1/13/2013: Becoming An Athlete

Phase II now has a name that resonates with me, "Phase II:  Becoming an Athlete."  Writing Friday's blog post was illuminating for me.  Before Friday I had not realized I had built a mental barricade against becoming an athlete, but while I was writing Friday's post I began to see how all of the pieces over the years fit together.

In 2007 I decided to do the AIDS LifeCycle Ride.  The ride is a 565 mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic and raise money to help those with HIV and help find a cure.  I had not been on a bicycle for 20 years but I decided to do it anyway.  I bought a road bike, the kind with "clip-less pedals."  The term "clip-less pedals" is a misnomer, because you clip into clip-less pedals.  I think they are called clip-less because they don't have cages for your foot to slip into.  With those clip-less pedals you have to wear shoes with special devices on the bottom that clip into the pedal.  That way you are connected to the pedal and you are more efficient when you ride because you can pull up on the pedal as well as push down.  Pedaling becomes a smooth, circular motion instead of an up and down piston motion.

This all sounds great unless you are like me and you happen to be uncoordinated and haven't been on a bike in 20 years.  That first season training for the ride I fell off my bike 8 times.  People started saying I should give up on the clip-less pedals, that it wasn't worth it.  I said, "Screw that!  I can figure this out."  I also weighed about 200 pounds when I started training for the ride and the ride included lots of hill climbing, or more like small mountain climbing, so the extra weight was a burden.  I started training in early February and the ride started on June 1st.  In 4 months I went from my first 18 mile bike ride that almost killed me to being able to ride my bike 565 miles in 6 days.  And I enjoyed myself.   I did manage to lose about 20 pounds while training.  I think I weighed about 178 pounds when the ride started.  That helped on those hills.  As I got better and better at riding my bike and started to look like I knew what I was doing, the training ride leaders started saying, "You are an athlete."  I rejected that notion.  I rejected it because in my mind, I am not an athlete.  I also rejected that notion because I had learned to do one thing, ride a bike.  It didn't matter to me that I could ride my bike 565 miles, I still did not feel like an athlete.  I felt like a heavy person that managed to condition her body to accomplish one task.

In spite of not believing in myself as an athlete, I did start to see myself a little differently because of the ride.  The ride felt like a huge accomplishment.  Just like going from not being able to hit a softball to having one of the best batting averages on the team because of a lot of practise; I became a pretty good cyclist by practising a lot.  I fell off my bike a lot.  I kept getting back on it and trying again.  I bonked while going up a hill and thought I was going to die.  I ate some food and drank some water and got back on my bike.  I pushed and pushed and got better and better.  I learned a lot about endurance exercise.  I discovered there was a sport I like.  I truly do enjoy riding a bike.  I am actually pretty good at it.  I can ride a bike and go and go and go.  I did the AIDs ride two more times, in 2008 and 2009.  Early in 2009 I moved to Kansas City to marry Jack (Come to think of it, it took a lot of practice to get that right, too!) so 2009 was the last time I did the ride.  It just wasn't as much fun to train for the ride here in Kansas City, by myself, as it was with all of my riding buddies in the Bay Area.  A couple of summers ago I went on a 500 mile bike ride across Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just for fun.  For fun?  That seems crazy, but it was fun.  I was uncomfortably heavy for that ride, right around 220 pounds, but that did not affect my ability to complete the ride.  I was pretty adamant about picking a ride that wouldn't be too hilly though.  I knew mountain climbing would be terribly difficult at that weight.  The funny thing about that ride, though, was how well my body held up compared to my companions' bodies.  I was riding with my daughter, Carla, and my friend, Ryan.  Both were in very good shape.  Carla, of course, was young and Ryan just has that natural cyclist physique.  His feet just touch the pedals and his bike jumps to life.  By the end of day two (and they were two 100+ mile days) Ryan and Carla with both having trouble with their knees.  Carla was having trouble with a hand by day 4.  My body was fine.  I ended up with a saddle sore for the first time in my life, but I think that is because my shorts did not quite fit.  It sucks being a 220 pound cyclist, cycling shorts just don't fit very well.  But my muscles and joints were fine.

As I get older I am more and more grateful for having a strong body.  While I've never thought of myself as an athlete, I've known for a long time that I am pretty strong in spite of not having taken exceptional care of myself.  I don't have joint problems or back problems.  I don't have any severe chronic pains.  I don't have any chronic illnesses.  Basically, I've been blessed with pretty good health.  Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of hospitalizations.  From having to spend a month in the hospital during my first pregnancy due to toxemia (stress related, I am convinced) to having extensive throat and nasal surgery to cure sleep apnea (it worked - a whole different story that we will talk about some day), I've experienced some moments of less than exceptional health.  But all in all, my body seems to be pretty resilient.  One of the reasons I started this initiative last February, though, is that I knew as I aged I needed to take a more active roll in keeping my body strong.  It was starting to get obvious that I was getting weaker at an increasingly rapid rate.  As it says in "Younger Next Year," I could choose to decay a little each day or grow a little each day.  I needed to take an active role in growing a little each day.  Doing nothing meant decaying.  Decay was the course I was on a year ago.  I decided to change that.

My "Get Fit Initiative" started out as just that.  Getting Fit.  Getting fit means a very different thing than becoming an athlete.  I could imagine being fit and healthy without ever going to "Athlete," in my mind.  Losing weight and becoming an athlete are two completely different things.  Every now and then, over the last 10 months, my sister would say, "You are an athlete!"  I soundly rejected that notion.  I have always know that I'm not an athlete.  I've never thought of myself as an athlete.  I never thought I could be an athlete.  Becoming an athlete was such a foreign idea to me, such an impossibly out of reach concept for me, that it is something I never even aspired to.  My mind firmly denied the idea of me being an athlete whenever anyone would bring it up.  I just couldn't go there.

I now understand, thanks to Friday's blog post, that my anti-athlete emotions are all tied up with pictures I have of myself that were taken when I was a child.  These emotions are all tied up with conflicting feelings that I had about myself, my sister, and my experiences in school.  Many years ago in therapy I learned that those decision we make about ourselves and promises we make to ourselves when we are little are the ones that stick.  I can't run fast, I'm uncoordinated, I can't hit a ball, I can't catch, I can't throw, don't even try.  Forget about it.  Move on and do something else.  If I just accept the fact that I'm not an athlete I don't have to be disappointed in myself every time I try to do something and can't do it as well as my sister, or as well as my classmates, or as well as I think I ought to be able to do it.  I learned to reject the notion of ever becoming an athlete.

So here I am, 50 years old, setting out to accomplish something I never thought I would set out to accomplish.  I am becoming an athlete.  That's the realization that I must accept and embrace.  That is the realization that I am accepting and embracing. 

My dad asked me yesterday if I feel a let down after accomplishing my weight loss goal last week.  The answer to that question is an emphatic, "No!"  In fact, it's just the opposite.  I am so relieved that I don't have to think about losing weight anymore.  And I am excited about becoming an athlete.  I am excited about preparing for the triathlon in August.  I am looking forward to being stronger and more fit next January than I am today.  I'm thrilled to be embarking on Phase II of this journey.  I feel very fortunate to be in this place.

Phase II is very different from Phase I, though.  Getting fit, and by fit I guess I mean that widely accepted notion of fit that means being a healthy weight and having reasonable cardio-vascular health, required a certain routine that I had grown accustomed to.  I knew my daily and weekly schedule.  It was not something I thought about much, it was just something I did.  There were moments over the last 10 months that I had to change things up, but once I figured out what piece had to change, it was routine again.  I could get fit by doing a couple of very basic things, exercise an hour a day, six days a week, and eat between 1500 - 1600 calories a day.  Oh, and I drank a lot of water.  And I stopped drinking alcohol.  And I started cooking my own meals.  But, all in all, it was pretty basic stuff.

Becoming an athlete seems to be a little more complex than that.  It seems like more of a mystery to me.  That's kind of funny, isn't it?  But it does seem mysterious.  How do "they" do it?  It's so not me.  I am so in awe of athletes I have trouble visualizing myself as one.  But no more.  I am becoming an athlete.  Just as tenmonths ago I visualized myself at 150lbs, I am now visualizing myself as an athlete.  And guess what?  It's fun!

I asked Ruth for a training plan to help me prepare myself for our triathlon.  I am also working with Jeremy on strength training with the goal of reducing body fat.  I don't think these two goals are mutually exclusive, yet they are different goals.  One requires strength training, the other requires endurance training.  The strength training will benefit me during the tri, of that I have no doubt.  It will help if I am carrying as little additional fat as possible while competing in the event.  The more of my body that is useful lean mass vs. fat, the better.  The endurance training will help with fat burning, which in turn will decrease my body fat %.  It is interesting, taking on both goals at the same time.  It makes me feel like an athlete!  But it is confusing, too.  I can't just wake up and go to the gym for an hour, I have to give some serious thought to what I am going to do when, so that I can fit it all into my week.  I only have so many hours in a day, I do have to work for a living, so I have to get serious about planning.  I have to make sure I eat enough and eat the right things.  I can't measure my "food consumption" success or failure by the scale anymore.  Success means fueling myself properly so I can accomplish the physical tasks for the day that I want to accomplish and having the proper nutrients in my body so I can build muscle and keep my bones healthy and strong.  This is going to require some thought.

I spent yesterday morning working on my training schedule and creating my new chart.  I had made a chart at the beginning of the year but the more I looked at it the more I was rejecting it.  It didn't reflect my true goals.  Yeah, sure, I want an abundant life (in the title of my original 2013 chart) but that is too vague.  My goal for 2013 is to become an athlete.  So I made a chart to reflect that goal.  Here it is:

1st Quarter 2013 Goal Chart

 I love this new chart!  It reflects my goal to focus on training in 2013.  Each vertical line represents a week and in the top section I have posted my first 4 week training plan.  I will write in the actual training that I completed each day, compared to plan.  The second section with the small boxes is my visual tool for illustrating what percentage of my plan I have completed each week.  Each box represents 25%.  I have a row for swimming, cycling, running, upper body and lower body.  Each evening (or the next morning) I will color in the squares to represent the percent of goal that I completed that day.  My plan is to get to the end of the first quarter without any empty squares.  The lowest section of the chart is my weight line.  It feels right that tracking my weight is a very small part of this chart, because all I am doing is tracking my weight.  I am not trying to lose any more weight, but I know I need to keep an eye on it.  This chart allows a 6 pound swing on either side of 150, though my goal is to keep my weight within 3 pounds of 150.  The right hand column of the chart is for comments and observations along the way.

One of the more challenging aspects of creating this chart was determining my workout routine.  How was I going to fit it all in?  Armed with Ruth's schedule and Jeremy's schedule, I started filling in the days of the week.  After a lot of trial and error, this is what I came up with:

1st 4 week exercise schedule

In weeks one and two I had to account for the fact that I will be in China, indicated by the yellow highlighted cells.  I also knew I needed one rest day each week.  It was also clear that I was going to need to double up on exercise some days.  So I wanted to combine lighter cardio days with strength training days.  I also needed to work two bike/run bricks and racquetball into the schedule.  Guess which of those two I think is more fun?  Between creating this schedule and making my new chart, I spent most of the morning on this, yesterday; which accounts for the lack of a blog post.  But it has already been worth it.  When we were finally done with what we wanted to get done yesterday, it was 5:30 in the afternoon.  Off the top of my head I had no idea what I should do for exercise, so I looked at my chart.  The chart doesn't actually start until today - it's just easier for me to think of a week as Sunday to Saturday instead of Saturday to Friday - but I looked at a typical Saturday and said, "Oh, I need to do upper body and ride a bike for 38 minutes."  So that is exactly what I did.  I can't even begin to express how much easier it is for me to exercise when I know what am I supposed to do.  I know this schedule and having my % complete squares on my chart are going to be hugely motivational for me.  I'm looking forward to filling out my chart and having another win!  I like those wins!

So you may be wondering what happened to my original, glorious chart.  No, I didn't roll it up and stick it in the basement.  It is still on the bathroom wall.  I raised it up and put my new chart below it.  Now our entire bathroom wall is chart.  Check it out!

Bathroom wall

 I like it.  Jack seems to like it, too.

I feel good about the exercise piece now.  I have a four week plan in place, along with a tracking tool.  I also have the tool in place for updating my plan every four weeks.  I now need to give just as much, if not more, thought into my diet.  I think I should start reading books about training.

It's a racquetball/running day.  I gotta go.

Have a wonderful Sunday!!