Getting in Gear

Labor day looms ahead of me, a sorry day indeed. The reservoirs close until next season, leaving me dry, dry dry.

I didn't make it out a single day. Amazing.

I would have never guessed our summer would shape up like this if you had asked me back in April. I'm excited, though. Yep. Here's why:

I BIKED TO THE TOP OF NCAR!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA. Okay, so this won't mean anything to you out-of-towners, but it's a big hill for a cycling weanie like me. And it's fairly steep. And I ride a mountain bike since road bikes are as costly as my dream race-boat. I am a happy camper. I don't usually post pictures, but this made me really happy. I'd also like to thank Kerry for accompanying me, and Zane, for his overall influence on my lifestyle. (See those saddle-bags, Zane? They are much loved! woohoo!)

And it's my new workout lover. I shall climb this hill, near my house, at least once a week from now on. I'd like to make it my pre-skiing substitute, and start getting up to ride at 6am a few mornings a week. I have a second similar hill not too far away, and if I can alternate, I'll be getting a nice workout. Then once the snow arrives, I'll be skate skiing in the mornings.

Happily, the biking will continue: now both kids go to preschool, but at different times. I now have 6 opportunities to ride 5 miles round trip just for that. So I'm hoping to ride 20-25 miles a week right there (can't do it every time due to schedule constraints), plus other errands. I might not be paddling, but I'm improving my overall fitness still.

Add to that the tai chi (starting that back up today YAY!) and the farming, and I'm feeling good. Oh, and with our first litter of baby bunnies even the poo-cleaning chores feel more fun. Maybe I can make this work still, even with my husband's crazy work schedule. :)

The many shades of greatness

Okay, so my inspirational reading begs the question: did Diana Nyad make it? Did she swim the distance of 103 miles between Cuba and Florida? The now-obvious and somewhat disappointing answer is, no, she did not. But come on! She made it about halfway, despite massive asthma attacks (she was prepared for some difficulty, but not debilitating) and strong pains in her shoulder which she had never encountered before that day. She fought hard, and in the end, she had to stop.

Am I sad for her? Yes, and no.

I would have loved to see her make a statement to the world about what women in their 60's can achieve with the simple completion of the distance. After all, society wants little sound bites to judge quickly and simply if there was success or failure. So I'm sorry that many will see this as failure. It wasn't, though. The training, the effort, still leave her better off than if she hadn't tried at all. She inspired others, and touched their lives. Now she's helping people take a good hard look at 'success' and hopefully deepen their understanding of it.

And I would have liked to see her do it for her own vindication and joy. I relate to the process she underwent to set the goal, have the courage to make it public, and to go for it all-out. Her spirit is indomitable. I'm sure she cried in frustration when she was in the boat, but her interview afterward demonstrated what a winner she is: an amazingly strong lady mentally, emotionally, and physically, who had the grace and wisdom to appreciate the experience for what it was- team work, hard work and training, and the best her body could offer on that particular day.

My husband made a good point when we were reading her report and watching the interview: she swam 50 miles in the ocean. Fifty. Miles. 24 hours. Really. My hat is off to her. I hope I put up as good a fight in my own life-challenges.

Inspirational reading

I have some stuff in the works to talk about soon, but for now, check out this victory for us all:

"Diana Nyad attempted it once before. It was 1978 when she was 28, but 42 hours into what's supposed to be a 60-hour swim, her team pulled the plug. Nyad, a world-class endurance swimmer, had been defeated by nature: the water temperature was a tad cool and the wind produced sizable waves.
A year or so later, Nyad did manage to swim 102.5 miles from Bimini to Florida before she retired at 30. But, as ESPN says in its profile of Nyad, just before her 60th birthday and following the death of her 82-year-old mother, she started to think back to 1978 and said "Would I? Could I?"


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/08/139082543/from-cuba-to-florida-a-61-year-old-starts-the-103-mile-swim?sc=fb&cc=fp

Sanity riegns

The impatient, ambitious, burn-it-all Viking in me lost out to the more mature, mellow part, I'm sure all of you will be relieved to hear.

I was 75% sure of that even when I wrote my last post, but liked entertaining the idea of a mad push for September anyway.  *sigh* If given the opportunity to actually focus on my own goals and work towards them, I suspect I could achieve great things... but I never get the chance to have single-pointed focus on *anything*.  It's ironic that passion burns bright in the 20's, but we often lack the discipline or wisdom to take advantage. Then in the 30's, we know how to execute what we want, but in my case, there are kids and other tasks that require multitasking, watering down my effectiveness. I wonder what the 40's will look like?

In the meantime, I have small goals. I feel like I'm starting over, but really I'm not. I'm in much better shape this time around. I'd like to add tai chi back into my life again this month. I also have brought up the exercise gear we have: balance disks, small weights, an ab roller, elastic bands for resistance training, and a mat. I'm going to do the 100 Push-up challenge again that I did last year, and just start doing little things when I have 5 minutes to spare here and there. I'm also going to put this computer back downstairs, and only let myself check it once in the morning, and when I need to write a new blog post.

I'm going to resurrect the monthly Exercise Confessional too. Accountability helps with getting things rolling again. I think I'll do it weekly just to get myself going, and then cut back when it becomes normal again. Bear with me- I swear I have more things to post beside my exercise! ;)

An Exercse in Independence

My goodness! I don't usually blog on a daily basis, but there's been so much going on, even without paddling.

I posted my thoughts to the WaterTribe discussion forum on paddling whether or not the formal races happen.  I heard back from Chief, the original organizer and founder of WaterTribe. He clarified his thoughts as follows: Death happens, things change, people get older, and nobody should put off doing what they want- they should do it now. That's what he meant when he said 2012 might be the last chance. So he encouraged me to paddle the NCC, then the EC, and then the UFC. But that I should start doing these as soon as possible. No problemo!

The NCC is a 100 mile sprint that is supposed to be pretty tough, and a good introduction to WaterTribe events. It's coming up, so I could technically make it to the race this summer. Paddling-wise, I feel prepared for that distance despite not having trained- maybe I'm being cocky, but my off-the-couch abilities would get me though a sprint like that. I could get the charts and tide tables and study up. What I'm *not* prepared with are my safety skills. I don't feel adequately prepared with my rolls, self rescues, and hypothermia kit. I don't have all the gear pulled together for a real overnight race. I'd have a ton of work to do.

I think I could pull it off, but I'm not the only factor involved here. My husband's start-up, to which he is a total slave right now, has almost completed it's initial incubation period, making life in August and September a big unknown. He's still working 7 days a week, and we don't know how soon that will let up.

So a more sane pace might be to not race this summer and fall, and register for some races that are closer to home for next spring and early summer, and also register for the NCC for next year. If I do three or so 100-200 mile races next summer, I'll get to work out lots of the kinks in my gear and skills. Then in 2013 I can do the EC to qualify for the UFC in 2014. That also gives me time to save up for and decide on what boat I want to partner with. (I can't assume Pat's boat will continue to be available to me after this summer).

Still, while the second option is very logical and well-paced, and was closer to my original plans (before my husband got into this start-up business), I haven't totally ruled out making a mad scramble for this year's race. I might just register, and see how close I come to being ready. If I don't think I'm a safe enough bet, and if it stresses out my husband too much, I won't do it.

So for all these musings, what I'm really grateful for is the mental exercise that I had to go through these past few days. Briefly having to consider the loss of the UFC as my goal made me look hard at what I'm doing. Sometimes having something get taken away makes you really examine your motives and the integrity of your goals. I feel a bit more steady now, more independent. Does that make sense?

Panic response

So. I have to paddle this 1200 miles alone. Sure, that sounds daft- of course I'm doing it alone! It's not like I have a companion boat full of well-wishers cheering me on. What I mean, is that there might be no more official Ultimate Florida Challenge after next year. There might be no more Everglades Challenges, either.

Initially, I panicked. Then I felt pissed. Then I thought, hey, I could drop the whole idea then, do something more sane... not.

This begs the question, what would I do if that were the case?

I would throw myself at the EC 2012 with all I have, for starters. The remaining warm weather this year would be spent drilling rolls and rescues, practicing with the hypothermia kit, and thanks to Colorado winds in the autumn, plenty of fully-loaded wind drills. And practicing loading, unloading, and setting up camp in wind and rain. All my free time would have to go into that, since I would not get to train from late Oct until the race in March.

Then I'd be skate-skiing like mad as soon as the snow falls, plus swimming. There's a group of 'yaks that meet at a swimming pool in January and February that I could review rolls and rescues with once a week. I'd have to do that too. Then, if Pat will let me, I'd see if she'd let me take her sweet boat out for the race. Otherwise, I'll see if I can bum one off of someone else... but that introduces the unknown of a boat I'm not familiar with. I'll deal with that when the time comes, I suppose.

Then what?

Then I paddle the 1200 mile course on my own, either in 2013 or 2014, depending on how the EC goes, and whether I'm ready. I'll have to do a bunch more planning on my own, since there possibly won't be a support group. Or maybe I'll make up a different course of my own of the same length.

All I know is that it's in my head, in my dreams, that I really want to find that deep rhythm of a long trip on the water with my paddle in hand. I really like the idea of doing it to draw attention to a particular cause, too. I'm leaning towards supporting the International Confederation of Midwives, kiva.org, or SeeYourImpact.org (all three are listed at the top of my blog with links- let me know which one you'd go for!). It all just feels right.

I guess I'm having to step back and find the space to unteather from the need to have it be a WaterTribe event. My vision of this doesn't need to be tied to a formal event planned by others. I know that's what inspired me originally, but I don't need to limit myself to that particular event. This realization is invigorating. Even freeing. I would like the camaraderie that a WaterTribe event offers, but in the end, I'm paddling alone either way.

Book review: Without a Paddle, by Warren Richey

An easy read, Warren Richey's book chronicles his efforts at completing- and winning- the first Ultimate Florida Challenge, the same race I hope to complete in 2014. It also examines his divorce from his first wife and eventual romance of another associate later, after starting to heal from the deep wounds of the first.

I am unqualified to speak about his personal life, except that I was a bit uncomfortable with his somewhat negative view of women, which only improved by the end.  I hope that means he found peace with my gender.  Having seen a close family member struggle with a divorce, I know they are like mourning for a death that is imposed by a loved one (or oneself), which must be incredibly hard to get over. I hope never to experience that grief.

His book appealed to me more for filtering it down to what I need to do to prepare for the race.  I would have liked it if he had delved into the challenges of the race a bit more, even.  He definitely provided plenty of ideas of things I need to work on.

I discovered, over the course of the book, that SharkChow (which is his official handle) is what we of the climbing community call a sandbagger.  Basically, a sandbagger is one who downplays their own ability, making a route sound easier than it is, thus luring others to attempt it.  It's not always done with malice, but at times stems from well-meaning but misplaced humility. Some people just don't think they are that far from average when they give estimates of their own fitness or ability, even while they are effortlessly adept. So when I call Warren a sandbagger, he fits the latter category, and I say it with a degree of affection- I am married to a chronic sandbagger, who has taken me climbing far beyond my comfort zone to the point of dry-heaving from effort, when he was convinced it wasn't that hard.

I might be reading between the lines a bit too much, but here's my take on it: SharkChow thinks he's not that athletic, like he was nuts to try to do this race, and yet if you pick up on it, he trained pretty hard, to the point of possibly having an over-training injury. He was not only very fit, he knew how to pack for the race from having done lots of paddling. (Did I mention he completed the 30 day race in like 21 days? Yeah. Sandbagger!)

He had the competitive advantage of having paddled many miles of the racecourse casually over the years- he lived in Florida, and had many hours of sea kayaking under his belt. This leaks out through references in his divorce portions of the storyline. This also means he knew where to camp, having camped at many of the spoil islands that he depended on in the race, and he knew the hazards of the different areas. These are major advantages to have going into such a long race. There is less of 'the unknown' that an out-of-towner like me has to deal with. So a big lesson to me is that I need to make time to paddle sections of this course and explore it before the actual race, so I can plan better. This is a huge lesson to me.

That's not to say that he painted a rosy picture of the hardships of the race. There were certainly plenty of hurdles to clear, from winds, to tides, to the especially unpredictable waves around river deltas where the intercoastal waterways crossed, and other pleasure-boaters hazing small kayaks in heavily populated areas. Not to mention getting lost, getting stuck on mudbanks, and getting blown out to sea. Mostly, he made sleep-deprivation sound like the ultimate demon of the race. It impairs judgment and removes the keen observation that keeps us from making really basic, big mistakes.

Some of the important lessons I have taken away from this, as they pertain to my goal of completing the race safely at my skill level:

1. Slow down, don't try to win: SLEEP.  Better to get enough rest to enjoy the trip and avoid dangerous misjudgment. I'm not a strong enough paddler, nor familiar enough with the racing grounds to take risks. Slow, steady, safe. That's my mantra.
2. Have lots of back-up options open at all times: alternate routes, duplicate places to camp close together (you never know how far you'll get on a given day), extra things to eat/drink, and emergency gear. Warren didn't wear his PFD during the race. This to me is a big no-no, but I'm a safety freak.
3. Never take for granted that the weather will stay good. Take advantage of it. This made all the difference early on for SharkChow's race. I know it's not the Northwest, but even Florida gets crummy paddling weather that requires staying off the water sometimes (this was not obvious to me until reading accounts of the race).
4. Really get to know the racecourse as much as possible.
5. Tides can really, really suck.
6. Inflate my tires fully on the portage. Oh goodness yes.
7. Pack light. This one is hard for me. I'm a boyscout at heart, and think I must have stuff for all eventualities. I don't want to paddle a barge through, so I have to figure out how to go light enough to stay fast, while having what I need to stay comfortable.

I'm really glad I got the book. It's very helpful to read a WaterTriber's personal account. I've been trolling for more such stories on the WaterTribe website as well as the blogs different paddles have linked. I hope to meet SharkChow at a race in the next couple of years and thank him. If my memory serves me right, it was his article in the Christian Science Monitor that I read in 2006 that fed my imagination in the first place!

What is discipline?

I've been clinging to this goal of mine since 2006, of doing this sea kayak race... through the births of my two children, through the very slow process of reclaiming my body from major injuries and pregnancies, and through the more recent process of having to put myself on hold yet again to give another person's dream first priority. I'm learning to let go of that a little bit, to relax with this journey, to be okay with perhaps not even making my goal of doing this by age 40. When I've had personal projects in the past, I've pursued them with a rigid, myopic intensity that has been unhealthy. Not this time.

In my hunt for a more balanced lifestyle, I discovered minimalism. At first, I saw it as a means to eliminate clutter from the house, to cut down on the things that needed cleaning, repair, or were simply time-suckers for attention and energy. I thought then I might be able to fit in the work-outs I need to be doing if I cleared out the house more.

Then I thought about how having kids simplified my life for me (an organic form of minimalism), freeing me of social obligations as well as some time-wasting, self-indulgent habits. Instead I had to learn to be continually present for these two little people, in all their intensity and need, and still try to keep a functioning house, farm, and marriage. I've never worked as hard as I have in the past 4 years- not at any of my corporate positions, not in retail.... maybe almost with some of my volunteer/non-profit work, but even then I had projects, dealt with mostly-reasonable adults, and then had breaks- it wasn't relentless. Not like full-time parenting.

This winter I caught a glimpse of getting to do something just for me again, in the form of skate-skiing, and tai chi. And I started getting fit. It felt great. Then this job came up for mu husband, which I totally support, and my paddling had to go on hold, and even tai chi has stopped for the first time. My body has lapsed back to softness. It bothers me. And it doesn't.

I've been giving thought to what discipline really looks like in the face of constant change. It can't be rigid, or it's dead. It can't be a formula- how to eat, when to work out, or how time is spent. It has to be a mental state first and foremost. Discipline must be fluid, elastic, resilient, honest, or it will not survive a day. Change doesn't have to mean failure. It means adapting and being able to continue, even if the outward form shifts dramatically, even unrecognizably.

One of the biggest challenges of the UFC race, being 1200 miles, is the length of it: the boring, repetitive, lonely nature of paddling 16-18 hours a day for a month solid. The relentlessness, and the seemingly slow pace of progress, especially when faced with slow-burn injuries, getting knocked around by the wind and water, and wearing down. I like to think that I'm deep in the mental training for this challenge, and I'm finding what it takes to not get worn down mentally. The discipline of resilience. 

Discipline, then, is adaptation. It requires that we constantly evolve.

WTH am I doing?

I feel like I'm casting about in a kayak without a paddle these days. I haven't gotten to go out even once. I don't expect to any time soon either. With my husband's work schedule (haha! That implies time off!) and the exhaustion of no real breaks for me either, I just can't get up at 5 to paddle.

I'll be honest. I don't know what the hell I think I'm doing. It's a good thing this race is a few years away, because I don't belong in it.

Why am I posting this? Because this blog isn't supposed to be all about how successful I try to appear. It's about the journey towards a goal. And right now I'm losing ground.

Somehow, this flailing about isn't making me lose heart. It's just a phase, and I'm ignorant enough to still think I have a shot at this.

I'm sorry that I won't get to do my first race this summer, like I'd been hoping, but maybe I can race myself down a section of river somewhere near enough to just be gone for 2 days. I'll take a GPS and see how I fare. We'll see. Not much of a point in doing that when I haven't been training at all.

Any advice?

Things in my life I FORGOT to mention

Oh, haha! So, we have a farm for a yard now. And I'm not kidding.

Since March, we have constructed- with our own hands- two bunny barns, I've laid a scavenged flagstone walkway to service them, I've dug out grass and put in 2 raised garden beds, I've filled in mud patches with the dug-out sod, and I'm now building (by myself) a chicken coop! My husband was able to help with the initial bunny barns, but with this new job, he hasn't been available. So I've done the rest of this stuff, with a little help on the initial framing of the coop and chicken run.

We have 4 rabbits we are raising to breed for meat, so I will eventually be caring for up to 20 rabbits at a time. We also now have 6 chickens for eggs. And I have a vegetable garden to tend to, berry bushes, herbs, and 2 cats to keep the rodents away.

All of this is tightly organized on less than a 1/4 acre of city land, with our little ranch-style brick house in the middle.

Plus the two kids, now 2 and 4 years old.

Did I say farm? I meant circus.

Blown away...

Goodness! Taking over the full running of the household is exhausting. I thought it would take just a week to get used to it, and then add the paddling into the mix, but honestly, I'm just now starting to feel up to the early mornings. It's taken a month.

I get up with the kids at 6:30am or so, and it's non-stop. They go to bed around 9pm, and then I'm doing the dishes from that day that I hadn't gotten to yet, giving the baby chicks fresh water, and usually sneaking out to water plants I didn't get to during the day too. And those are my nightly chores. Then there are the less-frequent but constant ones: bills, cleaning the cat's litterbox, correspondences, getting ahead on cooking things, planning meals and shopping lists, getting my 'to do' lists up to date.  I go to bed on average at 11pm. My son still wakes me 2-3 times per night.

Getting up at 5 or 5:30 hasn't appealed, but I am starting to think I could do it without totally wiping myself out now. And I can always supplement with napping when the kids nap when I'm exhausted.

So I've spent the past month learning to float and tread water in the hurricane, and now this month I plan on starting to *move*.

In the meantime, I've been able to sneak in some reading. Two book reviews are coming down the pipeline, both on paddling. They've been very educational books, and easy to read. Fun!

Swimming in a Hurricane

My husband's current 'job' requires really long hours- a major investment of time and energy that will hopefully pay off with a traditional job that has more normal hours, a steady paycheck, and a cool project to show for it. Meanwhile, we're relying on savings and my energy to keep the household going.

What I'm trying to say, it I have yet to take the kayak out. However, thanks to skate-skiing, I recognize what is going on below the surface: I'm learning to swim in a hurricane. Much like when I added skiing to my life this winter, I am building my stamina to a new level. I get up and take care of our little farm, I clean the house, prepare many meals, run the errands, and parent the kids. All day, all night. And then get up and do it again.

Typically, I'm up at 6:30am and don't go to bed until 11pm, in order to get all the dishes done each day, laundry folded, bills paid, meals cooked and stored for my husband's dinners at the office. I'm hoping that I will have built up a tolerance for this level of activity by next week, so that I can start getting up at 5:30 to sneak in the paddling. I'd really like to start going to bed an hour earlier, though. I don't think I'll last very long on less than 7 hours of sleep per night.

I tortured myself on a friends 'ab roller' yesterday, and it feels so good to be sore. I'm looking forward to paddling a couple days a week. I'm not upset at not paddling yet- I see the progress happening in other ways, and am confident that this will all pull together. I have to look long-term. This is going to happen. All of my greatest physical challenges have had a huge mental component, and I feel like I'm getting the mental conditioning going strong these days, so the physical will naturally follow.

Life just got trickier

Oooo boy.

Life just gets more exciting every time I look up. Just when I'm finding my stride, I get to add something more into the juggling act.

My husband just got recruited for a job he simply must take. It's a three month gig, with almost no real pay, but the training, mentoring, and chance of making it big are huge. It's a start-up type of opportunity that many wish for, and he's worked really hard- he deserves a chance to bust ass.

The trick is, it really is busting ass. It's 7 days a week, all day and night. He'll be home for dinner and bedtime rituals with the kids maybe twice a week, and that's it. I'm on my own the rest of the time. We won't really see him at all. He'll be lucky if he clocks enough sleep to keep going strong. It's a major deadline push for him.

So for 3 months, I will be winging it alone, and if I want to take advantage of the warm season for paddling, I have to make it all happen before 8 am, and somehow have the energy to tend to the kids for another 13 hours after that, when they finally go to bed around 9pm. I'll have to scale back my tai chi attendance, sadly, to only once a week, and find someone to watch the kids for those couple of hours. (Did I mention that the in-laws are out of town for the next 2.5 months too? No grandparents to help out!)

I'll certainly get to explore another facet of endurance! Stay tuned....

Who am I doing this for, anyway?

Why am I doing this race? Partially for me. Straight-up. That's clear. I'm excited about the challenge.

But ever since I started planning, I've wanted to tie these efforts to something bigger. To raise awareness, and maybe even money, for a cause. I still haven't settled on one. There are so many!

Here are the ones I'm thinking about right now. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on which one excite you too.

1. Eliminating leprosy. Once you've been to India, you never forget it.
2. Midwife training in developing nations. Lowers mortality rates amongst mothers and babies.
3. Kiva.org. Any money raised keeps on giving through micro-loans that get repaid.
4. Seeyourimpact.org lets you directly help individuals in need all over the world. You get a letter and picture of the person you help.
5. Women's rights/literacy. From acid bath assaults to bombing girls' schools, this matters for humanity's progress.
6. Hieffer International. Give a family some animals they can raise for sustainable food and breeding. It spreads and helps the community.
7. Habitat International (Habitat for Humanity in other countries).

The non-profits I mention are personal favorites.  I could be tempted to do something specific, like to raise money to build houses in Haiti for example. Or to build a well in a village that needs fresh water. Or send a midwife somewhere to train 20 midwives. I dunno. There are so many things I'd like to help with. Where should I start?

I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this. Which cause do you think would draw the greatest attention and support from the general public? Do you have any leads for me?

Who is in your inner circle?

Something I've been learning living here in Boulder is that I shouldn't compare myself to others.

There is always someone more fit, more lean, more accomplished, more hard-core. It continues: more health-conscious, more natural with their eating and lifestyle, more educated, and heck, just plain smarter. I have a simple undergrad degree. Boulder has the highest number of PhDs per capita in the nation. Lots of well-read, well-studied folks. Lots of brave adventurers, courageous entrepreneurs and high-powered, effective activists.

I have always walked into a room feeling like the kid, the youngster in a crowd of accomplished, wiser people. Even when that means selling myself short. Comparing myself to those who have achieved much is usually the quickest way to downgrade what I *have* done with my trips around the sun.

Of course, the opposite is true too. I can easily take a look at national averages and feel pretty good about my standing. This breeds complacency. It can even lead to arrogance.

How can we avoid those odious comparisons while still finding inspiration and support from the efforts of others? Most people have a default imaginary circle of people who they feel are watching and judging them as they move through life. Sometimes parents, friends, teachers. Often there are negative judgments and defensive justifications involved. I read about this theory and can't remember the book, or I'd give credit for the idea. Anyway, I decided to be pro-active, and formed a group of carefully chosen people to be my inner circle who would serve as positive mentors.

So who is in my inner circle of peers? Who do I have my imaginary conversations with (Come on! You ALL do it!)? I've chosen some interesting folks, most of whom I've never met directly. I've heard stories about their lives, their works, or I've read their works. Most of them are from previous generations. Most are not famous. Hard working and creative ranchers, farmers, entrepreneurs and homesteading housewives. Philosophers, writers and deep thinkers. A hermit or two. Some spiritual leaders. People with grit, who accept that hard work is requisite for success and hold positive attitudes.

I'm inspired by their ingenuity, humor, gentle joy, persistence, pragmatism, honor, shrewdness, and a toughness that's almost been bred out of my generation. Or schooled out of us. Or... I don't know. We, as a culture, are just not as ass-kicking, snake-stomping, rock-hauling tough anymore. Yet we could be. We complain and make excuses more. These folks step up and get things done without all the fanfare. We admire it when we encounter it. It still exists, like a startling, delightful sighting of an endangered species. And we can consciously choose to restore these values. *(I'm not saying plenty of you out there don't work really hard. I just think we as a culture spend too much time watching TV, surfing the Net, etc etc and I notice I waste bits of time doing useless things in the name of 'unwinding' when there are productive things that can allow me to unwind, too)

So during the day, some of these fair folk lean over my shoulder when I start to zone out reading the comics or some silly digest of crap online and snap me out of it. "What can you be doing that is productive towards one of your goals, young lady?" It's not nagging or judgmental. It's friendly standard-setting. I respect and appreciate the chance to improve my lot in life, and hell, that's going to require hard work! It's not like I'm going change overnight. But I am changing.

At the end of the day, as I head to bed, I review my day with my inner circle. Good day, or wasted? Was there time I could have spent better? It's a nice way to review things. I find I take more and more joy in hard work done well, and not wasting time.

More often than not, when people ask me how I'm doing, I find it harder to complain, because the efforts I'm making leave me feeling satisfied, even if I'm tired. I'm content with working hard, and I have some great cheerleaders. If you haven't cultivated such a group, you should pick some too.

Moving forward

A woman I met in the skate ski clinic this winter was a NOLS instructor in the Northwest before moving out here, and brought her kayak out. She is generously -and trustingly- letting me use it! And it gets to live with me, which makes it much easier. That means I can go to the Arvada Reservoir, which is MUCH cheaper at $15 for the summer pass. Boulder Res costs hundreds. :(

I'm a little nervous about using her boat- it's MUCH nicer than my beater whitewater I got last summer. It's lighter and I suspect more fragile. *Gulp* I have to be careful. On the plus side, being lighter, I can heave all 17 feet of it onto my Subaru without help, strap it down, and remove it without anybody's help.

This Tuesday morning, I'll be taking the kids on a field trip to the fair city of Arvada to buy my summer pass for the reservoir, and I'll bribe them with time at the Arvada swimming pool not far away.

I hope to start off paddling two mornings a week, and work up to four mornings by mid-July, when the grandparents return from their trip and can take the kids one morning a week again.  I don't want to burden my husband with too many breakfasts without me so that he sours on this whole thing. So that fourth morning will be when the grandparents can take the kids.

Other than that, I'm trying to up my tai chi practice by a few hours a week, and I'm trying to bike the kids everywhere I can. I've also upped my general activity levels/lifestyle by creating a mini farm here at home, where there's plenty of hard labor to do building new vegetable garden beds, a chicken coop, bunny barns, landscaping... so I'm good and sore on a daily basis. (We're building it all ourselves from recycled materials we find at Resource here in Boulder)

I figure it's all a good way to toughen up physically and also mentally. I think a fair bit of stamina stems from our expectations of ourselves, and from reasonably working up to greater and greater amounts of productivity. There's a balance to be found between expectations (and desire) and the patience to sustainably push a little further. This kind of conditioning takes time- to build physical strength and endurance, and also the mental attitude and habits.  That's my theory, and I'm testing it out on myself. ;) A year into it, I see lots of progress in both realms.

Hopefully by mid-summer, I'll be training full-on, and still have the energy to plan and cook the family meals, do all the farm chores (weeding, watering, feeding the rabbits and chickens, cleaning their various homes, harvesting, canning, etc), and still be a happy, engaged wife and mother. Are my expectations too high? We'll find out!

Springtime!

The weather is warming up more these days, and I have to find a routine to keep my cardio fitness up in the place of skate skiing now that the season ended this weekend. Here are the ideas I'm bouncing around right now, and need to shore up this week and this month:

1. I got a free rowing machine off of Freecycle that I'm sticking in the basement. I'm giving it a month to see if I am able to get myself to use it. If not, I post it back on Freecycle for someones else to decorate with.

2. I found someone who might lend me her 17' sea kayak to train in for this season. I have to check in with her. It's been hard to find water I can use at 6 am, but I found that the Arvada Reservoir is open at 6:30 am and is agreeable to my plan... Boulder Reservoir is not open that early until the end of May. That's more than 6 weeks out. Too long! I'll get solid answers this week and make my plans.

3. It's bike time! The cars need to be put away for the summer now, and I am back to biking the kids around for our errands and commuting. That's about 40 miles a week pulling 100 lbs of children and gear.

4. Tai chi and chi gung: I'm still doing tai chi, and we've been learning some chi gung that is pretty subtle and leaves me very sore. Great thing to do in the mornings when not paddling or if I wuss out on the rowing machine.

New challenges: My in-laws are going to be gone for the next three months. My husband is working without pay trying to get his business going. So we have no income coming in, little savings, and now no help with the kids for a while. I will have precious little free time to myself, and no extra money to throw at work-out options. I have to be creative. Early morning workouts are key, and "free" is the word of choice!

Winter hibernaton over- progress report

Last fall I found myself unable to update my blog, and sadly, have neglected it until now.

Why? Because I became very busy working towards my goals, and had to sacrifice something, which ended up being my quiet time at night. So, Yay, a good reason!


What was I doing? Skate skiing (a form of nordic cross country that's really freakin' hard)! Of course, we tried dragging the kids along. Then we bribed the grandparents to tag along to appease the kids, which only sort of worked. We weren't really getting to work out.

Our solution was to get up at 4:30/5am twice a week to ski before my husband's work began. One of us would stay home with the kids and 'sleep in' while the other dragged their backside up to Eldora, 40 minutes away, and stumbled out into the dark to fumble with skis and poles as hands went numb, and then glide off trustingly as the sky slowly lightened up enough to see the snow. I went up Mondays and Thursdays, my husband went Tuesdays and Fridays.

It was heaven. I know I have truly 'arrived' as a hard-core enthusiast when, in Boulder-Land-of-Athletes, there are only a handful of us doing this regularly. Why was this so fun? Certainly, the strain on my heart (literally!) of going up to 9000' in elevation to flail around on super-skinny skis uphill most of the way (Eldora is infamous for its steep trails: the saying goes, "There's no such thing as a casual day in Eldora"), the very cold wind that frequently blew, and the mildly creepy sense of wandering around in the near-dark alone were not the highlights. But here were the snapshots that kept me coming back: the sunrises; the quiet snow and trees; the sudden powerful views of snow-capped peaks; the gentle snowfall that muffled the world; birdsong as spring approaches; learning to recognize animal tracks in the snow; first tracks on freshly groomed trails... ahhhhhh, I'm so spoiled by that one thing that I can't even be bothered to go during normal business hours anymore!


Did I mention that this sport is insanely unnatural and hard? I also asked for my Christmas present from everybody to be that of pitching in towards a women's ski clinic that was once a week, all day, for 6 weeks. So I was really skiing three days a week through February. And it was soooo necessary. I couldn't go more than 50 yards without stopping to pant uncontrolledly, and certainly couldn't make it up a gentle hill without falling or totally losing form. The clinic gave me the tools to start putting the puzzle of skate-ski balance and coordination into place.

Now, last week, I think I went about 7 miles, watching the sunrise, and found myself making it much further between rests. I can go on blues and blacks, not just greens, and have a good time. My cardio is MUCH improved, and my clothes are fitting better. My legs are stronger, and I was able to keep with it through some minor injuries. A knee strain and back strain (both from gardening/construction projects at home) both were unable to keep me from going up for my commune with the snow. Even that demon-nemesis of mine, Sleep Deprivation, tried to stop me and failed. I recall one Wednesday ski clinic where I loaded up on coffee (which I never drink), sudafed for the cold I had, and ibuprofen for the knee pain and skied the whole day with my group. Another Wednesday, the temperature when I got there was -23 when we headed out to ski. We rocked it, though.

I discovered a whole new level of tough. I learned that being cold was okay. Frostbite is not, of course, but there are many levels of functional cold before that. I learned that to be an athlete means working with and through injury, not letting it stop you. Being sick doesn't mean you can't work out, either. Being sleep deprived is the same, as long as you can drive safely.  A certain degree of discomfort comes with the territory of working hard for something. And learning to not let it bother you is huge. Realistically, I have to expect that during the Ultimate Florida Challenge, for 30 days, I will experience all of these types of discomfort at some point. It just can't be a big deal. And the more athletes I meet, the more I understand that for many of them, it isn't that they're genetically primed to never get hurt or sick (although there are a few people like that out there). It's that they have conditioned themselves to work through it. They've toughened up. And so have I, although I'm still a total newbie. I have a stronger mental approach to physically demanding work.

I'm back now, and plan on updating my blog with regularity again. Thanks for letting the blog hibernate, but now it's spring, and I'm ready to add more to my plate again.