Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Wake Me Up

Distance running.  Anyone who follows my blog has come to realize that my quest to conquer distance running has met with equal parts of frustration and glory.  Frustration over not being capable of running faster or controlling my pace and glory over reaching distances I never thought possible when I was that obese junior high school girl hoping to not have a cardiac event right there in the school yard.  Nonetheless, one thing I have learned along the way is more is not better when it comes to training.  Yes, I had been told this.  I had heard all the phrases like,"muscle is built on recovery day" or "you will do better if you don't run EVERY day."  Ok, so maybe it took me suffering a stress fracture of my left hip followed by said fracture completely coming apart requiring a hunk of titanium to be installed 16 months ago for me to totally get this point.  To be fair, I may be just ever so slightly stubborn.  I may also have an irrational fear of active recovery, that I will magically undo my 85 pound weight loss by morning if I do something less. 

So, anymore, I try to be smarter and leave irrational fears behind.  I power walk a couple days a week at Orangetheory, walking away with a pure cardio workout as opposed to the high intensity after burn I usually want.  However, as great at this is,  I have a race.  A big hairy race that is terrifying.  In August, I will take on the Spartan Beast with my team.  A 12-14 mile obstacle race up the side of the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia.  Somehow, even my best current training efforts leave me a bit shaken on the inside when it comes to staring this one down. 

On Sunday, I decided to up the endurance training in preparation.  After a 90 minute Orangetheory, I hit the bike trail for the first time ever since moving to upstate New York.  I have run here many times, just never biked.  What I found on that trail was unexpected.  First, I learned in my world, biking music and running music are two different things.  When I run, I find classic heavy metal to be the thing. Guns 'N Roses, Aerosmith, AC/DC.... just to name a few.  I suppose it is my love hate relationship with training runs that push me to simply loud and angry tunes to keep moving.  It also helps drown out that little voice inside so well honed by my previous obese self that starts screaming at me to quit by the time I hit the first quarter mile.

Biking is different.  There is the wind blowing hard rippling my shirt as I go, there is the sun, and in my case the views of the Mowhawk River along the way.  A whole different vibe.  There is not the huff and puff associated with running or the pounding of the pavement, just a smooth ride with the quiet clicking of the gears.  While I was riding this maiden voyage,"Wake Me Up" by Avicii blasted through my wireless headphones.  Yep the perfect vibe.  It was funky and upbeat and paired nicely with the warm sun and scenic views. As I pedaled through I realized I have listened to this song so many times without really listening to the lyrics.  Not this time. "All this time I was finding myself and I never knew I was lost."  It made me think about all the years I thought I had it all together.  I was raising kids.  I was a successful nurse practitioner.  I had friends. As the song played on,"I was carrying the weight of the world but I only had two hands."  I realized I had relied on that very phrase for a long time as I filled up my time with everything else and not carrying the weight of my own struggles. 

As the song played on,"wake me up when its all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older."    In this moment, somewhere lost on mile six, I began to realize just how lost I really was for so long.  I began to wonder how often we wrap ourselves up in other things, work, kids, family, to avoid waking up to who we actually are and more importantly what greatness really lives inside of us.  In a sense, it makes me sad thinking about lost time, the years of throwing myself into everything but my own health.  The fad diets and quick fixes I would try just to put a bandaid on an otherwise gaping hemorrhaging wound, always ending up in the same old place.  Asleep.

In another sense, I found myself so excited to no longer be sleeping through life obese and unhappy.  Sifting through all of this I would look at my statistics later to find that was almost my fastest mile.  Balancing the grief and the excitement of what is yet to be, proved to push me just a little bit further.  As I tried to figure it all out, a sudden mess of emotion, the next song would come on,"Don't Stop Believing" by Journey (I am a child of the 80's, don't judge). I suddenly would relax and realize I don't have to have the answers or have it all straightened out in my mind.  I just need to keep moving ahead believing once again, the best is yet to come.  I would finish on the top of a ridge overlooking the river and almost feel disappointed the ride was over.  Twelve miles suddenly was not enough.


Tomorrow I will go out and cross train biking again.  I am excited to see what the trail has to offer my psyche this time.  Perhaps the music will tell....

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

When the Quick Fix Does Not Work.....Patience





A few days ago, I went out for a run on the bike trail  We are quite fortunate in upstate New York to have a paved, relatively flat place to run for miles and miles.  However, there was a certain amount of anxiety that went along with that run.  First of all, my last two running events I found myself with runners that were faster than me and Iballowed myself to marinate in the ooze of self doubt that goes with feeling like I cannot keep up, certainly an old emotion I wear as comfortably as an old sweatshirt.  Then, there was the fact that with my broken hip last year I will not run outside in the winter and therefore, I have spent months under the comfortable glow of the orange lights of Orangetheory on the cushioned treadmill running my base, push and all out with the best of them.  After two years of training there, this has become my comfort zone.

Unfortunately, my next race is none of these things.  The race's name in and of itself would indicate it probably is not time to settle into my comfortable training.  The Spartan Beast.  It is long...12-18 miles.  It is hot, West Virginia in the summer, and it is definitely not the cushioned belt of the treadmill I had allowed myself to grow accustomed to.  It will be anything but flat as I am facing the Appalachian mountains of southern West Virginia.  So, off I went, trekking it down the bike trail after my Orangetheory class of all inclines, determined to push my daily workout time to more than an hour if I was going to be race ready.  OK.  It was an epic fail.  First, I ran too fast out of the gate.  I checked my pace on my Apple Watch and was hovering near a 9 minute mile.  I had the triumphant moment that those people I ran with really were not faster than me, I was faster than them.  See?  I was doing it.  Yeah, that is until I couldn't. Stop.  Walk.  Try again.  Too fast.  Too Slow.  Walking.  Heart rate all over the place.  Yep.  It was 2.5 miles of epic fail, and complete and utter frustration as I just could not seem to find my groove that day.

Enter yesterday.  I had worked 4 of 5 night shifts.  It was hot.  I was tired.  I had made the mistake of taking my own advice.  I usually advise my clients to tell a buddy before doing  a workout they really don't feel like doing.  That way someone is waiting at the other side and that notion is usually enough for them to do it anyway.  Yep, I had told three people I would go for a long run on the trail today.  What was I thinking?  Now I really hated the trail.  Hated the run.  Hated the whole damn process.  I drove to the trail trying to get a plan in my head.  I would settle in to a 10:30 pace and see how far I could get.  It was 88 degrees with a real feel of 94.  I prehydrated and off I went.  To me, it felt painfully slow.  I was nowhere near as fast as my team, now it just felt worse.  The wind pushed back at me and the sweat ran into my eyes.  The sun made things hotter, yet I kept going.  In those moments, when the pace seems ridiculously slow however, you begin to notice things.  The lily pads are taking over the Mowhawk Hudson this time of year to where the water looks totally green.  The bunnies scatter away from the trail when they feel your footsteps, ducking into the trees, and the grass around the trail smelled as if it had recently been cut. 



Pretty soon, I would feel the vibration of my watch.  I had made a mile.  I was fine.  One mile turned into two, and following that, I started into the third mile when I found myself facing a sign that said,"Town of Colonie".  It dawned on me in that moment I had ran to a whole other city.  Something I had never done before.  Maybe it was only 2.25 miles but a whole other city sounded victorious to me.  Besides I had never run this far down on the bike trail.  I had usually given up long before afraid to venture too far.  From here, I started to make my way back to the car, switching to interval runs from there for a total of 4.5 miles in order to better prepare to run obstacle to obstacle.  I would have thought the wind would now be at my back since I had turned around.  No such luck.  Nonetheless, the run became much less of an epic disaster. 



I suppose anyone who knows me well would not exactly describe me as a patient person.  In fact, I tend to be a wee bit on the impatient side.  Members of my family may argue that "wee bit" descriptor, but since I have control of this blog my story is "wee bit" and I am sticking to it. Nonetheless,  I like to get things done and generally do not like to wait for things.  I would guess that this is why I am always faced with this same old dilemma.  I had once read that our greatest weaknesses are usually met with the repeated opportunity to face them.  For me, being impatient by nature means I am presented with the opportunity to learn patience over and over and over again. Years of infertility, followed by two Russian adoptions which were complicated and arduous, and a Haitian adoption that took three years to finally have my family complete with five children.  Then there was the ability to live a healthy lifestyle which took decades as my impatience had me attempt quick fix after quick fix, when the reality was it took about two years, eating real food,  hard work and patiently giving myself a break from time to time. 

As I look back on that 4.5 mile journey of yesterday, I realize that forcing myself to be patient in the pace that I fought so hard against, feeling as though I was somehow behind, actually allowed me to see things I never noticed the other day during my failure run, the same way I have seen things in myself on this health journey I never saw before when I went racing from quick fix to quick fix.  I began to wonder how many times we all push through things just to get done only to find we have missed the joy of the journey, missed the lessons intended to be learned and more importantly fallen very short of our goals.  In those failures, we miss a lot of warm sunshine, lilly pads, scurrying bunnies and most importantly the arrival to whole new destinations.


Monday, June 12, 2017

There is Power in the Burpees, Spartan Race Reflections

As I drove down Interstate 79 on the way from Pittsburgh to Bridgeport, WV, I finally had time to go over the events of the weekend in my head.  It had happened.  The Chicago Spartan Super.  I have trained for two and a half years for this, hip fracture last year notwithstanding.  I had convinced a team of four others this was a great idea, three of whom were new to Spartan racing, and terrifyingly set out to complete my longest race yet.  After four and a half decades of obesity, this was almost difficult for me to get my head around.  In fact, when I registered six months ago it seemed almost ridiculous.  Yet here I was, on race day.  Looking at the start line with my team.

In that moment, I wore the shield of confidence.  I had two years of training at orangetheory under my belt and 85 extra pounds gone.  I have achieved a lot in the glow of the orange lights in this amount of time. I had won challenge after challenge by this point, fastest 2000m row, fastest 500m row and I even lift heavier than half of the men. My success has become contagious, until I found myself leading a team of others trying to do the same.  They call me Mama Shark because of my unwillingness to back down and now they are crushing it too.   I clearly had this.  I yelled "AROO" and "I am a Spartan"  when asked at the start line.  Here I was.  Psyched and ready.  They had even finally announced the race was 7.5 miles.  Shew.  I could run that distance too.  All set to lead this team to Spartan greatness. 

Well, I am here to say...nothing shakes your training and confidence to its very core like a Spartan Race.  There was the top of the cargo net vertical wall when the doubt of my ability to truly have this escaped very loudly out of my mouth to my team member,"I so don't have this!"  That was at mile one.  She talked me through it until I did.  There was wading through ankle deep mud through mile 5 when my calf cramped so badly I was paralyzed and yelling in pain.  Toward mile 7 there was a full quarter mile of a barbed wire crawl, or in my case roll.  Enter more muscle cramps.  Rocks to roll over and this just seemed endless.  Finally after 7.7 miles we would emerge from the woods into the spectator area with the finish in site.  Oh wait.  There were 7 more obstacles in that short distance.  Yeah.  They had said 7.5 miles.  Um no.  It was 8.  These last seven were the hardest of the course.  The spinner was difficult as my arms were tired.  Enter burpees.  The Spear went wide.  More burpees.  The 20 foot A Frame?  Yes a bit of panic at the top four feet from the lens of the race photographer.  This was followed by the rope climb that my impossibly muddy shoes just would not grip.  I found myself uttering profanity with the burpees, my confidence not only shaken but gone.  My whole body was tired.  My legs bruised and my shoulders sunburned.  Then there it was.  The multirig.   A series of hanging rings to cross.  The second to last obstacle I have only successfully crossed once in a race.  I had enough of burpees at that point.  I could smell the smoke of the line of fire at the end and I was not going to quit, but at the same time just wanted to be done with no more Godforsaken burpees.  Ring after ring.  I was hearing my Spartan coach's voice in my head.  "Swing back let go, swing forward, reach."Over and over until I rang that bell.  I had done it.  As a muddy, tired team of five, we would finally scale the Slip wall, jump the fire and collect the medal. Truly a great moment for my whole team.  We would cry a little, drink our obligatory free beer and start the tale of war stories that would consume the rest of the evening.

Despite the shiny medal, my scattered failings on the course at times rattle me a bit.  As I continue my drive down to WV to see my granddaughter I can honestly say I look at these mountains that surround me and feel as though they may be taunting me a bit.  My next race is here.  It is a Beast.  My longest race ever.  Not less than 12 miles right in these very mountains.  The seeds of doubt with my struggles that existed on the course on Saturday seemed to be taking root. 

That  brings me to today.  I finished my visit with my granddaughter and came back and decided it was time to get out into the mocking hills and see what happened.  After all, I was the Mama Shark, or so they tell me, and this was my only opportunity to be in West Virginia until the race.  I owed it to my team to brave the 90 degree heat and report back.  The first thing that happened was I used an electrolyte tablet before hand and I had no cramps.  I guess that will take that problem out of the equation later on.  The second thing was I conquered these crazy elevations for five solid miles.  I told myself I did an 8 mile race two days ago, why would a 5 mile training climb be hard? Honesty, it wasn't.  I felt the sunshine on my shoulders and the music in my head.  In those moments I learned my struggles on the course made me stronger, better somehow.  Suddenly, the hills were no longer mocking.  They were inviting me to get better. It was then I knew why I Spartan Race.  The rocking of my confidence to its very core is a great place to rebuild to a better version of myself.

Coming back from this session I suddenly was barraged, as my brain often does, with ideas to further my training.  Conquering obstacles in new ways.  I was contemplating grip strength and technique....I had not failed on the course despite what I may have wanted to believe.  I was actually ready for more.  I suppose this is how difficult things in life go.  As we struggle through difficult times that have us questioning the confidence of who we really are, we discover there is absolute greatness in the struggles and failings.  I now sit at the firepit at the hotel, sipping a perfectly chilled glass of wine, overlooking the same mountains that shook me a bit yesterday and I see something entirely different.  I see an invitation to stay on my journey to become the best version of myself.  I realize it may take a few burpees and bruises along the way, but the best things always do.  It is the struggle that makes it great.  So, here's to ten more weeks of rock solid training before I come back to show these mountains what my team is truly made of.  As always, the best is yet to come.

Monday, June 5, 2017

When Old Doubts Creep In

I have been a nurse practitioner for 16 years, the last six of which have been in an emergency room.  Ah yes, the emergency room.  It is a veritable cesspool of bacteria and viruses.  Weeping abscesses, scabies, lice, pneumonia, strep, staph...the list of stuff we see is endless.  The upshot?  As ER providers we develop an immune system that is made of steel.  I rarely get sick.  However, once every few years I seem to get a case of bronchitis.  This is particularly annoying, as it lingers forever and to be honest, nothing helps.  Well, this year I drew that short straw.  It began in the middle of April and I essentially coughed until about two weeks ago. 

I refused to sacrifice my training as my fear of losing all that I had gained was stronger than my fear of coughing through a run.  So, I kept training.  I was medicated with an albuterol inhaler and other cold medicine and off I went.  Admittedly my runs were slower.  My rows not quite  what they were in March.  I found it frustrating as my lungs just would not allow me to go any faster as I would cough and sputter a bit.  Plus, I had a terrible hamstring pull making things worse.  I spent this time talking myself down off the ledge.  I tried to employ the things I had learned through my hip fracture.  I used the mantra,"it is a marathon, not a sprint." or,"bronchitis is not permanent.  The hamstring will heal.  This is temporary."  I kinda settled in to where I was.

Finally, the coughing ended.  The chest pain I had from said coughing went away too.  Even my hamstring got better.  So, I have spent the last two weeks telling myself that now that all of this was better I would simply have to rebuild.  Keep running.  You'll get there.  That's what I told myself as I still ran slower than normal and feeling like I could do no more.  I pushed the frustration away that I was not as good as I was at the beginning of April, figuring it would come with time.  At least I wasn't coughing any more and the hamstring was pretty reasonable.

This leads me to Saturday.  Saturday, I challenged my motivational health and fitness team to take the two months of training they had done and run a 5k in their own neighborhood.  Runners in 13 states.  I was one proud Mama Shark to see selfie after selfie of my baby sharks posted on my company page, who had accomplished so much in two months. 

Well, then it was my turn.  I was running an actual organized 5k with a larger team from the yoga studio, but more importantly two of my very own team members.  I was a bit anxious in the morning as I knew they were faster runners than I was.  I was afraid I would not keep up or somehow slow them down.  The gun went off and we took off.  I settled  into pace with the ladies.  After the first mile we were running just under 10 minutes.  My fastest 5k was in November and I was around 34 minutes so I knew already I was faster out of the gate.  This made me nervous.  I had not run this speed in six weeks, and I had never run this speed for 3.2 miles.  As we surpassed  1.5 miles I found all that fear made its way out of my head and past my lips.  I was apologizing for slowing them down.  I was telling them I needed to slow down.  I told them I wasn't sure I could do this at this pace.  Here I was.  Mama Shark.  Queen motivator and CEO of Team 1DOS repeatedly saying,"I can't."

I was blessed in those moments by two running partners who were clearly surprised to hear me say this.  At one point, one of them looked at me and said,"who are you right now?  Amy, you are not even breathing hard."  I tried to assure her I was and she pointed out,"you're talking to me."  She was right.  Still, the fears and doubts followed me all the way to the finish line which I crossed at 31:05.  A personal best for me.  Somehow this was a bit of a hollow victory as I struggled to understand what had just happened.  I talked it through with my two team members and running partners.  I reminded them that I think the problem was I was bullied a lot when it came to running as I was growing up.  Made fun of as I wheezed and coughed through junior high runs with my obese body. 

My running partners assured me I was OK physically and maybe this was just old voices in my head.  Then, they joked my old bullies were likely now middle aged fat men who could never consider a 5k like I had just done.  Yesterday, I set out to test the theory.  I got on the treadmill at Orangetheory for what turned out to be power day.  Power day at OTF is quick explosive movements.  On the treadmill this means a whole lot of push paces and lots of all out sprints.  I decided I would put my 47 year old brain in the image of running that same trail we did back in the day.  Put those bullies in middle aged men bodies on the side where they would stand and watch as I was the last to be finished.  Only this time I got to be me.  The me I am today.  My 47 year old self proving finally I could do it to this band of misfits that made junior high gym so difficult. I kept hearing in my head,"you are fine.  You are not even breathing hard."  The voice of a valuable and trusted member from the day before. 

You know, I ran.  I ran really fast.  I ran until I truly could not breathe for my sprints and found myself at 8.4mph for the fastest one.  Yeah.  Last week I ran those at 7 convinced I could not go any faster.  Ummm....yes.  They were right.  Now it probably should be said here, one of my running partners is a psychologist.  Anyway, after that workout I decided I had allowed  the bronchitis to act like my coughing and wheezing from years ago.  I had given the negative voices in the back of my brain a name.  I called them bronchitis an hamstring pull and they held me back every bit as much as my bullied fueled low self  image of my junior high days.  By the way, the hamstring was fine after this.

This led me to think about how many times do we find reasons to not do more.  Take the fear and negativity and call it something else. Something more socially acceptable rather than what it really  is. The barriers that live between their own two ears fueled by years of self doubt and the simple belief that we can't even though the truth is we can.  We may not always know we can, but we can. 

So, the better question.  Was I able to enjoy my PR of 31:05 finishing in the top 38% of my age group?  Yes for about 5 minutes, because now that I know I was fine, sub 30 minute 5k....I am coming  for you. 

Friday, June 2, 2017

Participation Medals or Place Medals, the Great Debate

I went to grade school in the late 70's and early 80's. Life was different then.  School PE consisted of much more competitive and at times, even a bit ruthless, forms of exercise.  There was bombardament, now known as dodge ball.  Clearly, you had not lived unless you had perfectly circular welts on your extremities left by a pink rubber ball thrown by someone who clearly had some sort of super human strength for a third grader.  Now to be fair, this would be refined, and go on to be a very respectable modern day adult sport as would most of our PE endeavors in those days.  There was floor hockey, where the plastic blades of the sticks left bruises on your shins, and no shin pads were not necessary in those days.  There were recess games of red rover where you were just lucky to survive without a shoulder dislocation rather than having that guy break through the line.  All of these things required teams. There were captains chosen by staff who took turns sizing up the other students and carefully selected their teams.  The biggest and best were first.  By the third grade it was clear who was on the top of the proverbial athletic hierarchy.  As for me?  My childhood obesity made me last.  Last to be picked.  Occasionally a gym teacher would take pity on me and make me the captain.  I am not sure that was much better as the audible sighs of the other students echoed off the gym walls.   

Then there was field day.  The coveted ribbons for 1st, 2nd and 3rd for each event.  I would go on to never win any of those, but was not alone in that notion.  I knew early on which handful of people would dominate those things as did everyone else.  When I look at today's take on that, my kids have their own field days and I see a swing in the complete opposite direction.  Everyone is a "winner", everyone gets a medal or ribbon.  Nobody "loses".  There is so much controversy over this.  A google search will  provide so much heated debate that you could literally read for days on the topic.

As for me, I think neither thing is the answer.  Those of us born in the late sixties and early seventies resigned ourselves early on to the notion that we just would not ever be able to be that person.  We would never have medals for athletic greatness, we would never be captains and you know what?  That was OK.  We invested in our other gifts and found a lot of success.  This may be OK in the 20's and 30's but as for me, I found that in doing so, not only did I not invest in athleticism I used this as an excuse to somehow be less mobile, less healthy. After all, I was not going to win at bombardament or the sack race, so I probably did not need to go to the gym.  Besides, those gym people are crazy.  One of the things in my own pile of bullshit as I convinced myself that my other gifts were enough to get me through life.  Well that, and my blood pressure meds.  Oh wait, that and my insulin resistance medication.  Well, the antidepressants.  You see that was just a chemical imbalance.  Just playing the hand I was dealt.  This is what we do in life.  Take the pills, accept the physical mediocrity and call it a day/  After all, I was a professional success and a good mom, so all was well. 

In my journey, I have come to understand that as far as elementary school is concerned, place ribbons or no place ribbons is not really the debate. It really does not matter what you give kids.  First is first and last is last.  Kids know regardless of the color ribbon or the way it is painted.  The real challenge comes in daring to believe that you can finish first.  One of those ribbons can belong to you.  That you can win the sack race in the third grade just as easily as you can run your first marathon at age 50.   It may mean a lot of hard work with some losses along the way, even Diana Nyak the first to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage failed four times before she got it.  Famous athlete after athlete have failed many more times than the famous victories they have had.  The big difference is they believed one day they could.  This has not been instilled regardless of the age old place ribbon versus participation ribbon debate.

That brings me to my first medal.  My first real gold medal for individual athletic achievement came one year ago.  I was long past the days of sack races and shuttle runs.   It was the marathon challenge at Orangetheory.  Run a marathon worth of miles in the studio in the month of April get a fancy towel.  Win it all, and there was a prize for top mileage.  Well, I couldn't run.  Fresh off my hip repair in February I was only allowed to ride a bike.  Bike mileage was calculated at a rate of 4:1, so I was staring down 104.8 miles.  This was a difficult mental task.  I had been back at orangetheory all of a week after being released to go back after surgery, with some restrictions.  Until then, I had been fighting the old ladies off the arm bike to ride ten miles a day, at the regular gym for weeks.  I put in my mind I would just go for it 104 miles.  Although at that juncture I had to beat back the disappointment of not being on the treadmill, fresh off the set back of a horrible injury, my trainers assured me I could still complete this challenge.  Well, I trained every day, even at the OTF's in Florida when I was on vacation that month.  Pretty soon I hit 104, with two weeks to go.  Now it was time to see if I could actually win.  I did.  Over 200 miles.  It was shocking seeing my name on the leader board for the bikers.  More shocking to see the medal.  My first real gold medal at 46.  Along with it the realization that I had it in me, I just, until this point,  didn't know I had it in me. 


So, happy ending?  Amy wins and here is the celebratory picture.  She believed she could so she did.  Well yes and no.  Yes, I won that month, however what follows is failure.  This year I could run.  Still working with hip rehab, in the setting of a person who never ran any distance in life until the last 10 months, I set my sites on a double marathon. Big hairy goals.  Surely that would do it.  Oh wait.  I don't run fast relatively speaking.  I did hit a double marathon and a wee bit more, 54 miles and change.  Awesome?  No.  I did not even place.  Lots of folks running 7 minute miles in there or less, even in my age group  It makes my 9 minute mile look slow.  However, the difference this time is I took that lack of winning to work harder as I finally understand my body is capable, I just have to keep working the bad hip and be patient, but not give in.   Training my mind to believe my body is capable.   So, the million dollar question....if I could have a do over to those grade school days armed with the knowledge that ability lies within me and all of us, would I go back?  Nah....this Mama Shark is having too much fun captaining a team of 50 folks who are learning their own bull shit is just that.  Bull shit.  They are tossing out this notion, along with their participation ribbons and taking on new challenges and killing it all.  So much better than any sack race on Field Day or being picked first for Red Rover.  Besides as I am learning little by little each day, the best is yet to come.