You, Too, Can be a Triathlete, Yes, Seriously, I Am Not Kidding

[katemn]

 This is not a tongue-in-cheek little thing any more.  I am DEAD SERIOUS.  This is to motivate you.

So sit back and allow yourself to be motivated. Quit playing the damn laundry game, we all have enough real laundry to do, and make yourself feel good.

I am no different than you.  Last night I polished off half a pan of brownies, I yell at my kids, and I struggle to maintain my sanity and composure when I am confronted with YET ANOTHER sink full of dirty dishes. 

But I have done something, twice, that I never ever thought I would do, and that is complete a sprint-distance triathlon.  500 meter swim, 13 mile bike, 3.1 mile run.

(Notice I said compLete, not compete.  There's a big difference.)

When I was growing up, my sister was "the athletic one." Sound familiar?  I was the one playing with dolls and drawing, while my sis was out running around tearing her sneakers up.  She was in gymnastics from the time she was 3, became a weight-lifter, and after that played world-class sports.  I definitely couldn't keep up with that, it was just safer to keep knitting sweaters.

So I was the one that got labeled "the creative one" and that label stuck. I kept on with my knitting and baking.  Because of course, if you're one thing, you can't possibly be another thing, right? 

YES, you can.

Since the age of eighteen I've been gradually gaining weight.  I've gone up five sizes, from a 6 to a 14, since graduating from college.  (Ten sizes if you count the in-between ones.) After two pregnancies in four years, I looked like a marshmallow with stretch marks at the age of 35.  

I would stand in front of the mirror and feel that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, thinking, oh God, that can't be me, can it?  I'd grab a handful o' belly, completely forgetting the two miracles that took place inside it, and moan.  And groan.  And complain.  And wonder why my husband still found me attractive.

And then turn to the side and do it all again.

Two things happened that started my change of mind.  First, I found out that my boss (the superintendent at the small school where I teach) was offering a training regimen for people like me to train for and complete a sprint triathlon.   Not fitness gods and goddess, people like me whose fitness level hovered around "pathetic."

The second thing that happened was much harder, and this is where you have to make up your mind. 

YOU have to make up YOUR mind.  No one else can do it for you.  YOU have to make the decision and just start somewhere, anywhere, whether it's rock bottom, or past rock bottom, or post-pregnancy depression, or mid-life crisis, or just wanting to make a lifestyle change. 

I decided that if I wasn't going to work at improving my fitness, I had NO BUSINESS standing in front of the mirror criticizing myself.  None.

I then said, "yes" when the email went out asking who was interested in the training.

Sometimes, all it takes is to say "yes" even if you have a zillion voices in your head offering a zillion reasons each why you shouldn't say yes. 

You just say YES and then worry about the consequences later!  And sometimes you just laugh your ass off, wondering what you were thinking, but you still do it, 'cause you already said yes.

At the first meeting, we received a packet of information about how to begin training.

The most valuable pieces of information to me were as follows:

1. You HAVE to put time into it. 

For a busy mom like me, who was teaching, being a junior sponsor, pumping 2x a day and nursing at lunch, dropping kids off at two different daycares and then coming home and starting a fire and supper and feeding dogs and cats and kids and then spending an hour getting ready for the next day...that seemed ludicrous.  But I found some time.  Really, I did, in the hour between pumping after the last bell and the deadline for picking up the kids from daycare.   Instead of farting around at my desk for twenty minutes, I just stuck to my routine and got in the weight room at school as soon as I could, and got my workout done by five.

2. Don't be afraid of the swim.  It's worth repeating: Don't be afraid of the swim.  If you can't swim a stroke to save your life, you just get across the pool any way you can--doggy paddle, hop on the bottom.  And the corollary: You CANNOT hurt yourself swimming.   My husband is a hopeless swimmer (I love him dearly but we can both be honest about it) but he found a way to do it.

3. Your goal is to complete the triathlon, even if it takes you six hours.  You will be ahead of all the other people that had the opportunity to try it but chose not to.  This piece of advice was the most empowering of all. By simply saying "YES!" I had already broken out of the negative "I can't do this, I'm not an athlete" mindset. 

You can, too.

YOU can, too.

You CAN, too.

The first time I went to the weight room at school I felt like a total dork.  Here I was in the inner sanctum of teenage football player gods, their coach who lifted every morning and was built like a brick house, and my friend, who was already a half-iron triathlete, and has the most gorgeous, athletic body. 

She showed me how to use the machines and took me around the five little stations where I'd do squats, dumbbell lifts, pull-ups, sit-ups, and back lifts.   It took fifteen minutes to do the first lifting workout and the day after I felt like a train wreck.

I couldn't even do the situps on the machine, I had to do crunches for a couple of weeks to get the strength to actually do a situp on the machine.  

In another few days when it was time to lift again, I did two sets of everything.  I still felt like a train wreck, but I had completed twice as much, slowly, and with minimum or no weight.

I slowly began to add weight and sets and stopped feeling quite so much like a train wreck.  After a month I noticed that I felt stronger carrying the baby up and down steps.  I felt stronger when I had to wrestle my two-year-old into his clothes in the morning.

So I'd gotten used to lifting.  But the running was another matter.  "I have bad knees."  "I tried it once and got really bad shin splints."  "I don't have any shorts."   These were the voices I had to banish.

I started walking on the treadmill (it was February in Colorado) for a half hour twice a week.  The first time I tried to jog I did six minutes, but you could do one, or three.  The day I jogged for twenty minutes at a snail's pace, I was elated.  The ghost of the shin splints was fading.  I still didn't have any cute shorts, my knees still looked like mashed potatoes, but by golly, I had jogged for TWENTY WHOLE MINUTES.   Getting there took me nine weeks.

I started swimming in March when the pool opened.  I loved being in the water, I loved feeling the warm/cold flow of it over my body, I loved feeling as though I were in the womb again.  And my boss was right, there was no way I could hurt myself, and I managed to make it across the pool and back all right.

As for the biking, well, you just have to put in seat time.   Get your fanny all beat up and calloused and hard from sitting on that little seat.  Get your husband to caress your hoo-ha when it's sore.   Get out on the road and feel the freedom come rushing into you--no kids, no husband, no dishes, no work, no laundry.   Just you and the road and the breeze.  Makes you feel like a little kid again with no responsibility.   

If you don't have a bike, well, you kind of need to get one.  I got mine used from a shop that fixes them up, and some kid with seventeen piercings and ripped camo threads helped find me a bike that fit.

You kind of need to get a decent pair of running shoes.  Go to a running store where somebody who knows what they're doing can fit you and talk about the shoes with some intelligence.  I got shoes with a lot of softness and give. 

Get a swimsuit that looks like it's made for lap swimming, not lounging.  You can virtually try on swimsuits at www.speedo.com, it's the coolest thing ever. 

And hey, shelling out all the big bucks for this stuff is a kind of commitment, is it not?  You wouldn't want those shoes or that swimsuit to languish at the back of your closet after paying so much for them, now would you?  That stuff is meant to not only make you look and feel HOT, but to actually enable you to move your bod comfortably. 

Get a really, I mean seriously, awesome sports bra at www.herroom.com.   (I got one designed for breast-cancer survivors that zips up the front and has pockets for prosthetic boobies.  How cool is that??? It was good for nursing.)

For twelve weeks I stuck to my routine.  I wasn't bored, I actually started to feel empowered. My students looked up to me for working out, even the cute football gods, when they'd see me head out from my classroom to the weight room after school.  How much more empowered can a woman feel, going straight from producing milk for her baby to the gym to work out?  GIRL POWER.

I noticed in the mirror that little bulges were starting to form above my knees and on the backs of my legs--those were my quad and calf muscles forming.   I noticed a little more definition to my midsection. 

Best of all, and here's the total kicker to this whole thing: Exercise produces endorphins. Endorpins do all kinds of things for you, like make that screaming three-year-old actually seem kind of funny.  Like improve your sex drive (sex, remember that??).  Like help you sleep better (sleep, remember that??).  Like cause a room full of sixth-graders hell-bent on making your life miserable seem like a mere bump in the road.

Remember, this could happen to you.   You just have to say "YES."  You have to make time.  You have to banish the negative voices.  You have to banish the embarassment of working out in a gym customarily populated by gods and goddesses.  You have to BELIEEEEEVE, SISTAH.

During all this time I had the date of May 18 rolling around my head, the date for which I was preparing, race day.   It was in my head 24/7, even in the middle of trying to teach my sixth graders to play the school song, even while I was at solo/ensemble with my upper level kids, even while I was changing diapers or driving home, I thought about that day, and what I was getting into.

During training I did have a couple of moments of feeling, What. Have I gotten myself into.   I just kept up with the workouts anyway.  By then it would have been more painfully embarassing to quit than to just deal with my self-doubt. 

The week before the race, my boss held a practice tri at the pool, where we would complete 2/3 of the distances back to back, to get used to doing the transitions.

When I completed that workout, I burst into tears.  I had never done so much physically before, with the exception of labor and delivery.  I couldn't stop crying, and it wasn't even the actual race!  I felt powerful, strong, and happy.

And all it took was one time, where I said "yes," made the time in my day, and kept at it.  One day at a time.

I started from no fitness at all, except being able to help my kids put away their trombones.  No strength, other than heaving my little baby up the steps of her daycare.  No stamina, except for walking to and from the car with my six bags and two kids every morning.  I was at rock-bottom, physically and mentally. 

No place to go but up.

Nowhere to start but at the beginning.

Nothing to lose except...30 pounds, the crappy voices, the stupid excuses.

This recent race, my second triathlon, I noticed the incredible variety of bodies there.  There were women who bulged out from their spandex at every angle.  Women as round as bowling balls.  Men with beer guts out to HERE.  Women who looked fine on top but who had the hips of a hippo.  (Me.)

Oh yeah, there were plenty of fitness gods and goddesses, but I finally had something in common with them:  I completed the sprint triathlon just like they did.

You can, too.

No really, don't laugh.  Just say yes.  It's so much easier than making excuses, or standing in front of that mirror with that helpless feeling in the pit of your stomach.  You don't even have to change your diet.  I didn't, I was/am nursing, it's no time to cut back on calories.

For resources, a training schedule and races in your area, go to www.active.com.   Message me, I'll give you our training schedule, and all the encouragement you need.

Say YES.

Tags: empower, exercise, girl power, say yes, triathlon

Add A Comment

[MommaK2007]

Aug. 6, 2008 at 6:21 AM

Wow, Kate!!! What a pep talk!!!  You really make me believe I can!!!!

[darkroomchic]

Aug. 6, 2008 at 8:13 PM

Thank you so much for sharing your story.  I have been struggling with my weight for quite some time now and have been off and on trying to doing a walk/run program to get me running a 5k.  Reading success stories is SOOO inspiring!  So, thank you for your inspiration and congratulations on your success.  I can't wait to write my story.

[tressa260]

Aug. 6, 2008 at 11:02 PM

You rock, Kate!