just be a Lite Tri year. Yes, Lite as in Lite beer, as in Not Too Much Of. I'm spectacularly unmotivated right now to do any kind of wintertime tri training. I have worked back up to running four miles, so that's feeling a bit more okay. Swimming is, well, there. It's always there, though, so that doesn't count for much. Bicycling - there have been some days lately where I'd love to be outside on my bicycle, even in the cold. But it seems like the amount of stuff I have to get done in those same daylight hours (the hours when, unfortunately, businesses are open and such) has been overwhelming me and I haven't made it outside. So it's grudging trainer miles on the bike. Not Much Fun. In the last few years, I've had some pretty big goals to keep me moving through the winter - marathons, Half-Irons, Iron, trying for a personal best in the Half-Iron.

I've kind of run out. Of goals, of time to accomplish them, of impetus to make new goals. I think this year will be the Year of Fun. I might do some sprints, I might do some Oly's. I might not. I might play lots more volleyball and concentrate on Karate - I played two hours of volleyball this morning after a hard karate workout yesterday (40 jumping squats - aiiiiyah) and I'm sure it's keeping me in good shape still. I know we'll be doing lots of cycling with the kids, getting ready for our big touring vacation in September.

I'll be busy with Team in Training, helping others accomplish their triathlon goals in the new year, and I'll be training with them along the way. It feels weird to read everyone's blogs with their races already penciled in for next year. Normally, I'd be doing that. But I guess I'll just have to wait and see what shakes out for me in '08.