Peak Performance Week? or Confidence Shaker....

I was raised with two brothers.  I think my mom was an overachiever in the late 60's as she had three kids in 28 months.  I am the youngest and was the resident tomboy.  I shot baskets on the driveway for hours as a kid and played kick the can with the best of the best.  I may have been overweight, but my love for running with the boys in those days was not deterred by that.  As I grew up, I found the world of softball.  My weight was to my advantage at the plate as in junior high I would come to know the pure joy of nailing a line drive deep into center field as my brothers would cheer me on by my nickname coined by them,"Big Tomahawk."  My glory days of sports.  Later on, I would play high school ball and grow into my token position, catcher.  I would learn to pick off the runner at second, and toss hand signals to the pitcher.  In my later high school years though, this would change.  I was bullied by another member of my team, someone jockeying for position on the team.  Admittedly, she had things I didn't.  I could not run fast, my weight slowed me down.  She was part of a legendary family in the world of softball in my hometown, I was not.

The love of this game for me personally ended one fateful afternoon on the practice field.  The coach fed the pitching machine as I was up to bat.  My bully was nearby mocking me on every pitch so much so that I could not hit a thing.  Perfect strikes from a pitching machine and I could make contact with absolutely nothing.  Pitch after pitch, whiff after whiff.  Little by little my confidence gone.  For the rest of the season I would fall farther and farther down the roster on the team as the bullying continued and I think in retrospect, I completely stopped trying as in my heart of hearts I felt defeated.  This would be my last season of softball after 12 years of playing a game I truly loved.  Part of me was simply left at home plate on the practice fields that day.  I was 17.

Fast forward to my adult routine athletic endeavor, Orangetheory Fitness.  This week was Peak Performace Week at Orangetheory.  Five challenges, one each day.  This is a twice a year offering at OTF designed to help you see how far you have come.  I remember my first one, 60 pounds heavier.  I had only been training there for two months.  I had so much anxiety over it.  It felt a bit like those moments up to bat.  I was terrified.  I was an adult now.  I had no bullies outside of the spirit of failure that lived between my own two ears.  I did the challenges anyway, as my trainers were fairly insistent I do it, and got my results.  I had done the one mile challenge in just under 12 minutes.  That was two years ago and was a personal best in life.  Even as a kid I had never run a mile faster than that.  I decided at that point I would take it and jump off from there.

I have since had three more peak performace weeks. January was by far my best.  I was humbled to walk away with three wins for females 40 and up, fastest 500m row (1:27), fastest 2000m row (6:40) and highest reps in the body weighted exercise challenge, 4 minutes (126).  The other challenges I would not win.  They were running challenges, furthest distance in 24 minutes and fastest mile.  It didn't matter, my running would come in time.  Besides I felt like this was such a huge achievement for me after a lifetime of obesity and just 17 months after a hip fracture and surgery.

This Peak Performace Week was completely different though.  Just like those days of softball, my confidence was completely shaken and admittedly, my spirit a bit broken.  I lost my mom suddenly three weeks ago for no good reason, I had traveled to Florida to sort through that, and immediately after, I had a vacation planned.  In two weeks, I had been checked out of my own life and out of my routine.  Orangetheory kept me sane in Florida, long bike rides kept my mind calm in the Outer Banks on vacation.  However, dedicated focused training and planning for Peak Performance Week was just not in the cards.  I entered the studio this week with lots of members offering friendly banter and  discussing me "defending my titles".  The reality was my head was not in the game just then.  I thought about just not recording anything, or not really participating in the challenges.  My brain was busy filling with excuses. I could say I "wanted to give someone else a chance to win."  Yes that would do it.  It would be a lie though.  My fear of doing poorly was really the culprit.

I began to consider how many times it was that we take our own shaken confidences and allow them to simply take ourselves out of the game.  Fear of losing, fear of looking silly or someone else's negative opinion that tell us it would be easier to just walk away.  I had to reason with myself that the very worst thing that would happen would be that maybe this time I would not hit the leader board.  Certainly that was not fatal.  Maybe my head was not in the game but it was time to as they say, fake it til I made it.

We arrived at day one.  The 500m row.  I pulled off three seconds slower than last time, enough for the win, but not a PR.  I had not beaten myself.  The same held true of the 2000m row, only that was a full 20 seconds slower, a win, but kind of a hollow victory when I had not beaten or even come close to my own time.  The 2000m row was Thursday.  By then I was frustrated I was not where I had been in January and just wanted to find my way back to me.  I even considered canceling my Friday class as I felt the crowning blow of being a slow runner might be more than I could take for the challenge of the fastest mile.  Again, feeling the confidence shaker attempting to pull me out of the game.  The belief that failure was somehow final and absolutely fatal.

I went in yesterday anyway.  I had several members of the motivational team I run waiting on me wanting to know how I did and letting them down was a lot harder than walking away because I felt so much doubt in my own ability.  As I got on the treadmill, and it was go time, I started at 6.1mph, increasing throughout the whole mile ending at 7.5 for the last tenth. I finished in 9:12, a personal best in life.  Not quite olympic speed, but for me a best nonetheless.  I stared at the readout on the tread when I was done, admittedly a bit tearful with all that had happened in the last three weeks, and conquering my worst event with a PR that meant more to me than any spot on the leader board.  In this moment, I realized that sometimes life is hard.  Events and other people will shake you to your core.  We have a choice, give up or fight it out.  I certainly have done my share of both.  Although I can never get back the last line drive I hit deep into center field, I can hold on to that 9:12 and realize that the best is truly yet to come....Sub 9 minute mile....You will not elude me forever.  Oh and as to the game of softball?  I think it is time I challenge myself to a trip to the batting cages, in my Cubs gear. Once a Chicago girl, always a Chicago girl.

Conquering Old Fears in a Brand New Place

I don't like horror movies, never have.  My logical brain tells me some guy in a hockey mask is probably not going to show up, chainsaw in hand in upstate New York, yet, put that on and I am assured a full night of nightmares.  Fear, such a strange thing. There are so many things as adults we are afraid of.  In fact, there are full books on phobias.  In my world, outside of the ridiculousness of the horror movie, lies a terrible fear of heights.  I always have been afraid, even on a six foot ladder.  It is a paralyzing type fear that thus far has kept me from doing anything involving high open places. 

Those who know about my recent love of Spartan Racing find this fact quite odd, given that I scale 10 foot walls and 20 foot cargo nets.  Yet, I am.  I think as racers we subscribe to the theory of,"what happens on the course, stays on the course."  This means my intimate racing team of five is really good at keeping my dirty little secret.  They have not shared that what happens to me at the top of the cargo net is I turn into a shaking, screaming ball of fear.  It is so evident that complete strangers offer words of encouragement.  "You got this!"  To which I have a standard answer screamed in a panicky voice,"I DON'T GOT THIS!"  When my feet finally hit the ground it is the attitude of,"nothing to see here", and my team and I take off again, ultimately completing our mileage and jump the fire at the finish line with pizzazz as the badass racing bitch my persona would suggest. 

As every race approaches, I find myself haunted by the damn cargo net. I always hope it will get easier, and maybe I will even curse less at the top or not have a pro shot with the absolute look of fear on my face.  This week I have been in Corolla, Outer Banks, North Carolina.  Here, they have a brand new attraction which my logical brain told me was the solution to my dirty little secret.  A ropes course,  Corolla Adventure Park.  I had never done this in my life as my fears had kept my feet firmly on the ground.   As we pulled up, suddenly the ropes seemed so high, the obstacles difficult.  I was afraid.  However, I kept replaying the two acronyms for fear in my head: Face Everything and Rise, or Forget Everything and Run.  Well, in my real life I run a motivational health and fitness company based on me holding the take no prisoners attitude to my own health and finally winning a four decade long battle with obesity.  I subscribe to the shark mentality and help my people embrace this to get healthy.  In fact, I arrived to the course wearing my own logo.  Probably  using the run aspect of the second acronym would not make for great marketing.  Brett the owner, met my son an I at the door and his staff got us ready to go.  I tried my best to appear brave, in fact, I pulled it off well until I got strapped in and walked out to the obstacles.  I felt my nerves kick in as I stepped off the first platform.  However, the first level went pretty well.  I made it through the obstacles and was not feeling too bad. 

However, then I got to the second level.  The obstacles were harder.  Thin wires to cross, a teeter totter to walk across, which in the middle of Brett called out to me,"try not to look terrified, and I will take your picture."  Boards that seemed so far apart as I held on to just a rope.  Boards that swayed beneath me as the wind blew.  At times, I found my legs were shaking, the "I don't got this" screaming in my head.  At other times I felt simply stuck and had to convince myself my vacation would be over in a couple of days and parking it on the second floor of the ropes course was likely not an option.  However, my guide Becky kept encouraging me.  She gave me tips to help me to get across, and I did not need rescuing even once.  Little by little, obstacle after obstacle, fighting the fear, I was able to make it through. 

The other side of all of this is this, though was a concept my terrified brain would not embrace, I was wearing a harness.  I was strapped in and the very worst thing that would happen is I would fall all of two feet at my harness would catch me and I would just sail along the wires to safety, thus making my fear here quite irrational.  I began to think about how many times fear keeps us exactly where we are even if it is not a great place.  I fought obesity for 45 years mostly due to what I now see was the fear of what it would actually take to be the fit person I am now, along with the fear of what would happen to my relationships as I became this version of myself, and the fear that I would fail yet again as I had so many times before.  Those are just the first things that come to mind, with the battle of obesity there are dozens of other fears.  What I did not know though, is that I had a safety harness all along.  None  of these fears if they came to fruition were fatal.  I probably was not going to die increasing my exercise, and giving up the junk I used to fuel my body with would likely not kill me either.  Rather these things were simply fears that I had run from as the acronym would suggest keeping myself figuratively paralyzed. 

However, right there at Corolla Adventure Park, I didn't.  I faced my fear of heights, shakey legged and all and I would love to say I rose.  I did rise to the third level, and after scaling the Corolla sign, walking through stilts and stepping stones 50 feet in the air, I did not rise, I descended. I descended along the most amazing zipline I have ever seen finally free of the fear that kept my feet firmly on the ground before today, once again allowing me to ask myself, if I can do this, I wonder what might be next.  One thing is for sure, I need to clear myself all together of the phrase,"I don't got this" as clearly when facing fear, I just might have it, maybe not with grace or without a few shaky moments, but I just might have it. No matter what, though, it helps me to see that the best is truly yet to come.

Living in the Moment, Lessons Learned from Crabs

Since I learned to get healthy, I had to learn to make time for myself. A little reprieve in the day where I generally brew up a hot cup of coffee, ok to be fair, I am a coffee junkie.  There I said it.  I generally drink Death Wish or a masterfully crafted latte from Starbucks with more qualifiers added to my order than I care to admit.  I just tell outsiders that is between me and my barista Gabe.  Nonetheless, I generally like to take my coffee and find a quiet place to shut the noise of life out for a while. After losing my mom last week, I find I need more of that these days than usual. Fortunately, this week I am in Corolla, NC in the Outer Banks and can have said cup of coffee on the beach as the sun slowly rises. Today, I did just that. I had my headphones on playing my ever eclectic playlist as I sat on the cool sand. As I tried to make sense of life, I suddenly was reminded of an Outer Banks nuance. In the early morning hours the beach is teaming with crabs. They are of all sizes, ducking in and out of their sand holes leaving tracks all over the beach.

As I watch them scamper around, the thing that is now dawning on me about the crab is their eyes face forward but they walk sideways. I began to wonder how that worked. As referenced in an earlier blog, I am inherently clumsy despite successfully scaling ten foot walls, crawling under barbed wire and jumping fire at the Spartan races. Clearly, however, I realize that if I had to walk sideways but could only look forward I would likely end up back at the orthopedist's office with yet another injury. 

As I thought about it, though,  it dawned on me maybe I had already done this. Placing my vision clearly on a goal, but moving side to side instead of forward. Moving toward the things that kept me trapped in the prison of obesity as I desperately shuffled side to side instead of just forward. After all, I was not a crab. I had the ability to move forward. I just spent a lot of years not really knowing I did.

In that moment of realization, as often happens, the perfect song came on. "Living in the Moment" by Jason Mraz. "If this life is one act, why do we lay all these traps, we put them right in our path, when we just want to be free". This was the perfect backdrop to watching the crabs duck into their holes not to be seen as I thought about how many times I disappeared in my own hole.  That hole that consisted of a comfortable couch in my basement, wrapped in a cozy blanket, eating salty snacks and calling it "relaxation" or "unwinding" as so many of us do.  Later, I would come to learn this is neither of those things.  It is instead, the hole I allowed myself to be captive to missing out on some of the greatest things life had to offer.

Later  today I would go back to the same beach with my little people in tow. The crab tracks that covered the whole beach at sunrise were gone. The crabs were gone except for the abandoned pinchers my six year old found. The holes were covered over. There was no sign of the early morning activity.   Yet, it was the height of the day. It was a blue sky, bright sunshine and crashing waves.  This was the thing postcards were made of.  I taught my little guys how to boogie board today, something I never would have done three years ago.  The self consciousness of the bathing suit.  The absolute belief in my inability to conquer physical things.  All of it.  I likely would have sat idly by as they built their sandcastles, sipping my tea and missed it all.  Instead, I had emerged from that crab hole with the ability to move forward and not lateral riding after wave.  I hear the kids absolutely squeal as they finally get the timing right and ride the perfect wave all the way to the shore.  This was a moment I would have been sorry to miss for them and me.  As this occurs to me, I hear the song again, "I'm letting go of the thoughts that do not make me strong and I believe this way can be the same for everyone".  If after 45 years of obesity I can boogie board with my babies in a bikini surely anyone can.  It just takes "peace in my mind, peace in my soul, wherever you're going, you're already home, you're living in the moment."

Welcome Home

Fourth of July. For those of us emergency room nurse practitioners holidays are kind of a crap shoot. Depending on the year and depending on the rotation, for any holiday there is a 50/50 chance we have to work. Yesterday was my turn to work. It was to be ten hours of drunken fireworks accidents and crazy injuries bound to provide good stories for the foreseeable future. Instead, I was not at work, I was driving top down in a black mustang convertible up Interstate 75 from Naples to Sanibel Island in Florida. I rented a bike and rode 16 miles. Eight out to Bowman Beach where I would sit for a time and listen to the water and look at the shells. One week ago I would have thought this seemed like a crazy notion, but yet here I was. Sounds like a great work substitute right?  Only it wasn't. I am here because my mom passed away unexpectedly on Friday. She lived here and I had to come and do what families do when there is a death.

On my bike ride, I had many things go through my mind when it came to my mom. Mostly I thought about how throughout her life she battled obesity just like me. In fact, we spent decades fighting together with one diet or another. When I was 13, we did Weight Watchers together. This was long before the days of points and more moderation. Weight Watchers was strict. We were required to eat one liver meal a week. I can remember her purchasing chicken livers and drowning them in spaghetti sauce and saying over and over,"these taste like garden dirt", yet we choked it down praying for some
sort of magical power they supposedly held.  Somehow we could not deviate from this formula set in front of us.  We had the horrible frozen cod meals, as we were required fish several times a week, and learned to make our own ketchup. Ultimately this failed. When the food could no longer be choked back and somehow watered down tomatoes called,"ketchup" lost its appeal.

Later, Weight Watchers got an overhaul and we went back. This time we were serious. We would go to the meetings and get this done. Well, that is until my fairly independent and outspoken mother challenged the leader. My mom had gained two pounds that week. The leader was concerned and compassionate. She wanted to address what stumbling blocks my mom had. She asked her what happened. In true mom style my mom answered,"I cheated". When asked why, her answer? "I chose to cheat. I wanted to eat and I did".   She was matter of fact. That leader never stood a chance.

Later, we would do optifast. Six shakes a day. I lost 50 pounds during a summer home from
college. She lost over 100. By this time Oprah had joined the craze and we got to see her roll her wagon of fat out on stage, a visual representation of her weight loss. Well, there was the fine print. You have to eat at some point. We ate again. We gained.

Then came Phen/fen,  because clearly amphetamines are a reasonable weight loss tool. I mean look at the meth addicts. They are nice and thin. My mitral valve reminds me with an awesome murmur that this may not have been the answer. We did Jenny Craig, which my mom, to her dying day swears they put something mystical in the food that allowed her to lose weight. The regular food when we transitioned back did not have that "secret ingredient".

Later we would both have weight loss surgery. We would both lose weight. A decade later we would both put some back on, not all. She would go on to have some side effects of the surgery 14 years later that ultimately took her life on Friday.

My bike ride took me to Bowman Beach, our favorite beach. I sat there on the sand covered in sweat realizing she got to see me get healthy. She believed in me even though at the end of the day she did not believe in her own ability to be healthy. Hell, I suffered from the same belief for 45 years, constantly looking for the ever elusive weight or clothing size at the bottom of shaker bottles, prescription bottles and multiple externally controlled diet plans. Somehow for me, the combination of a 16 mile bike ride, with time on our favorite beach was the perfect marriage of the celebration of my health with her cheering me on through every mile as she knew I figured out that success was free, a lifestyle, and existed between my own two ears, with the enjoyment of one of her favorite places on earth.

As the storm clouds rolled in, as they often do in southwest Florida in July in the late afternoon, I decided it was time to head back. Through that ride I put on Ed Sheeran's,"Divide" album. Part way back the song "Supermarket Flowers" came on. It speaks of the death of his own mother. "A heart that's been broken is a heart that's been loved."  Through our battles for health my mama loved me a lot which explains my own hurting heart in this moment. However, as Ed so eloquently puts it,"when God takes you back He'll say hallelujah you're home". Welcome home mama. Welcome home