A Must-See IFor Every Athlete

Here's the motivational speech of all time. For athletes, kids, and anyone anywhere:

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.

Inspired

I think I've watched the finish from the Olympic Men's 4 x 100m relay about ten times by now, and every time it just blows me away. That's got to be one of the best moments in sports that I've ever watched. I stayed up really late watching the other night, then saved the program to replay for hubby and the kids. They all peeled off the edges of their seats as Jason Lezak blitzed into the home stretch of the last 50 meters, it was so unbelievable and beautiful. Despite my many other misgivings about the Olympics, that was a moment of pure unadulterated sports magic. It reminded me a bit of when, as a kid, I watched Nadia Comaneci score that first perfect ten in the 1976 Olympics. I'm betting my kids, especially my newly-minted swim teamer will remember this moment too.

And in a happy side-note, I got totally fired up in my swim workout yesterday and did some just awesome sprint sets. How can you watch something like that and then go to the pool for some boring old lackluster workout? Simply not possible. I think all of my strokes benefitted just from watching so much swimming over the last few days. I kept thinking of things I'd seen on the underwater camera and how to apply them to my own stroke, and overall I had the strongest swim workout I've had in a long time. Nothing like some inspiration!

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...

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.

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....

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!

Perspective

I went for an absolutely dreadful run yesterday. It was my long run day, 36 degrees and raining outside with wind whipping the rain into my face seemingly from every direction. I stepped in a puddle almost immediately and had wet socks, got a blister underneath my toe that split my toe open. I only discovered this later when I was scrubbing my foot with my lovely Grapefruit Chamomile sea salt scrub that I use after running and realized I'd just poured salt into an open wound - yeeeeow! Not recommended.

The run just never materialized into anything resembling fun, and I was starting to feel pretty damn sorry for myself when I passed this spot on the running trail, near the University football stadium and was suddenly taken back over twenty years to a November day when I was in college. On the way to classes in the nearby art buildings, I heard something that sounded like gunfire. We later found out that a student had taken up a position in the stadium with a sniper rifle and was firing at people. He shot and killed an Olympic runner who had also competed on the University Track team: Chris Brathwaite, near the spot I was running past yesterday.

I hadn't thought of that name in decades, but it came immediately to mind. He was a sprinter, originally from Trinidad & Tobago who had competed in two Olympic games. It's not unusual when you're out running on the paths in our town to be overtaken by Olympians past and present. I've been blown past by some of the best runners in the world out there: Marla Runyan, Alberto Salazar, and Mary Decker-Slaney to name a few. Twenty-three years ago, Chris Brathwaite was just out doing exactly what I was doing yesterday (only probably a good bit faster): going for a jog on the beautiful bark trails envisioned by Steve Prefontaine that pass along the river. He didn't know it would be his last run, and probably never knew what hit him.

From that point forward in my run, I vowed to stop whining and letting the weather get me down. I had let the rain bring my run down to a drudgery, but I squared up my shoulders, concentrated on my form, and tried my best to ignore the cold. A funny thing happened: my run got a whole lot better. It felt more like a gift to be out there running, even in the freezing rain, than a chore. As the legendary Prefontaine once said "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." I had definitely not been giving my best, but the memory of Chris Brathwaite's last run on that spot had brought back how precious it is to have this gift at all. As I've been struggling this last week with appreciating the gift of the last few days of my dog's life, this lesson seems to be one I'm destined to be presented with again and again.

This is not to say that I hope fervently that my next long run is not going to be accomplished in sleet and freezing rain, but even if that's the way the cards fall, I'll try to keep yesterday's lesson in mind.

Mind Games

I did all the right things yesterday morning: ate a good breakfast and got my running gear together with plenty of time to spare. The weather looked terrible so I even took the time to hunt down my ear warmers and waterproof gloves. I dropped M. off at his friend's house and A. at her dance class. My usual Tuesday run is right from the dance studio parking lot because the bike path goes along the river there and it's a beautiful run. But it was incredibly cold out and the freezing rain was just pouring down. Thanks to a recent entry by J. at Ironmanlife, I also know that the Mind Chill factor was not to be discounted, it felt ten degrees colder than it probably was in reality. In short, I just didn't want to run.

This is a pretty unusual thing for me. As a person who treasures her time alone, my workout times are usually sacred. I don't miss one unless I'm on death's door or the sky is falling. But the yuckiness of the weather can't be minimized, it was really ugly out there. I knew that regardless of how much Goretex I stacked on, I'd be wet to the skin and freezing in minutes.

So it was time to bring out the mind games. When your brain is resisting doing something, you can often get yourself to do it anyways just by turning things around a little. I do this sometimes in the middle of a workout ("I'll just swim another 10 laps and then I can stop", repeat as necessary) but this time required some creativity. I decided to drive to my gym, where I could run laps inside or even just sit in the hot tub if I wanted to. Once I was at the big parking garage for the gym, I knew I still wanted to run, and a solution presented itself to me. After 9:30 and before the lunch rush, no one really comes in and out of the garage, so I decided to run laps up and down the circular levels of the garage. It was still cold, but at least I wasn't getting rained on, and I told myself I could stop at any time and go in and sit in the hot tub. It was actually kind of cool and novel, so I enjoyed the first 15 minutes or so. Just when I was getting bored, the rain miraculously stopped and I headed out on the streets.

Just a few blocks away on the north end of town, I discovered a trail up a small butte that I hadn't known about, with rock steps leading up to a great view out over the city. So I got a lot of unexpected hill work in between the parking garage and the butte, and ended up with an easy jog along the river. When all was said and done, a hot shower was waiting for me and as usual, I was glad that I'd taken the first step after all.

Where Ironman Meets Mozart

When I was a kid, I had this unfortunate tendency to quit when the going got tough. Plenty of things came easily for me, so when things didn't go quite so smoothly, I guess I just made the assumption that it wasn't something I could do, and I quit. Even within subjects that were normally straightforward, if I struck a snag, I just gave up. Being a perfectionist didn't help, because if something didn't come out just right, I threw up my hands in frustration and walked away.

Sports changed my life. I know lots of people say that, to the point that it is a cliche. But more than changing my life in a broad sense (which also happened), becoming first a swimmer and then a triathlete began to change my essential approach to almost everything. Before that, I had always had an image in my mind of perfection, and if what I was doing, whether it was playing Mozart or painting a landscape didn't match that perfect image, my frustration became overwhelming and I would stop. In sports however, I learned that nothing is perfect. There is no perfection, there is only better. You can never run a perfect race, something can always be improved. Once you know this essential truth, you can accept that the only thing you can do is to make yourself better, in all aspects of life.

The other more critical thing I learned from sports was the principle of Incremental Change. You don't have to make yourself instantly better, you only have to try just a little harder today, and tomorrow your "normal" will be where "harder" was yesterday. Over a matter of time, once can go from barely being able to run/walk a mile to crossing the finish line of an Ironman. It's amazing how many implications this has in our lives. Whether it be work, hobbies, relationships, eating habits; once we know that the only change we have to worry about is a small and incremental one, then overwhelming problems stop being overwhelming and start to be manageable.

So the other day I was sitting at the piano facing a Mozart concerto that I want to be able to play fluidly. It's not there yet. But, unlike 30 years ago, I have the ability to take it one day at a time, to make each segment better in incremental ways. I now know that when I sit down a week from now, provided I've put in some diligent work, it will sound much better than it does today. I don't have to throw up my hands with an internal "I suck! I'll never be good at this!", but instead can tell myself "Just play the left hand three times, then play them together. It will be better. Tomorrow you can work on the right hand." I know this doesn't sound like much of a revelation, but to this perfectionist it's solid gold.

Passing these hard-won obvservations on to my kids has been a challenge as well. My kids have, quite unfortunately, inherited my perfectionist tendencies. Some lessons, however, are hard to put into words that don't sound trite and lecture-like. So more than anything, I've tried to provide opportunities for them to discover this themselves. Taking Karate together has been a place where both of them have had the chance to make this discovery. Things that were hard a few months ago come more easily now. And once a kid has had success in mastering one thing, they can take that observation to anything they want to tackle in life.

More than anything, I'm grateful for my college swim coach, who provided both the opportunity and the lessons that I needed to learn in order to be able to face my perfectionism bugaboo. Without him, and his edict that I tackle a triathlon, something that I thought I could "never do", my Mozart book might be slammed shut, my piano silent, and I surely wouldn't have crossed the finish line of an Ironman.