I Am A Crock-Pot

Confession - I am the tri-world's oldest newbie. Not in terms of calendar age maybe but in terms of being "hooked" on the sport. I have long been entranced from afar. Far, far, afar. To date, I have done one tiny triathlon - the Old Hickory Lake Sprint Triathlon 2006. But I first yearned to do a triathlon in the mid-80's (<-which, according to my children, was back in pre-historic times.) Julie Moss, all the Scotts (Dave Scott, Scott Molina, Scott Tinley), Paula Newby-Fraser, Erin Baker, Karen Smyers - I read about them all! For years. Mostly while sitting in the bathtub, eating pizza, dripping oily cheese all over my Triathlete magazine. (<--A magazine that I bought and read in complete secrecy because I was convinced I would be laughed at if anyone ever knew how much the idea of triathlon called to me. I kid you not. In fact, I once thought the chiseled and buff guy behind the sales counter was giving me the raised eyebrow like, "You? Buying THIS magazine?" and I BABBLED something about buying it as a present for a very athletic friend. Sad, sad, sad. I was so mean to myself and dismissive of my own dreams!)

I may have been a total slug after about 13, but I was an active little kid. I was a gymnast in grade school - the Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci years. I even went to the Junior Olympics but was told by my coach that I'd never be a "real" gymnast. Being too old and too big, I "retired" my 8 year-old, 65 lb. self * and moved on to swimming. I'd always loved swimming. Both of my parents were on the Masters swim team, so it probably wasn't much of a stretch in their routine to schlep me and my sister to swim practices too. Practice was great but meets made my stomach hurt. I'm tempted to say that I'm not a competitive person - and I'm not. But I have to add that our swim team was probably higher pressure than most with Tracy Caulkins on it. At the time she was the best swimmer in women's swimming history. (And she's really an amazing person: kind, funny, truly graceful under pressure, and nice to all us kids who worshiped her.) I quit the swim team in middle school. The three hour a day practices were too much, again I was told I was never going to be a "real" swimmer, school work was hard for the first time ever, and I felt "fat" in my bathing suit - in short, I fell face first into what I now call all that Ophelia crap.

My poor mother. She encouraged me in so very many high school endeavors but she especially (and fruitlessly) invested her energy when it came to me and athletics. She went with me to Jazzercise (which I dropped after about three classes - realizing the cute leg warmers weren't worth all that floundering effort). She invited me to join her yoga group (which I totally couldn't hack because they smelled weird.) She bought me a bike and volunteered to be the sag wagon for local group rides. I loved cycling because it wasn't about being fast or winning or losing. The group would bike 16 miles to Cracker Barrel, pig out, and ride back! But then my bike got stolen; my now-single mother couldn't replace it; body consciousness (and loathing) hit all time highs; school was still hard; college admissions loomed; and boyfriends distracted me. I got caught like a rabbit in the road between the wanting and the doing. I ached to do something big, bold, daring, and demanding. But the minute I began, the internal critics yammered mercilessly. I'd cave and then the next time I had an idea to try something the mean voices would remind me I'd failed before, why would this time be different. (See the catch there?)

There are places where my internal compass held strong. I marched to my own drummer - A LOT - when I was a teenager. My personal style (punk in a preppy world), my art (knitting, fiber, mosaic), my service to country at age 17 (bewildering to my Yale-,Harvard-, and Vanderbilt-bound friends) - all of those triumphed where my athletic self flailed and succumbed to the ugly voices. It's also good to note the ugly voices couldn't be everywhere at once. I occasionally snuck athletic endeavors by them. Racquetball? I'm not being sporty - I'm only playing because my boyfriend likes to play. Volleyball? It's just the intramural team. I know I'm not good enough to make the "real" team. Running? Er, well, they do make you run when you're in the Navy, so maybe I should practice. Boot camp coming up and all. WHAT?!! My mean voices freaked the fuck out the week before Boot Camp. A mile? We can't run a mile. We'll never make it. We can't go. We'll have to back out. So sorry.

Were my mean voices in for a rude awakening! For the first time, caving athletically was NOT an option. I'd signed a legal contract. I'd known since I was a little bitty girl that I'd join the Navy when I grew up. (<-- Doesn't it make you howl to know that I sincerely believed being 17 was all grown up?) I was third generation Navy. It was just one of those things. And now I was going to Boot Camp whether I could run a mile or not. (And I could not.) The first day of Boot Camp we ran a mile and a half. Eight weeks later we were running three and a half miles every morning. At four a.m.. I never fell out of the run. Not once. Of course, I gave myself no credit for this triumph of will power. In my narrow world, there in Orlando in 1986, it wasn't will power at all - it was abject fear. I was flat out terrified of my company commander. I saw what happened to the girls who fell out of the runs. Running was the lesser evil. Running was by far and away better than doing push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks, mountain climbers etc while getting yelled at for hours after everyone else got to go to sleep. My sole purpose in life was to avoid being yelled at or "cycled" as they called the late night calisthenics. My plan was to fly low, low, low under my CC's radar and graduate from Boot Camp as soon as humanly possible. It was a good plan. It might have worked, too, if it hadn't been for my pesky birthday and a whiny shipmate. Whiny girl wanted to get out of something or other and said, "But it's DB's** birthday. Can't we have a break?" My CC turned to me, "And which birthday would this be DB?" "Eighteen, ma'am." "Eighteen? That's not enough. We'll give you a few to grow on. Drop and give me 25." "Gather 'round K115. How 'bout a song for our birthday girl." And what follows next is the first inkling, glimmer, speck of an iron moment I had ever experienced in my life.

I started in on those stupid effin' push ups (after having already run, marched, and worked my tail off all day) while my company sang "Happy Birthday". I was ok for the first few, but then a couple were sloppy and my CC didn't count them. Then my arms got shaky and sweat was pouring off of me. I tried the last one I don't remember how many times. Each time it wasn't good enough and I heard my CC say, "Again!" instead of the longed for "Twenty-five!" And then I collapsed. Hands slid, arms splayed, elbows went akimbo, face smacked the tile. Blood spurted. Nose swelled. I looked up at Petty Officer (First Class) Mackey and wailed, "I can't do it." She had to give me a pass on that last one. I had tried so hard and I was now bleeding earnestly all over the floor. She looked down at me and said kindly, "What? You don't think you can do 25 little pushups? Ok. Then make it 50. Right now." I spluttered bloody snot bubbles and said, "If I can't do 25, how do you expect me to do 50?!" "You don't want to do 50?! Ok, make it 75! You've got 51 to go. I know you can do it even if you don't." There was no way to win! What else could I do? I scooted over to a clean place on the tile and tried some more. Petty Officer Mackey sent the others off to clean shit and she settled in to count my push ups.

And I did them. They weren't pretty. But I did every last one of them - crying (out loud), cursing her and making excuses (in my head) until I ran out of all the extraneous mess. For the agonizing last few, I was empty of everything except the hot/cold tension that was holding my muscles together as I pushed up and lowered down. When I was finally, finally done, I didn't get a birthday present or even an "atta girl". I got, "You're stronger than you've ever let yourself think. Don't let it go to waste." (<--Well, to be honest - she probably said, "Don't fuck it up" because that whole "cursing like a sailor thing" is for real. Sadly. Curse words are not very smart or precise, but they are oddly satisfying. And appropriate for the hell that is pretty much every aspect of military life. I find them impossible to avoid when I even start thinking about the Navy.)

That one moment has had lasting repercussions. I'd long known I have a deep and abiding faith in God (even if my idea of God is a bit unconventional.) It was startling to discover a deep and abiding faith in myself, in my very own strength (even if my strength might not be recognizable to anyone else.) The timing was uncanny (or maybe not - the universe being what it is.) Some really terrible things happened about then and all of my newfound strength was spent just breathing in and out on a regular basis. After a while, I got through crisis mode alpha and went on to wonderful challenges like higher education and mommyhood. It wasn't until I was invited to come along and cheer for my sister's neighbor's friends at the Music City Triathlon (1995) that I remembered I had a neglected athlete, hanging around forlornly inside of me.

That morning, for the first time, I saw a triathlon in person - not on glossy pages or TV - but in real, live life. Oh man! The fog over the lake, the focused looks on faces, the whir and clack of bicycles being put through their last minute checks - I ATE IT UP! There were big name pros there but it was seeing the regular joes - friends of neighbors' sisters and all - that really got me jazzed. I know I'll never be a magazine worthy pro, but I'm a friend! I have neighbors! I've done push ups 'til the cows came home! Why couldn't I be one of the ones on the other side of the ropes? The old longing welled up inside of me so forcefully I thought my heart would explode right out of my body. My dear friend Donna turned to me and said, "I've always wanted to do a triathlon." I gaped at her. "Wouldn't it be great?" she asked me. "Yes!" I shouted at her. "It would be awesome!" "Really? Fantastic! Let's do it then," she said.

Yeah. About that "let's do it then" part. That's the part I'm not so good at. But Donna is a doer. We went for a run the very next day. In the sticky, late summer, Southern heat. Did I mention I had babies at home? I had, in fact, just weaned the baby that would ultimately end up being the middle child (of our now blended five pack) the week before. I finished that run with a tomato face, soaked shirt front, and rising panic. It was TERRIBLE! It was AMAZING! And it was decidedly better than push ups. Donna and I realistically set our sights on the next year's Music City race. She was in grad school; I had a busy family; and it was a long distance to train for. (It was an olympic distance. I'd never heard of Sprint distances until a couple of years ago. Were they even around in the 90's?) I bought book after book and stuck to a training plan of sorts. I had no fancy gear and rode a heavy touring bicycle. I was on my way to triathletehood.

Then six weeks before the race I got the flu. I would have been fine if I had just taken the time off and recuperated. But I didn't do that. I was anxious about missing "key" workouts so soon before the race. The ugly voices in ascendancy, I crammed in the "lost" workouts one on top of the other, telling myself to suck it up and deal. Being a "real" triathlete meant hammering it. Maybe that works for some people. But it was the wrong end of the push up lesson for me. I overtrained and shredded my achilles tendon. Shredded. I had very little money - barely enough to cover one doctor's visit where I was told I needed to be on crutches for a few weeks and not to run for at least three months. Oh, and that I needed PT. Riiiiight. I could afford neither the crutches nor the PT and crushingly, my race was not to be. I hobbled. I made do as thoroughly as I could. And I promised myself I would never, ever be that stupid again. I would not bulldoze my own dreams! Build up, not tear down! I would use my powers for good!

Donna and I said we'd try again next year but we never got back to training. She got her M.Div, fell in love, moved out of state. I had another baby, got divorced and later remarried. Donna and I were still close friends, just not the training partners we had been, nor the life partners we would later become. It seems strange and drawn out - this triathlon adventure of mine - looking back at it, like this. I promise I'm getting to the crock-pot part. Are you still with me?

My triathlon fire - repeatedly banked - never went out. Donna and I made a deal in 2005. We would finally complete our triathlon! A decade later than originally scheduled - yes. A shorter distance than originally planned - yes. A real triathlon nonetheless - yes! We signed up for the Old Hickory Sprint (and what the hey, the Country Music Half Marathon while we were at it.) Both races had their ups and downs. Clearly I had some baggage to unpack to get my butt to the starting line, much less the finish. But we did it! We had no intention of stopping there. We were hooked - not just on the IDEA of racing - but on the very doing! Life - interesting sucker that it is - threw us a few curveballs (same old song and dance, really - falling in love, moving out of state, focusing on sweet children, etc.) The doing got put on hold once again. It hasn't taken us quite as long to get back to training this time around. Still...to date, I have only some splotchy training and one sprint distance race to show for twenty-plus years of triathlon enthusiasm!

I read some amazing stories about folks who go from swimming one pool length to Ironman in a year (e.g. DCRainmaker) and it blows my mind! The mean voices (if I ever loosened their gags) would hold that story up and screech about how lame I am for taking so long to get almost nowhere athletically in comparison and how I'll never have a chance to be a "real" athlete so I should give it up. The nice voices - my own internal cheerleading squad - the ones who are in charge these days simply say, "Wow! How interesting to read about people like that." And then, "Yay! We had a great ride today. Pacific Grove is going to be cake!" I still like to read about the pros, but more and more I'm drawn to and inspired by stories of triathletes from all over the spectrum. I value how many different ways there are to participate in endurance sports. I no longer feel intimidated or shut down by the idea of never being a champion. And it's ok that it took me so long to get to this point.

Some people are microwaves - cooking whole meals in a fraction of the time it takes to cook in conventional ovens. Lots of people are conventional ovens. Some other people are maybe convection ovens. I'm not quite sure about convection. Is it swirly and hot, cooking a little faster? Or is it swirly and more energy efficient? I do know convection has something to do with swirly - and there are some swirly people out there. Me? I am a crock-pot. It's not particularly glamorous and it is certainly not fast. But the end result is tender, with plenty to share.That's the whole story of how I got to be this salty and inexperienced at the same time. More and more often, I let myself feel like a real athlete. My idea of what "real" means is now achievable and anchored in health, unlike the bad old days. I no longer need anger and fear to motivate me. Kindness, deep seated desire, and compassionate connection are much better driving forces. And blogging? Blogging rocks my entire unconventional, athletic, creative, social/agoraphobic self! I still sneak an occasional Triathlete magazine, but I much prefer stalking terrific tri-bloggers. Maybe this post will help someone somewhere make peace with their inner crock pot. Ultimately, though, I just want to be part of the wider message that says "Cook up those dreams and serve them to the world any way you can!"

Peace and happy training through the weekend, my pals. I will be unplugged until Monday! (Of course some of you may still be trying to slog your way through this unending post come Monday and not even notice I was gone! :D)

PS: (digressions)
* You do NOT want to get me started on the horrifyingly sick and toxic culture that was gymnastics in the late 70's/early 80's.
**DB was for "Dizzy Blonde" - although I have never considered myself either dizzy or blonde. Empirical evidence will back me up on at least the not-blonde part. There's more to the nickname but that will have to be another post. This one is frightfully long as it is!!