Up Goes the Gate...But Not My Breakfast

I’m not a fan of mysticism…but if I was I’d be tempted to say all the stars were aligned that day. It was the St. Patrick’s Day 5 Miler, and my coach said to use the race as the Run Test. In the last post I recounted my experiences with the Swim and Bike tests last week – all-out efforts geared to benchmark current fitness level, and pinpoint my maximum and average heart rates to establish the proper training zones for different workouts.

So many things came together for the race:

- I was topped up with great sleep – 9+ quality hours every night all week!
- The day was overcast, breezy, and a crisp 40F – perfect temps to run in
- I was familiar with the course, knew all its hills and turns
- I was sporting new Adidas Adistar Cushions – real Cadillac shoes!
- 14,000 other runners to make it exciting
- I had a PHAT playlist on my iPod, hugely motivating tunes

But the biggest part was that I’d been reading my coach’s blog all week. She and her husband were out in Arizona training with their coach, Spencer Smith, who is a professional triathlete and makes a darn good living at it. Day after day she posted a recap of the training they had completed. One day they rode up Mt. Lemmon and to hear her tell it, it was a lungbusting and legshredding climb up followed by a mind-numbing descent at 30+ mph; and then they ran a “short” 50-minute tempo run. Another day found her riding so hard that she yarked up her dinner from the night before. Amazingly she “hung with the boys” and everyone reading her blog that week was no doubt profoundly affected in some way. To use her famous words, she “suffered like a dog.” :)

In short, I was grateful for her brutal honesty and transparency, but more so her unyielding determination to rule her body with her mind and push the envelope despite being outmatched with the men at times. In January at a triathlon camp I attended, I had a candid reckoning with my self-confidence and had to painfully concede there were more mental demons about this sport lurking in my head than I wanted to admit.

The last 2 months I’ve worked hard to come to terms with what holds me back. Big surprise – it’s my brain! :) Sure there are the required workouts and training to build ability, but I have sorely underestimated the role of the mind when it comes to pushing the limits.

And I proved it during Saturday’s race when the gun went off. Steve and I had run 1.5 miles to the Start as a warmup, and I used the first mile of the race as a “ramp up” for the test. Right after Mile 1, I hit the lap button on my heart rate monitor, and as Steve said, I was “gone.” It was an all-out, max-heart-rate, work-til-you-puke kind of effort til the end.

My legs felt like they had springs in them and my heart rate was already near 180. One of my favorite tunes, Break Me Down by Red, popped up on my player, and I was reveling in the music and picking off other runners. It felt GOOD to pass a LOT of people. Another peek at my monitor 5 minutes later – 188bpm – holy cow! – and I was showing no signs of slowing down. My leg turnover was FAST – each foot was spending as little time on the ground as possible; its only role was to take off so the other foot could land, as if the road was a runway (which in literal terms I guess it is!). Sure it hurt, but my brain was saying c’mon where’s da line? You got more – show me da money!, which to me meant pushing over 190bpm.

I saw the last major hill of the course and thought yeah, this is it. By now I’m 25 minutes into the test, and my legs and lungs were screaming at me, but there was no turning back. I could do anything for 5 more minutes.

Up the hill I flew and for a second I thought man, I might puke – what do I have left in my stomach…hope nothing liquid, that would be gross and I might slip in it…hey, Jen suffered like a dog, so can you! You think it’s NOT supposed to hurt?!

I distinctly heard my mind say exactly what Steve must’ve heard ad nauseum during Marine Corps Boot Camp…Let’s go ladies – MAKE IT RAIN! (Hilarious thing to say to a bunch of MEN in an elite branch of the military…) :)

I crested the hill and saw 194bpm on my monitor – AWESOME. I nearly cried. The rest of the course was downhill and flat; I could hold onto 185-188bpm for a little while longer.

It truly is about the mind ruling the body and today I found out how to take it one step further. There will be other days of aggravation but not today.

Today the gate barring my best performance went up…but at least my breakfast stayed down :).

Asking For It

“You’re a brave girl to be asking for these…LOVE IT!” said my coach when I suggested a Test Week to benchmark my current fitness abilities in the disciplines of swimming, biking, and running. I had septum surgery 7 weeks ago and with the increased oxygen uptake I was already noticing a difference in performance. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t being overly enthusiastic about my perceived gains.

Test Week is relatively “light” in terms of training volume (time) but brutal in intensity. Phrases like “all-out effort”, “max heart rate”, “suck it up and suffer”, and “work til you puke” are all associated with finding one’s breaking point. The purpose is to pinpoint your maximum and average heart rates which are used to determine the appropriate heart rate “zones” within which to train. The theory is that every workout has a different goal: some are to build power; others are to hone efficiency which in turn is one of the underpinnings of endurance. Training within the right heart rate zones maximizes the achievement of these goals while also minimizing the risk of injury and burnout. Contrary to some popular beliefs, “going hard” all the time is not healthy at all and, moreover, is the Express Route to getting hurt and demotivated in a hurry.

The bike test is a long warmup, about 20 minutes with some brief accelerations, and then launches into a 30-minute all-out time trial ride. It can be done outside on a measured course, but is just as feasible on an indoor trainer. Mine was on a Tuesday, on the heels of swimming 3,200 yards Monday at Masters practice. To stoke the fire, I burned a CD with some high-powered tunes by the likes of Van Halen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Metallica, Three Days Grace, and Creed – songs in the order of how I might be feeling during the test. I hopped on the saddle and started right in.

Snippets of thoughts racing through my head during the test:

“Feeling pretty good during warmup. I think I’ll do a few single-leg pedal drills just to get the legs limbered up….wow, 90 rpms of smooth pedaling, not bad…I’m either excited about this test or really angry about something, or both! Maybe I should pick a fight with someone before doing my next Test Week :).”

“Wow, 5 minutes into it and I’m sweating a LOT…water’s flying out the bottle and down my throat; I don’t even need to point the bottle in my direction…heart rate’s about 165bpm, working hard but totally in control…tunes are awesome!”

“Okay, 10 minutes in, 20 left to go; I’m in earnest distress now…but look at my computer – 21 mph and 94 rpms! I’ve never pushed that big a gear that fast – holy cow!”

“Heart rate 185bpm - Good GRAVY!!! Is that smoke I smell, ‘cause my legs are on FI-WAH!!!" (Elmer Fud-style)

“Where did all this water in my ears come from?…wait, it’s SWEAT…SUFFER girl!...”

“Only 2 minutes left to go…you can do ANYTHING for 2 minutes!! You’re an IRONMAN!”

Then it was over and time to run “easy” for 20 minutes on the treadmill to unwind – I finished the test and blew away last year’s test results.

The swim was the next day (Wednesday) and much of the same in duration and intensity: (10) 100 yard intervals – all-out raw speed -- with precisely 10 seconds rest between each interval. Though each interval is max effort, one must “plan” for the stamina to finish all 10, meaning you can’t blow your wad on the first one and expect to have enough in the tank for intervals 2 thru 10.

I did a nice warmup in the pool, reset my watch, took a deep breath and launched right in. Snippets follow:

“Okay, finished that first one in 1:45, which is awesome, but I was pushing pretty hard…time to go again!”

“Man, that was even harder and I came in at 1:49…what, time to go again?!”

“Oooooo, someone let all the FUN seep out of the pool…this hurts, my legs are flat from yesterday’s ride, and I’m heaving…”

“Wow, here comes the wall and I have absolutely no oxygen left for a flip turn…but I’m gonna do one ANYWAY…”

“See, you didn’t die at the wall…man, only 4 more left…I WILL DO THIS and DO IT WELL!”

“2 more left…my arms are really on fire…waterfalls of dark chocolate dancing in my head…are my legs still attached?”

“DONE! Smile, Catherine, you nailed it…”

A nice cooldown of backstroke and then freestyle with my paddles…ahhhhhh…I could stay in the pool all day. Due to maximally filling my lungs with oxygen during the test, I’m able to swim 8 x 25 yards of freestyle, easily rolling to breathe only once for each 25.

One great thing about swimming perhaps not readily apparent to many recreational swimmers is that stressing the different systems of the body such as breathing, or doing drills during a workout, produces immediate benefits in the water, as it “teaches” the body a new adaptation or technique. Similar to a computer, the brain contains stored “programs” that it recalls when recruiting muscle fibers to work. It is entirely possible to overwrite these stored programs whenever something new is learned. Mix in patience and consistency, and you have the perfect recipe for huge gains in fitness and a considerable investment in the future of your health.

Now you’re really “asking for it.” :) (More tomorrow on the run test…)

Surviving Suicide - Part 2 of 2

Five years had passed since my mother’s death, and I decided to finally get help. I had absolutely no idea how to fix my problems, but I knew something was terribly wrong. The thought of living the rest of my life in this state was unimaginable, so I went to the University’s counseling office and made an appointment to meet with a therapist.

Five visits turned into five harrowing years as I dredged up everything from childhood as far back as I could remember. In some sessions words were not even spoken, as I would simply sit and weep over the hopelessness my mother must’ve felt, seeing only one way out of her troubles. I couldn’t relate to it at all; we were not cut from the same fabric and that fact slashed at the pillar of my identity. Would I wake up one day and suddenly the world would be sideways with a pinkish tinge and everyone would be speaking Frenglisharian (French, English, and Hungarian)? My brain blowing a circuit was a very real fear. I slogged through each session reopening many aching wounds, not realizing at the time that because I was getting things out in the open in a constructive manner, that progress was being made – like depositing money into an investment, the proceeds of which are not immediately visible but continuing to make the deposit nonetheless.

Just shy of the five-year mark of being in therapy, I was graduating from MBA school and decided that it was time to close two chapters in my life at once – school and counseling. I didn’t have any Ah-HAH! answers, but the time seemed right. I did have a decent job, a good boyfriend, and a place of my own – plenty of constructive areas in my life to work at and improve.

The boyfriend was a Christian, a born-again Jesus Freak (see The Sign), and little by little I pieced together who God really is, not the Stern Distant Judging Father I’d see Him as earlier on. When I was 28, He reached into my life and in one divine Fell Swoop, I plainly understood why He allows suffering to come into people’s lives, among other things such as His Son taking my place on the Cross because He “so loved the world…” (John 3:16a).

I’m 43 now and it’s been nearly 30 years since my mother’s suicide. Though I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I’m no hero, there are a lot of lessons I’ve learned through her death, such as:

• Why did it happen? We live in a fallen world full of death, disease, injustice, inequality, abuse, babies who die, terrorists who kill thousands in the warped “name of God.” Sometimes we suffer by our own hand; often people suffer because of the choices others make. Either way we must live with the consequences of these choices.
  
  
• Why did God allow my mom to die? Strangely enough, because He loves me. I can only imagine the direction my life would’ve taken had she lived. It’s entirely possible my life would’ve been consumed with taking care of my mother (and aging grandmother). I may never have gone to college, met Steve or his kids, or had a fulfilling career that allows me to help others.
  
  
• Where is God in all this? Right here with me, walking and talking with me. Looking back, He’s always been here. One must go through the valley to stand upon the mountain and this is a universal principle that proves itself out in endless life experiences. It’s primarily through suffering that you become even more “tuned” to the voice of God. Did you last pray to God when things were in the toilet, or when you were flying high?
  
  
• Suicide is immensely tough on those left behind. Feelings of guilt or responsibility often accompany the devastating sense of loss, and these should not be discounted. A good therapist is WORTH IT, no matter how painful or meaningless it seems at the time. With patience, progress does come, but one must be consistent, willing to hang in there as long as necessary, and honestly deal with your problems. The Blame Game only works for so long.
  
  
• I am left with an ability to feel deep compassion for those who have experienced traumatic loss in their own lives. All three of my stepkids are facing serious life issues right now, and though I don’t always say the things they want to hear, I have sorrow and compassion for the hardships they face and will never turn them away or minimize their pain.
  
  
• I’ve learned I’m most fulfilled when I’m helping others. If I can live through an experience like this, I want to help others through trials and hardships in their own lives. We live in a Microwave Society that expects quick fixes to everything. With serious pain, this is just not possible and expecting anything different is a serious injustice to the value and dignity of the human being.
  
  
• I’ve learned to never say quit, to carry on through anything life hands me, to “run with perseverance the race set before me…” (Hebrews 12:1b). This runs so deep in me, it’s one of the many reasons why I train and race, especially endurance distances. You can’t fake it; it requires training, discipline, and hanging in there even when things look grim.
  
  
• God answers ALL prayer. Sometimes His answers are No. Just because He doesn’t fix something the way I want Him to doesn’t mean He isn’t fixing it. If we always gave our kids what they wanted, we’d always be giving them sugar. God’s perspective is wildly beyond mine – I’m the proverbial ant crawling over a Rembrandt painting; I can’t see what He sees.

I was sure by now
That you would have reached out
And wiped my tears away
Stepped in and saved the day

But once again, I say Amen
And it’s still raining…
And as the thunder rolls
I barely hear you whisper through the rain
“I’m with you.”

And I’ll praise you in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For you are who You are
No matter where I am

And every tear I’ve cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise you in this storm

-Casting Crowns “Praise You in the Storm”

Surviving Suicide - Part 1 of 2

I’ve mentioned in previous posts (see My Father and A Long Line of Iron) that my parents were refugees from Hungary’s Communist Revolution in 1956. Hungary had been under Communist rule since World War II, and an uprising by the people in a short-lived attempt to overthrow the regime was crushed by the Soviet army as they stormed the country and resumed control of the government. My parents, along with my mother’s extended family, escaped over the border into Austria and lived for months in a refugee camp before being allowed to emigrate to the United States. Below is a snapshot of what the exodus looked like as thousands of Hungarians fled the Soviet tanks and soldiers.




Both of my parents grew up in extreme circumstances themselves. As children, they lived in poverty conditions and survived World War II, my mother being 7 years old when it started and 12 when the Allies declared victory in Europe in 1945. Their house had been bombed, so my mother’s family and several others lived in the cellar while the war raged on. It was only by befriending one of the Russian soldiers that they were given rations of basics such as flour, grain, milk, bread – things we expect to find everyday at our supermarkets. Sometimes I wince when I hear my kids complain about not getting the latest whatever-it-is. The stories (most of them independently corroborated accounts) my family told me and carried with them to their graves renew daily my gratitude for living in such a prosperous nation. Having traveled the world over, I’ve also seen my own share of heartbreaking poverty that would make our own poor appear “rich” by the world’s standards.

I didn’t grow up with my father. My parents were divorced when I was about 2 years old, and my mother and I came to St. Louis to live with her parents. My father stayed in New Jersey and eventually married Ann (who by the way is a wonderful friend and the GREATEST example I could ever have for how to be a stepmom to Steve’s kids).

My mother’s sorrow and bitterness over the divorce bled over into her judgment on how to raise me on her own. She committed the parental cardinal sins of terribly disparaging my father in his absence and not allowing me to see him at all. Later on I discovered some of the things she said about him were true, but it didn’t mitigate the resentment of not being allowed to realize these things on my own, untainted by another’s terribly biased opinion.
I was about 8 years old when I figured out something was dreadfully wrong with my mother. She heard voices in her head and thought people were “after” her. Sometime later I would learn it was a textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia, but at the time I was just a child and utterly incapable of helping in any meaningful way. When I was 12 I got a firsthand introduction to the hopelessness and desperation buried deep within her - she made an attempt on her life by taking a bottle of pain pills. She didn’t tell me and I found her one Saturday morning when I tried unsuccessfully to wake her from a deep sleep; she was completely unresponsive. I remember the 911 system had just been installed because somehow I had the presence of mind to dial the numbers. Paramedics showed up in a few minutes and tried to revive her. The trip ended at the hospital with her getting her stomach pumped and sleeping off what had already been metabolized. I sat in her hospital room, watching her, and prayed like never before that God would intervene and keep her from taking her life. To be honest, I didn’t know what I really wanted. In some ways anything was better than this, but the fear of losing her and my subsequent fate was more than I could bear.

Another attempt followed when I was 14. In the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, she finally succeeded by hanging herself. My grandmother found her. She had used twine and a pullup bar I had in the doorway to my bedroom. The coroner said it took only a couple minutes for her to die. I later wondered if she regretted stepping off the ladder.

A flood of strange “relief” and heartbreaking loss swept over me – now what? I had prayed to God and He said no. At the time I truly hated and cursed Him.

My father came to the funeral and wanted me to go back to New Jersey to live with him. No way, I said, I barely know you; where were you when I needed you most? Though he legally could have forced me to move, he relented and allowed me to continue living with my grandmother. It would be a blessing in disguise as I would later realize, but not before taking just about every destructive detour possible.

The years shuffled by and my life was ruled by rage, resentment, and the proverbial “my way or the highway” attitude. Ironically my mother’s suicide had the opposite effect one would expect – I absolutely REFUSED to follow in her footsteps. It was simply out of the question. As bad as things were I couldn’t imagine taking my own life and meeting my Maker in my current state of mind. I was on fire to stay alive, even if only by clawing my way to reality each dreary morning.

One night when I was 20 and halfway through college, I watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune and the contestant won a lot of money. An avalanche of tears burst forth from me (kinda like the little alien in Spaceballs…yeah this is a way heavy story and this is called comic relief), and I realized I was living in a seesaw world of extreme emotion – one minute I would be tearfully ecstatic over the most trivial experience, and the next I would be living in a gray cloud of apathy, experiencing the world from inside a cotton ball.


Part 2 coming tomorrow...

"Git 'Er Done!" The Tri-Bloggers Swim Challenge

Earlier in the week when talking to my coach I opened my big mouth and highlighted the Tri-Bloggers Swim Challenge on Pedergraham’s blog (http://pedergraham.blogspot.com/). It’s a 4,000 yard swim made up of (40) 100 yard intervals that seem easy enough in the beginning. The intervals are written to accommodate the swimmer’s speed and skills. For example, mine were written as follows:

1st 10: 4@2.25; 3@2.20; 2@2.15; 1@2.10
2nd 10: 1@2.20; 4@2.15; 3@2.10; 2@2.15
3rd 10: 2@2.20; 1@2.15; 4@2.10; 3@2.05
4th 10: 3@2.20; 2@2.15; 1@2.10; 4@2.00

This means for the 1st set of (10) 100s, 4 of them were leaving at the 2.25 minute mark, the next 3 at the 2.20, and so on. If I finished at 1.50 that meant 35 seconds of rest on the first 4, 30 seconds on the next 3, etc. The opposite could hold true too – if I loafed and finished at 2.10, that meant only 15 seconds rest on the first 4, 10 seconds on the next 3, etc.

After being “challenged” by Jen (see “Me and My Big Mouth”), I really had no choice but to accept and put this on my calendar. So last Thursday night I’m getting my gear together and I have to admit I was positively excited about doing this. Frankly, I LOVE a challenge. The idea of putting myself to the test both terrifies and exhilarates me at the same time. Yes, I might fail but that possibility alone is enough to drive me in the direction of success. The feeling of glorious fulfillment that waits on the other side is an equally prevailing force.

Friday driving to the pool, my heart was already beating faster. I’m thinking “C’mon, you swam this distance several times last summer when training for Ironman! What is going on here?! You can do this – and do it well!” It was a rollercoaster of fear and confident excitement all rolled into one big ride.

In the locker room, I pulled on my swim cap and grabbed my towel, goggles, and baggie with the outlined intervals in it. Of all the preparation I’d done, I’d actually managed to forget my watch! “Sassafrassarassa!!”…(Muttley-style, from one of my favorite childhood cartoons Stop the Pigeon).

This meant I’d have to read the pool clock, which is not a big deal; it just meant one more thing I’d have to manage – remembering where I finished, what interval I was on, when I’d have to leave again. Always a learning experience!

I stepped into the pool area and surveyed the lanes. Hmmm…Slow, Medium, or Fast…people in all of them. Suddenly the swimmer in the Fast lane said she was finished and getting out – sweet!

I jumped in, plastered my baggie onto the end of the lane, waited for the second hand on the pool clock to cross over 60, and started right in.

The following is a rehash of each set of 10:

1st 10: Okay, the first 7 feel a bit “stiff” – this is a warmup of course…but is that 1.45 I’m seeing on the pool clock??? Awesome!!

The next 3 intervals are right on 1.45-1.48 and I’m in disbelief. I’ve never swum this fast, except the week before when I blew it out at 1.39.

2nd 10: Alright, I’m warmed up now!! And cruising, flip-turning my heart out…I’m almost halfway!! This is so easy...maybe Jen should've rewritten some of the intervals...

3rd 10: Okay, feeling a bit tired, but still strong – I’m still coming in at 1.48!! This is so great!

After the 33rd 100…

Ooooo, where did all the fun go? Man, will this EVER be over?? 7 more to go…sheesh!

I take a peek at my baggie at the remaining 7 intervals…my times are now inching closer to 1.50.

3 more at 2.10 and THEN 4 MORE AT 2.00??? Can’t the time pass any faster? I’m bored…

3 intervals later…4 more to go. The war between body and mind is raging at full tilt.

Wow, that hurt…I needed nearly every bit of that rest…I could use a buffet about now…ooo, look at those tiles on the bottom of the pool…can I have some chocolate?...and why is France so far away?

The LAST 4…

Good grief, only 5 seconds rest!! Huh?? Sassafrassarassa!! No WAY I’m NOT finishing, I don’t care if they (my arms, but I hardly had the strength to think the words) fall off!! I can pick ‘em up on the way back!

I bulldoze my way through the remaining intervals and gratefully touch the wall at the end. My smile was broad enough to reach both sides of the pool – I DID IT.

It made a 200 cooldown swim seem like NOTHING. Some other unexpected side benefits: reading the pool clock and flip turns have now become second nature. The amazing part is that I still met one of my goals for this season, which is to be in flip turns full time by March 1st, despite having septum surgery and being out of the pool for 2 weeks.

As Larry the Cable Guy says (ad nauseum): “Git ‘Er Done!”