The Incredible Power of Belief: Most Inspirational Video Ever

Watch this one from start to finish. It's amazing, it's mind-blowing, it's inspirational. There is no reason that, wherever we are in our journey today, we can't keep getting up and getting stronger.

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.

Countdown to Ironman, Week 14: Damaged, Discouraged, and Depressed

It's raining. For the next ten days at least. And cold. And raining. And my back is not only not better, it's worse. A massage yesterday did nothing to help. Some time every day in the hot tub at the club isn't cutting it either. I'm supposed to spend next week as a "big bike week" doing tons of bike mileage, and I can't even sit up in a chair for an hour without my back killing me. That terrible fear that my injury will take too much time out of training and I won't get enough miles in before Ironman keeps lurking at the back of my mind.

And did I mention it's raining? And cold?

I normally get the post-vacation blues when coming back to the soggy NorthWet in the wintertime, but this is a thousand times worse. I need to go read over some of my old posts where I actually have a good attitude, and kick my mental butt back into shape. That is all.

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.

Does It Matter Why We Run?

Maybe it's perfect timing to read something explosive and divisive like this as I prepare for a Triathlon 101 Clinic aimed at first time triathletes (Julie from Chubby Mommy Running Club and I will be putting this one to help women prepare for the IronGirl Portland Sprint Triathlon). Helping women experience the transformative power of doing their first triathlon is one of the real highlights of the year for me.

But you see, the "real" runner and triathlete over at Frayed Laces (self-defined as "real" apparently because she qualified for Boston and Kona) has her knickers in a wad because other lowly mortals dare to do marathons and then (gasp) have the audacity to call themselves marathoners. Even if they finish in 4 or 5 hours, or more! And they might even eat (bigger gasp) chicken nuggets at the end! Her attitude can be summed up by her closing words:

what I want to scream out is "I train 20 hours a week! I push myself in training to the point of puking! You're doing this once to cross something off your life goal list, and I train harder-harder-harder to get faster each year! I eat, sleep, breathe this sport!"
So, are there too many marathon runners? No, there aren't.  There are too many "chicken nuggets at the end!" marathon runners and not enough "eat, sleep, breathe" runners

As mind-boggling as it is, she thinks that in this world of mounting obesity and a medical/financial diabetes crises looming over our collective heads that will bury our health care system, that too many runners do it for the wrong reasons and should just... well... stop. So they don't sully those of us who are real athletes, you know.

As you might have guessed, I take exception to this viewpoint. You see, the most inspiring moments I've ever had at a triathlon have not been watching someone finish first. They've not even been the times I've finished first. They've been standing at the finish line and watching ordinary people finish. Not folks who can throw twenty hours a week of their lives into the "training" bin, not elite competitors gifted with athletic prowess, but ordinary people with families, jobs, small kids, and other responsibilities. Maybe people who have made the arduous journey from obesity to health. Or from anorexia to health. Or just from the couch to health.

I don't have to tell you that I'm a big ol' sap. I mean, I cry reading Frog & Toad stories to my kids. But when I stand at the finish line of a triathlon or a running race and watch what it means to people to finish, the sniffles start. Waterworks on. And when I've coached those people, seen them go from "I don't think I can run to the next block" to "Wow, I just ran 13.1 miles!" or "I'm afraid to put my face in the water" to "I just finished a triathlon with  a lake swim!", then I'm really sunk at the finish line. I bawl like a big baby.

You see, we're all on this big ball of rock together. It doesn't really matter if someone's faster than me, or if I'm faster than them. What matters is how I feel about my performance, and how I help others feel about theirs. One thing I can guarantee is that even if you're the fastest now, I mean the absolute fastest in the world, someone will come along eventually who will be younger and faster. We all turn 40 and 50, 60, 70, and 80 some day,if we're lucky. Unless we die first. No one is fastest forever.

Or perhaps you'll have an injury that sidelines you, or you'll get pregnant when you least expect it and decide to just become a recreational athlete, or focus on a career that doesn't allow for so much other activity. Any number of things. Some day, you will probably see things from the point of view of just being happy to finish. And I hope when that day comes, the faster athletes give you a high five instead of saying you don't deserve to be there.

No Such Thing As An Ugly Day

On Thursdays I take my daughter to her Mime class (my son's running gag to her is "you need to practice your Mime!", on account of that she's our noisy child and he's our silence-craving introvert, LOL) and usually I head out the door with a fellow mom for what we've come to call the Thursday Mime Run. Yesterday though she didn't appear so after heading inside for a drink of water, I paused in the doorway to survey the thunderous black clouds and an impressive amount of water falling from the sky. A mom scuttling out the door to her minivan said "Isn't it a shame it's such an ugly day?"

I thought about that as I began to run. At first it seemed as if she might be right. It hasn't been very warm lately, and there's nothing like getting instantly soaked to the skin to put a damper on one's happy running feelings. Often when I'm confronted with a situation that is less than ideal however, I search for a phrase that I can dwell on that will change my attitude toward those circumstances. This time it was "the rain is washing all of my stress away and leaving me refreshed."

You know what? What you tell yourself is what you live. Misery evaporated and the rain became a beautiful and invigorating thing. I began to notice things, like how fresh everything smelled, how the air near the ground was still warm from reflected heat and the rain was turning to steam all around me, how some birds were still singing even in the downpour. I began to not just endure the rain but to revel in it, even to enjoy it. My pace quickened, I spread my arms in an embrace of the day and a smile broke out on my face. Ten minutes into the run, the clouds above me parted and rays of sunshine streamed down in place of the rain. A heron swooped overhead, fields of wildflowers looked spectacular in the stormlight, and a flicker alighted in the tree next to me, flashing his orangey wings. My feet were now virtually flying along the path by the river, my eyes taking in the water spilling over the banks, swollen from days and days of stormy weather, with the roar of the rapids blocking out all other sound.

By the time I was done, the sunny hole in the clouds was closing up, my clothes were almost dry, and the rain was sweeping back towards me from the clouds to the North, but I made it back to the studio before it could douse me again. Rather than run in an ugly day, I chose to see the beauty and had one of the best runs I can remember in a long time. It was a great reminder that we are what we choose to see and do.

Hills Are My Friends

I used to hate hills, dread hills, fear hills, loathe hills. On the bike, on the run, and I would thank God there's never hills on the swim. Sometime after moving back here to a place where I have to go up and over a big hill just to get to most of the great bike rides, hills became the norm. Just something you do, usually in the first couple miles of every bike ride. Eventually, I realized I was getting stronger on every hill, taking longer to stand up on my pedals. I used to get to the curve sign, now I made it past the mailboxes, now I made it past the picket fence, now all the way to the top. Hills weren't the horrible monsters I had made them out to be, but they still weren't my friends.

One fine late-summer day a couple of years ago, I had an epiphany. Epiphany is a favorite word in our family, largely because of an epic multi-day tournament of Ghost that my husband and I played on a long car trip when we were just dating and barely knew each other. He didn't know yet that his beloved was The Human Thesaurus and Dictionary all rolled into one, otherwise he wouldn't have blithely played word games with me in the car. I got him in several successive games of ghost with words like zweiback, gnu, and epiphany. Though that moment is now going on 16 years in our past, he delights in using the word epiphany in the most random and inappropriate ways, just to get my goat. Yeah, he's like that.

So like I said, I was out on my bike one day and had an epiphany (used correctly here) that hills were really my friends. Every single hill was helping me become stronger. I composed an epic poem about hills that my oxygen-deprived brain promptly forgot (this is most likely a blessing). Since that day, I've relished hills, delighted in hills, passed people up hills whistling dixie, and posted most of my best finishes on hilly courses. I'm too dense (not brain-wise, but body-wise) to be a really great hill climber, but it's no longer my achilles heel.

Yesterday I headed up what used to be a horrendous hill for me, now it's one of my best buds. It's a ride I look forward to and yesterday didn't disappoint with stupendous views out over the blue-layered hills and valleys to the South.

In just about four weeks, the famiglia and I will pack our tandems into suitcases and head for the hill towns of Tuscany and Umbria. I'm using Google Earth to carefully pick routes, but there's no getting around the fact that medieval people used terrain to their best defensive advantage when picking their townsites. Our ascent to our first hill town of Cortona climbs 780 feet in less than two miles. I think we may be pushing our bikes by that time. So over the next month, I face the daunting task of convincing my kids that hills are their friends too. Wish me luck!

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!