Keeping my day job!

Yesterday, despite it being Saturday, did not feel like much of a break!  It was, however, a change of pace from usual Monday-Friday schtick, to which I'll happily return tomorrow!  To give some background, I've been a lackluster member of a "triathlon" club since January, attending the occasional run and on an even rarer basis doing something like an open-water swim or a bike ride with a group.   Despite my limited participation, when they were looking for volunteers to help raise money, I thought "Oh, why not".  The money will go to the Challenged Athletes Foundation and probably a local food bank, so this is all for a cool cause.  I did not love the idea of spending most of a Saturday at a UCLA football game helping to man (or woman?!) a concession stand, but they needed volunteers so I signed up!

Knowing the WHY did help me rouse myself out of bed on Saturday morning - after a fun night out, which made the getting up even more difficult - so that I could meet up with the volunteer group.  We all looked quite professional in that food-service-sort-of-way: black pants and a white-collared shirt.  Once we put on a black apron and and a hat, our transformation was complete!  I won't go into the details - much of the day reminded me of some of the stereotypes I have of the military - fairly bureaucratic, and not very efficient with a "hurry up and wait" mindset.  The company that "generously" allows groups to earn money was fairly incompetent - we were supposed to have cash registers, but the company did not give them to us.  They did give us calculators - none of which worked, so all of the people working the registers needed to rely on old-fashioned mental arithmetic.  This would have been a royal pain, but at the very least every item was a dollar amount.  You know, five dollars for a coke, five dollars for a hot dog, seven dollars for nachos, six dollars for water.  The prices were, of course, ridiculous, and my favorite part of the day was the fact that customers complained to us about the price point.  As if we were owners of the concession stand?  Couldn't they tell that we were doing not much more than menial labor?  (I don't mean to belittle the food service industry - this was definitely not high-end stuff and it wasn't a challenging task.)  About Sodexo, the company that actually does own the concession stands, I was more than happy to help out the club and raise money for a good cause or two, but it did bother me that I was helping this company earn a huge profit margin because they were obviously not paying us jack shit!  I'm very skeptical about their fair labor practices.  We were just volunteers, and they stipulated what we could eat - one soft drink, one bottle of water and one hotdog!  Despite the fact that watching the food prep all day totally grossed me out, I was more than happy to scarf down the hot dog.  Probably the worst part of the day was the clean-up - at that point, I was hot and tired (we all were) and ready to go home, and having to account for all of the hotdogs and hamburgers that we made but didn't sell was quite depressing.  Also, the "cheese" that accompanies the nachos is one of the most disgusting non-food processed items that is sold as food that I've ever seen in my life, and trying to clean it up when you don't have soap, water or a rag/sponge is a Sisyphean task!

Fortunately, we were out of there at 4:00, like they had promised, which came as a relief.  The other major relief for me was that I didn't see any of my students or any of my students' parents while I was serving this terrible food and swindling people out of their money as they paid too much for everything.  It wouldn't have been the worst moment of my life, and I've certainly seen students outside of the confines of the school yard, however I always think about that moment from the movie Mean Girls when some students see Tina Fey's character who is working at the mall and one of them says "Oh, I love seeing teachers outside of school. It's like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs."  


So, not my "ideal" Saturday, but it was a good experience.  It does make me appreciate that I work at a place that I like, where I can dress more or less as I choose (as long as I look presentable), and where I'm treated with dignity, on the whole.  I'm glad that I did my part, but everyone carpooling back agreed that we don't need to do that again this season!

Swimming along

Source So, while I have no hope nor plan to look like Mark Spitz in this lifetime (or the next), nor to perform like him, I am happy to report that I have learned not only to be comfortable in the water but have increased strength and endurance. Whether my training will have prepared me sufficiently for the Wildflower Tri at the beginning of May still remains to be seen, but at least I can say that I've made a good effort. One of these days I'll get around to writing about WHY try for a tri.

In the meantime, I will briefly talk about swimming. It's funny because my older two brothers were really 'into' swimming when I was a kid, and I have fond memories of eating Frito Pies at swim meats. If you don't know what a Frito Pie is, I'll educate you. My entire family spent many a weekend at all-day meets. I, however, never swam competitively or on a team. I knew the strokes and enjoyed the water, but the competitive spirit of swimming was never a part of my experience.

Back in December, when I signed up for the triathlon, I decided that swim lessons might help me swim more efficiently. My stroke was not strong, and I had major breathing issues. I ended up taking 2 different 4-week classes at the Rosebowl, and the classes really transformed my swimming experience. First of all, being at the Rosebowl Aquatics center is fun by itself - there are tons of people of different sizes and ages, lots of activities, different teams and groups that meet. With the exception of one of the coaches/teachers whom I did not like, I have enjoyed the other coaches/teachers who have asked me what I wanted to work on. It has humbled me slightly to have a twenty-year-old kid encouraging me, nagging me or yelling at me to swim better or faster, to push myself, to breath better. As a teacher, I must say that I envy these kids/coaches the reward to easily see the results of their coaching. Seriously, they would tell me to tweak one thing or another, and after one 50 I breathed better or had improved my stroke considerably. Thanks to the practices, I have built up some stamina. Speed might be another issue altogether, but I can work on that with time and more practice. In addition to the physical challenge that swimming has presented and the small, incremental victories (which will hopefully pay off on May 1), the experience of being a student and being in a class is both refreshing and hard for me. I am definitely a people-pleaser AND I'm very competetive by nature, so I want to swim harder and faster and prove that I am a good student. At the same time, I am not a great swimmer, so I have struggled with that fact which is quite clear to the coaches and to me.

One final thought - I could not have improved on my own. Maybe I could have increased stamina, but swimming would have continued to be a major chore rather than an opportunity to learn and to improve. As an adult (in my own experience, at least), I'm open to new ideas and experiences, but it can be difficult to really commit to them. Taking swim lessons and pushing myself to improve my *mad skills* has required a certain commitment on my part and an open mind, something that I don't always exhibit. So, yeah, it's been about swimming, but I've also loved the other experiences that I've gained from my swim lessons. AND... I might take an advanced swimming class, even when the triathlon is long over!

Random musings on running

After taking so many years off from running due to a bad knee, I don't consider myself to be a 'runner', but I would also NEVER classify myself as a 'jogger'. Oooh, the horror, the horror! However, I wonder if it might be healthier for me to take a less dogmatic approach to the runner vs. jogger dichotomy. Maybe my body would thank me if I were a jogger and NOT a runner? Returning to somewhat high-intensity activity and running and "racing" has been constant theme on this blog (and in my life), but I question whether I should walk away when I'm ahead?

What has prompted this thought is that today I was supposed to run a half-marathon. After running several 10ks back in the fall, I exuberantly signed up for a trail half-marathon. The training went well, until the end of December, when I tweaked my knee (my bad one) playing the Xbox Kinect at my in-laws over Christmas. Seriously.

So, I took a full week of running off and then eased back into runs, knowing that a half-marathon was out of the question. That was especially true when the dance to which I had committed myself to chaperone changed dates and was the night before said half-marathon.

I chaperoned the dance last night, and all went swimmingly. I warned off a few students who seemed to be enjoying each other's bodies a bit too much on the dance floor, stayed until things were more or less cleaned up, and then crashed into bed around 12:15. This is NOT my ideal pre-race evening schedule. But I managed to wake up, roll out of bed, make a decent breakfast and cup of coffee and then head to the starting line. The one bonus of this particular race was that it was 5 minutes away from our house. The second bonus was that I knew the 'course' well - two loops around the Rose Bowl. And, the final kicker - it is/was super flat. Okay, there are a few VERY slight inclines, but nothing crazy. Based on that last fact, I had hoped to run a fast 10k, but then, as I warmed up and pretended to look really cool and like a "runner", I realized that I did not have my stopwatch and that they did not have timers around the course. Rather than feeling like a runner, I then felt like a rookie who would be walking the course.

Once we got started, I hit a nice stride - one loop done (yeah!), but I had no idea what my time was and everyone in the pack in which I was running cut off to the finish line for the 5K. So, I chugged along the second loop. It seemed like everyone else had finished, but I finally passed this one guy during mile 5 (I love passing people closer to the end!). The finish line was IN the Rose Bowl Stadium, which I experienced for the first time. It was anti-climactic, except that I saw that my unofficial time was one minute faster than my 'fastest' 10k!

Feeling triumphant, I got some water and a snack and then hobbled off to meet Michael, noticing that there were plenty of people still finishing the 10 AND 5K. Later, I checked my 'official' time which was sub 50 minutes! Just barely, but I was/am psyched! Despite all of the shitty factors that could have contributed to a less-than-stellar performance and my expectation to be disappointed, I managed to squeak below what has seemed like an impossible threshold for my running performance. Yeah, happy dance for a PR!

But there is a rub - or maybe many rubs.

First of all, as much as I would like for my next 10K to be sub 8-minute miles, I fear that I will begin to chase these shadows - these impossible goals that I cannot attain. That sounds too much like a quixotic exercise in futility. But maybe I just ran my personal best for a 10K forever? So, should I or could I be happy with this time and then accept that I really should be a jogger and NOT a runner?

The bigger issue that looms larger than the idea of futilely chasing times is the threat of injury. Seriously, I feel fine, no, great, while I run, but then afterwards, my foot, knee, muscles, leg all hurt. Today, I wondered how it was possible that I ran a decently fast 10k for me, but then I limp around the house all day and can't even walk properly? At what point does something that I truly enjoy become more of a bane than a boon?

I don't want to be a crazy running person who has trashed her body over the years, and yet I also wonder if I only have one or two more good years in me, should I just go all out?

Again, these are definitely random thoughts, but I wonder how other people deal with getting older, the body breaking down, and quitting (for a second or third time) an activity they love.