The Mama Bubble--One Friend and the Mother Board

     Let's review.  In a nutshell, our needs are water, air, food, shelter, sleep, medical treatment, physical activity, an honest, loving relationship with our spouses, and one real friend. Necessary clothing is important, but nothing dies if you don’t have it. Everything else comes after. 

     We have many acquaintances in our lives.  Friendship is different.  Friendship requires humility and honesty.  Knowing who to trust for confirmation when you think your child has lice for the first time can be a daunting decision.  Making that leap of faith determines if you have the ability to be a trusting friend or if you will spend your children’s lives keeping your imperfections hidden from the rest of humanity.  Yes, it is terrifying to reveal our flaws and limitations to another flawed and limited person, but nothing will free you from yourself like a friend.

     As one person, I have only my life and my experiences from which to draw information, but my trusted Board of Mothers multiplies that cache to a wealth beyond limitations.

     When my kids were tiny, my mom was my main source of baby information. Not only was she an expert on diapers and nursing, but sharing my role as a mother with her expanded our relationship, bringing us even closer. However, as the kids grew, topics arose in my life where she was learning along with me. By necessity, I had to expand my boundaries in search for guidance.  Am I overreacting?  Does this situation require action or waiting it out?  Time and time again, life presents us with choices and it helps tremendously to have trusted counsel.

     My friend, Lynne called me earlier than usual one morning.

     “Okay, I know it’s early, but you have to help me decide what to do.”  She had seen another friend’s child in front of the middle school, throwing his sister’s bike into bushes just off campus.

     “Do I call?  Am I overreacting or should I tell his parents?”  For a moment we considered our friendship with his mother (would she be mad at Lynne for tattling?) and the worst-case consequences (the bike could be taken).  We decided that the call should be made because bikes are expensive. 

     The outcome was that we had a closer friend and a new, hilarious story to tell.  The boy’s father was dispatched to retrieve the bike, spotting it just as it was being driven away by landscapers.  He had to chase them down, explain in broken Spanish that the bike was his daughter’s, and set up a life lesson for his son.  Their son learned that he should get up when his alarm goes off, air up his own tires when they are low, and lock up bikes, even when they are pink with streamers.

     “Yea!” Lynne called to tell me the results of the day.  “The Board of Mothers wins this round against the evil minions!” she laughed.  And so, The Mother Board was born. 

    

     As a mother, there is nothing more terrifying than not knowing what to do about your child. Within the sacred borders of our membership we have dealt with the decision to hold a child back a grade and another child's special needs.  We have tackled children’s study habits, chore neglect, pet responsibilities, vacations, medical issues, and college choices.  We get defensive, cry, and laugh our heads off all in the same conversation and I know, no matter what the subject, if something concerns me, I have people available who will take it seriously.

     Men call it gossip or gabbing, but that is because they have different brains.  Gossip is telling someone else’s secrets to an uninvolved party for the sole purpose of elevating the position of the messenger. “Did you hear that the Smiths are having an affair?” can be translated as “I want for you to think I am better than I think I am.”  Tattling is giving negative information about someone else to their superior to get them into trouble.  This behavior is usually to thwart consequences of the tattler’s own bad behavior.

     Asking for help does not fall under either of those categories.

     The rules of being a Mother Board member are as follows:

1. Never brag about a child’s accomplishments if you have not shared his struggles
2. Give your best answer, despite the immediate negative response to it
3. Show up

      We have learned that when families travel together, it is most enjoyable for the moms to ride in one car with half the kids and the dads to ride together with the other half and that each family should have their own bathroom.  We have learned that just because we think it’s right, doesn’t mean it’s right and when someone dies, make a pot of soup and go over without calling first.  Some days, it’s enough to just get through the day.  Inside jokes should never be told outside.  Everything and nothing can be decided on a three mile walk.  Actively have faith in the people you say you trust.  Trust must be earned and is a two-way street.   Perfect or ideal is all in the perspective.  "Trusted friend" status is only a step below "soulmate" and understand that opening one's heart to share a difficult situation with another human being is the highest honor one can give.

    

   

Intro The Mama Bubble

     The summer of 2005 did not begin well.  On the first day of summer vacation, my triathlete husband, Bo was hit by a car.  He suffered a shattered hip, separated ribs, sprained hands, and several deep gashes, but managed to survive surgery.  His recovery was touch and go, then settled into misery for all of us.  After months of struggling with a broken husband, insurance companies, a sweltering Texas summer, and four "totally bored" kids, I loaded our Excursion with every bit of beach paraphernalia I could buy or borrow and hauled the entire family to Gulf Shores to meet our best friends and Bo's brother's family. 

     A Southern California native, I knew the beach and had my program ready.   I dragged my umbrella, newly purchased beach chair, the newest addition to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, and mini-cooler to the water's edge.  I set up the umbrella and chair, then plodded back up to the beach house through the hot sand several times to retrieve two inflated boats, two boogie boards, and assorted toys.  I tied the two boats together with a 100-foot cord, then tied another 150' cord from the second boat to the leg of my beach chair.  I slathered each child in sunscreen and made them wear visors.  I spent twenty minutes teaching them how to ride the boogie boards.  I demonstrated how to pull the boats past the gentle surf to the soft rocking of the blue-green gulf water, showing the nervous ones that they were always attached by the cord leading to my chair.  I set up another chair with a larger cooler full of ice and drinks and snacks.  I pulled out a kite, threw it into the air, and tied it to the cooler where it danced in the breeze above our heads. 

     "See?" I showed all of them, "You will always know where we are because of the kite."  They were set.  I walked over to my umbrella, put on my perfectly curved straw cowboy hat, plopped myself down in my chair and picked up the novel.  Ahhh.  Heaven.

      Having never been to the beach, the children were all over me in five minutes. 

     "How do I get on the boogie board, again?"

     "She took my boat!"

     "Mama, make a sand castle!" my five-year-old demanded. 

     Ever see a woman lose her mind?    

     "No!" I yelled. "I have given you everything you need and I am sitting right here watching you.  Get off of my feet.  Do not touch me with your sandy hands."  I got up and made my four and the three extra kids stand in a line. "This…," I said, drawing a large circle around my chair. "…is off limits.  Do not enter my Mama Bubble."  Noticing my best friend nodding her approval, I proceeded to draw another circle around her towel lying a few feet away from me. "This is another Mama Bubble.  Anyone who enters the Mama Bubble will burst!  Got it?"  The children giggled, not knowing if they should heed the warning of the insane woman frantically gesturing in front of them.  I re-settled into my chair, my glare daring any of them to cross my line. 

     For the first time in thirteen years, I had made a boundary.  A couple of them tested it and found themselves sitting on the steps of the house for fifteen minutes, but for the rest of the week and for every beach vacation thereafter, the Mama Bubbles remained unbroken. 

     This blog is about boundaries.  Boundaries for you as a mother, for your children, for your husbands, and for your extended families and friends.  Only a mother's love is endless, but her patience and good humor must be nurtured.  You cannot give what you do not have.

     So this is the blog I ought to write.  I cannot not decide if my friends and neighbors asked for my thoughts on children affecting marriage because they think my system works or if they just like to hear me rat out my kids.  As my marriage is still intact and I am looking forward to spending the last decades of my life with my husband, I assume it is the former and doing it.

     I travel my life searching for the wrong things and stumbling upon the right.  I seek and have sought the approval of the unworthy and have been honored with the acceptance by people of great value.  One’s life is never lived according to plan without wrestling it into place, but with flexibility, it can be beyond the wildest of expectations.

     Giving birth to another person does not require relinquishing one's soul to the child.  Mothering does require that you demand the child's own soul to show itself and be recognized.  How is that accomplished?  By stepping back and allowing it to happen. 

"Ironbutt" How I survive and embrace being the wife of a triathlete

    “Why do you put up with it?” has to be the most thoughtless question to ask the spouse of an age-grouper Ironman athlete.  The insinuation is that a) the tremendous effort it takes to train for triathlons is wrong and/or b) I am crazy. 

     The beginning of the long answer to that question is that the presence of God is different for everyone.  For me, holiness is in the scent of the North Carolina Mountains, a symphonic orchestra playing John Williams, and the lilting poetry of Keats.  For my husband, God is mostly present in the Texas Hill Country, riding sixty miles on well worn pavement, his Cervelo screaming around hairpin turns.  His religious moments are in the light footfalls of a seven-minute pace on the trail at Town Lake and in the tense quiet morning of an Ironman race.  He is most content when he is training toward a goal and so, knowing how important it is to limit the creeping insistency of the “daily grind”, I have gladly sent him off on those excursions every day or two.  The exertion, wind, and scenery restore all that is depleted during his long work days and he returns to me loving and funny.

     I never worry about his safety on long rides. He is the one who puts flashers on his bike if it is dusk or dawn, wears blaring yellow when he rides by himself, and actually follows traffic rules on those long training rides.  If someone has the audacity to pass him without even an acknowledging nod, he clicks his gears and chases them down, only to allow the newly conquered to pass him again when he stops for a red light. 

     “It pisses off drivers if you act like you are the only one on the road,” he explains.  “You don’t want them aiming for you.”  His friends used to joke that it was like riding with race marshals all of the time.  So when the phone rang at 9am on Saturday, June 4, 2005, and Bo’s number appeared on the screen, I thought he was just letting me know that they were on time and he would be home for lunch.

     “Nance?” I heard his friend’s voice on the other end of the phone. 

     “What happened?” my heart dropped into my stomach knowing that Jay calling me on Bo’s phone could not be good.

     “He’s okay, but Bo got hit by a car,” he put those two freakishly disjointed sentences together and then gave me no believable information at all.

     Quickly, he put my husband on the phone to calm my fears, not realizing that Bo telling me that he was alright did not make it so.  His voice, always to calm in a crisis, told me that he probably broke his leg and that he was going to the hospital.

     A local woman in a 1992 Dodge Dynasty had decided at the last minute that she wanted a Starbuck’s, saw no cars, and turned left at about 25 miles per hour.  She did not see my husband on his bike coming at her at about 35 miles per hour.  The word he uses to describe the collision is “violent.”  He realized in that split second that he could not go in front of her or behind her to avoid it.  He was going to hit her straight on, so he made his body go limp and waited for the impact. 

     His left knee hit her right rear view mirror, breaking it off and sending his femur straight back into his left acetabulum (or hip bone), shattering it into pieces.  His bike smashed her windshield, but his body vaulted ten to twelve feet into the air, over the car, and down onto that shattered hip.  Though it knocked the wind out of him, sprained his thumbs, separated two ribs and cracked two more, he was conscious for the entire event.  His knee and shin bled profusely onto the street, but he had no internal injuries.      

     “Can you come get my bike?” he asked me.  Good GOD

     Shaking internally, but keeping my voice at a normal volume, so as not to terrify our four children, I quickly got them dressed and taken to friends’ homes.   I drove to the accident site with my hands clenched, knuckles showing white on the steering wheel the entire way.

     What seemed like forever passed as I stood in the freezing cold emergency waiting room, watching the doors, willing a nurse to appear and call my name.  Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out.  The tiles on the floor were in need of a good scrubbing and I wished with all of my being that I had not been there to know that.

     Finally I was taken back to him.  His face was fine and his helmet on the chair did not have a scratch on it.  His hip was shattered.  He was urgently telling the doctor about his training for the Lake Placid Ironman the following summer and that a total hip replacement would end that, but the doctor was adamant.  If it could not be put back together correctly, he would replace it.  End of story.  If Bo wanted a second opinion that was fine, but if someone did not perform surgery on him in the next six hours, he would be dead.

     Oh.

     “I’ll never qualify for Boston,” he said, his lifelong dream ending.  His eyes welled up with tears. 

     I walked beside him down the hall as the orderly wheeled the bed toward the surgical suites.  We tried to be light-hearted about the situation.  “At least your helmet was fine and the kids got to swim all day,” “Hey doc, this leg has always been a little shorter.  Can ya do anything about it?” Bo joked, but the doctor stopped us.   

     “You don’t seem to understand.  This is a very dangerous surgery.  You need to be sure you have everything in order before he goes in there,” he told me, turned around, and disappeared through the double doors.  The orderly took several steps back to give us some privacy.

     We looked bewilderedly at each other.  Is he saying he could die?

Everything is in order?  How could we possibly have everything in order?  He’s not even forty.  Our youngest has only been out of diapers for a year.  How are we supposed to have everything in order?

     “Come back,” I finally told him.

     “I’ll try,” he gave me a half-hearted grin.  I stared at him and he stared at me.

     “If you don’t, then save me a place, okay?” I whispered.

     His face grew still and he nodded.  I leaned over his body and kissed him firmly, breathing him in.

     I watched the doors close behind him and stood in that freezing hallway until somebody led me away.

     That abrupt, wonderful, gloriously talented surgeon not only kept him here on earth, but pulled every shard of bone out of the smashed cartilage and screwed all the pieces back together with thirteen titanium screws and two plates.  Our three-year-old’s Lego Bionicles figures look better than that X-Ray, but they were his bones and they might heal.

     And so, the healing began.  Heparin shots to ward of thrombosis, managing pain killers so that crutching to the bathroom was not excruciating, managing painkillers with senecot and oatmeal and raisins to combat constipation, watching the swelling of his left leg to twice its normal size, dealing with being in a wheelchair, dealing with being on crutches, dealing with the kids’ fears that Daddy was broken, dealing with our fears that Daddy was broken, dealing with the impact to his soul that he might never be able to run again.

     He withdrew, not wanting to see anyone, not wanting to talk to anyone.  I panicked, thinking I was about to lose the best friend I ever had to depression, but instead, I got in his face, “This isn’t just about you, dummy.  Your friends are hurting, too.  They can’t put you back together, so they bring brownies and backscratchers and casseroles and movies for you to watch as an excuse to be here with you.  When you turn them away, you’re telling them that they aren’t good enough for you.  Let them in.  Let them love you.” 

     So he did.  He grew to love showing everyone his horrifying twelve-inch scar that was held together with staples and watch the look of shock on their faces.  He signed all of his emails, “Frankenbutt.”   The house swelled with family and friends who brought food and wine and books and backscratchers and listened to him tell the story of the crash over and over as he exorcised it from his soul.  I watched the light come back into his face. 

     “Well, I suppose he’ll put all of that training business behind him now,” sedentary, underachieving, thoughtless individuals commented to me. “This will put his head straight.” 

     “Oh, no,” I told their shocked faces. “He’s an Ironman.  Of course, that is something non-athletes can’t understand.  He’ll do it again and everyone who gets it will be there with him at that finish line.” 

     “Don’t change a thing about him,” I told God. 

     Our sixteenth wedding anniversary was coming up and I wanted to do something special to mark the day, considering that this could have been my first anniversary without him.  Since endurance training began, Bond’s wedding ring was a bit too large.  It bothered him that had to take off any time he ran or swam, so I decided to get him a new one that reflected who he was and why I would marry him all over again.  Sounds nice, but I am not artistic.  Neither of us paints or sculpts or visits museums.  I actually have been known to groan when the kids have a project that requires glue.  So after racking my brain for a week, I almost gave up and ordered another plain gold band, when I bumped his Ironman Canada plaque off the wall

          The night of our anniversary, I doped him up on Advil and hauled him to a white table-clothed, expensive-wine restaurant.  We carefully got him settled in an out-of-the-way booth, where no one could possibly bump into his seat, and ordered champagne.  I slipped the new ring on the thumb of my left hand and waited about twenty seconds for him to notice it.

     “What’s that?” he asked me.

     “It’s your new inspirational wedding ring,” I showed him. “First of all, it fits.  You’ll never have to take it off while you are training.

     “The band has a block M to commemorate every marathon you have run, but this one,” I showed him. “It has a diamond dot over it for Canada.  Your job is to dot all the rest.  You’ll be an Ironman again.  There isn’t a doubt in my mind.”   Broken and in terrific pain most of the day, he could only shake his head, not daring to wish my words to be true.  But he did wish it.  Knowing that I was behind him sparked him to acknowledge it.

     When Bo was given the okay to get out of the wheelchair, he would park at the far end of the building and crutch the long route to his desk. When he would see people waiting for the elevator to take them up one flight of stairs, he would head for the stairwell, crutch as fast as he could up the stairs, and beat the elevator.  The moment he could, we got him to the neighbourhood pool and he swam laps, gently moving his feet, working out the tightness in his legs.  He did exactly as the surgeon said; putting no weight on his hip for three months and at his twelve-week check up, the surgeon said “go.”

     We drove straight home, he went upstairs, put on a screaming yellow jersey and his helmet that didn’t have a scratch on it, and went for a ride on his bike.

     “How was it?” I asked him.

     “It sucked,” he admitted. “And it was glorious."

The Comeback - Ironman #2 Lake Placid, NY, June 22, 2007

Goals: Beat his Canada time from three years ago before the accident (13 hours, 16 minutes, and 6 seconds), finish in the top half of the field, and beat his two buddies racing with him that day.  All the difficult, painful, frustrating, agonizing hours have led us once again to the starting line.  Thank God.  Thank God he’s here to do it.  Thank God.

     We get up before dawn after not sleeping all night.  It’s chilly and quiet and all of Bo’s equipment, clothing, and nutrition are in their assigned bags ready to be taken to the transition areas.  Our hotel room smells of multi-grain Power bars, orange Gatorade, sunscreen, and the scent of newly printed t-shirts—mine proudly state TRANSITION VOLUNTEER and FINISH LINE VOLUNTEER allowing me past those guarding the gear of the 2,425 professionals and hopefuls that have given their bodies, minds, and souls to this quest.  Bond’s face is stoic, but I know he’s barely holding it in.  As we walk down the street to the venue, several hundred athletes maneuver their bags and bikes into this slow river of bodies heading toward their starting place.  It is holy, this march.  Hearing only the occasional nervous laughter break the tension in the air, their prayers are palpable, the silence so like the quiet in church before the organ music signals the beginning of a service. 

     The announcer has not yet started his playlist or encouraging tag lines.  About a tenth of the racers are here as I stand in my spot, pointing the way to the changing tent and marking station.  I don’t hover over Bo and his preparations.  He is taking in everything around him, pleased that he has this moment of quiet with ‘his kind.’ 

     He comes over to let me know he’s headed to the swim with a hug and kiss.  The moment is too big for words.  This is it.  This will be the proof that the accident and its effects are over or are they are not. 

      “Be great,” I grin at him, choking back the flood of pride and joy and love and fear I have for this man, thrilled that he is here again.  He heads off.  I stay at my post until the last racer leaves, then dash over and find a great spot on a rock above the crowd to watch the start.  I can’t pick Bo out in the sea of wetsuits and swim caps, but tears well up and slide down my face, “Don’t drown, dummy,” I whisper to him.  The horn blasts, the music blares, and they’re off!!  It’s a washing machine of arms and swim caps and goggles.  How anyone can survive that start is beyond me, but the churning mass manages to move forward and spread out, Bo and his two friends, too, I hope.

     I go back to my place and meet other spouses and parents and college-age kids of racers, doctors volunteering in the Medical tent, Bill, the walkie-talkie guy who hands me a megaphone.  Bo isn’t crazy here.  Here, he’s normal.  In Transition, I’ve got a perfect spot to see every racer come through and I get to try to make the racers laugh.  They need to laugh.  This is supposed to be fun, so I spend my time in the Swim-to-Bike transition hollering into my megaphone stuff like, “If you did not pee in the lake, the bathrooms are this way!”  “Make sure you grab your own bag or its owner will hunt you down!”

     It’s a long day of injuries, dehydration, and disappointments, but the time flies by as racer after racer moves along the 140.2 miles.  I volunteer at both transitions, running back to the hotel room between shifts to send a quick email report of Bo’s time to all of the parents, throw my jacket and jeans into a backpack for the chilly evening to come, and change into midday clothes (it was ninety that afternoon). 

     I’m back again to catch the finishers, a lot of them needing the medical tent because of the heat.  Bo was 20 minutes down the time he wanted for the bike and probably won’t beat his old time, so I’m thinking up all of the supportive things I can say to him. 

     13:10:00 I step away from the line of volunteers as the clock ticks closer to his goal time, but I sit down on the table under the tent, sad that the day had not gone the way he’d hoped.

13:15:50 “From Austin, Texas,” the announcer blasts, “Number Eleven Oh Seven, BO JONES, YOU are an IRONMAN!”

     I shriek and leap off the table, “That’s HIM!  THAT’S HIM!” My new friends holler with me as I grab a ribbon and medal and catch his eyes as he comes through the Ironman tape at 13:15:56. We’re sobbing and laughing.  He did it.  He did all of it.  And he made up the loss of time on the bike with the run.  His hip is fine.  He’s back.  It’s done.  He beat his personal best time by ten seconds!  He squeaked into the top half AND he beat both his buddies, though you couldn’t tell who won by all the tears and hugs as his friends saw him waiting for them at the finish line.  God is at the Ironman Finish Line, too.

     He’s doing Arizona with several of his buddies the weekend before Thanksgiving, more than willing to give up his “ownership” of them both.  I’ll be there with the rest of the crazy wives and husbands and kids, cheering on my Iron Man.

     He wants to put “IRONBUTT” on his jeep’s license plate.  Maybe Texas will go to eight letters by this year’s wedding anniversary.

A word to wives-of-triathletes just beginning their first training season,

There are several reactions to this support position that are very normal:

1)      As your spouse begins to shrink into a “fit machine,” do not panic and think that now he thinks you are a fat slob.  Bo began training for his first marathon when I was pregnant (the bastard) and it gave me a massive fit of insecurity.  His words to keep in mind--People who are accomplishing something for themselves want only to be honored for what they have done.  In fact, a lot of them feel that their efforts are underappreciated if their spouse begins their own life-changing experience at the same time.  Let this training season be for and about him.  If you feel motivated to become healthier and want to try something active for yourself, you’ve waited a long time to begin; you can wait a little longer before competing for time away from the kids or kudos for yourself.  Can you do a “boy” push-up?  I admit freely that several years ago, I could not.  I could do “girl” push-ups, but a “boy” push-up actually scared me.  I did more and more girl ones until I got up to forty, then actually found I was able to do a boy one!  It was awful and I thought I might strain my arms to the point of bursting, but I did it!  I built up to two, eventually getting to six!  On the day of my big reveal, I told him “I have accomplished something huge for me and I am about to show it to you.  You are to respond with the following:  ‘Wow, Honey!  That’s great!’”  The smart man listened and we are still married.

2)      Time spent training is another fear.  Yes, it does take time.  Full Ironman races require a buildup of training time.  Sixteen weeks out from the race, you can expect about 2 hours on the bike once or twice a week which builds up at the end of training season to add an additional six hours on one day.  Running can add another hour to three, three or four days a week.  Only once or twice would age-groupers do a nine-hour training day once a week, but it can be frustrating to a spouse if they are not prepared to expect that kind of time allowance. 

     What is a fair amount of training time?  The most problematic word in that sentence is fair.  Fundamental Rule of Life #1: Life is not fair.  It is not fair that women get varicose veins and fat thighs for a couple to have a child.  It is not fair that moms never get to sleep in, our boobs are the first thing to go, and when men can go bald they still look good.  If you think about or try to make anything fair, you will be a very unhappy person.  My way of dealing with four small children and an Ironman triathlete is to go away from him during the most difficult time of training (about six weeks out from the race).  If you are a “stay-home-mom” and have family or friends who live somewhere out of town (mountains, beach, swamp…) make plans to load your kids into your car and go visit those people and others for about three weeks.  Yes, travel with children does not really equal a vacation, but the children are communicating with different people than they normally do, they are discovering a new part of the country, and you do not have to be mad at your spouse every night at 6:30 when he falls asleep on the family room sofa and is a giant grump when awakened by a child giving him a good-night kiss at 7:30. Your spouse will be able to work at his job and do his triathlon workouts unencumbered by familial duties.  This sounds SO bad, doesn’t it?  Well, if it were regular life, it would be.  But it’s Ironman.  Most age-groupers only do one or two of these.  You can manage this once or twice. 

     If you handle the experience with gracious dignity, your triathlete will go above and beyond to accommodate you both during and after the event.  Workouts tend to be scheduled crazy-early to make it to the six-year-old’s soccer game and appreciative athletes make time for a nap, so they can take you to a nice dinner and a movie.  Watching Bo struggle to keep his eyes open always makes me think of Robert Frost’s

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

     A warning about early workouts: if your athlete gets up really early to ride his bike for four hours mostly in the dark, it is more dangerous AND he will be exhausted for the rest of the day, definitely falling asleep in the middle of the family room.  You then have to move the kids to keep them from waking him up into a grumpy mess.  Give the guy a break and agree that it is better for him to ride in the daylight (skip telling him about the falling asleep, grumpy thing).

3)      The equipment is expensive.  True.  So are houses, cars, dinners at restaurants, clothing, and college. Good equipment means a safer triathlete.  Screaming yellow jerseys are a great way to keep from being run over by a car—buy several.  A good way to offset expenses is to find triathletes who are hooked on the sport.  They usually have an extra bike they are happy to loan or sell at a much more reasonable price (new bikes can cost anywhere from basic $2,500 to impressive $15,000—average seems to be about $8,000).  Wetsuits can be rented, but it is better to buy his own (it costs the same as a gown you would wear to a charity gala)—maybe you can use it and take a scuba vacation for a girls’ trip next year!  Think of bike shoes the same way you would think of a pair of high-end heels.  If your spouse spends a fortune and does not like the experience, you can sell the stuff on Craig’s List.  If he does like it, the equipment can last for years and years to come—and get a lot more use than the dress and heels. 

4)      Nutritional requirements—every athlete has to figure out how to fuel himself.  Plan to buy a lot of Gatorade and nutritional bars (it’s cheaper and easier than fast food).  Do not pass judgment; no one gave you a hard time for eating nachos with ranch dressing every day of your first pregnancy!

Finally, I must encourage that you make signs, wear the t-shirts, and scream your head off at the finish line.  You will be SO much happier that you did.

To the Rising College Freshman--The Light Post Lecture

Dear Rising College Freshman,

Anyone who has ever started a running program knows the dread of the first run.
"I’m gonna get all sweaty. What if I hurt myself? I look ridiculous in these shorts, I should wait until it gets colder and wear sweats. I feel like a fraud."
But running is the best, most effective way to get and stay healthy. The muscles have to push all that weight into the air and forward; wearing them out and building them up. The pounding of foot on hard surface jars the bones into building themselves into a stronger protective device. Adrenaline washes over the brain, allowing moments of euphoria to remain as a positive attitude. Running is good.
But the first run…is not much of a run at all. It is picking a light post in the distance, sprinting to it while fighting one's formerly-stationary body’s attempt to put a halt to this attack. It is torture, this placing one foot in front of the other, moving the arms forward and back, and having to breathe all at the same time. IN, two, three, four, OUT, two, three, four. Gasping for breath, muscles burning, sweat pouring from the brow, the runner rejects the former goal, choosing a closer light post, and manages to slog across the final crack in the sidewalk.
"Whew. I can’t breathe. That was awful. Did anyone see me?"
But quickly the breath returns without having to pant, the muscles cool, and the runner picks another light post and repeats the task. If the newbie stays with it, in a week, she will run past that first light post to the second on the first try, and within six weeks, she can make it two miles without stopping. Then, as the runner trots along the path, she begins to think about the new shoes she saw and how to find the money to buy them. It becomes…dare I say it? Easy.
Beginnings are painful. You don’t remember learning to walk, but your mama can tell you about the bruises on your forehead from falling into the coffee table. Learning to read (all of those strange symbols, first individually, then paired, then finally grouped into strange sounds and coherent meanings) opened the world to you. Football plays. Band. Algebra. Boys/Girls. Spanish III. They were all painful beginnings, but you pushed past and conquered. I will tell you the truth, even at age 107, beginnings are always painful. They always will be, but the more beginnings experienced, the less daunting they become.
The trick is to keep from having to re-experience a beginning you have already begun. If you have already been a runner, run to maintain your fitness level. You just triumphed over psychology, government, and Beowulf. Now, read something daily, so reading is not the struggle, the struggle is discovering which philosopher said “Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.” Maintain. If you maintain a level of ability, the “bang ups and hang ups” you experience along your route will not devastate every aspect of your being, they will simply knock you on your butt.  However, maintaining an acceptable level allows you to know that you are capable of getting back up under your own power.
A good deal of life is lived as you make your way down a two mile run. Your life will be going along steadily when you suddenly realize you are at the top of a hill with a vista that takes your breath away. It fills your soul and you are motivated to move forward at a quicker pace and through the valley to come. Randomly, you will have days that feel as if you are only capable of gasping to that first light post. Say to yourself, “I have enough to get to that light post” and do it, as that moment will pass and you will find that you have more to give the next time. When you decide that you are ready to invite someone to join you, be sure that they like and respect your chosen path and pace, as it is entirely different to view a beautiful vista with someone who gets it and someone who does not.

With Love, Mrs. J