Happy Old Year

So it has been.

With the disappointments and frustrations of 2009 came gifts large and small: perspective, adventure, and a humble little box bearing a reluctant treasure called maturity.

Turning 41 means accepting that the days of being the hot girl at the beach are long gone. It means that doing 100 free repeats on 1:25 is about the best you can hope for. It means a sore knee can break your heart. It means an Ironman goal can turn into the satisfaction of a Danskin finish.

2009 brought, for the first time that I can remember, a tiny taste of boredom. How do you fill the 16-25 hours per week you planned to spend training for the Ironman when suddenly you can't?

With layoffs of colleagues, workload partially filled that gap. Our yard looks pretty nice. I was reaquainted with old friends and made a few new. I joined Toastmasters, and am a new, better person in public when I have to be. Mike and I took in the Sundance Film Festival, watched whales off Whidbey Island, and challenged our brains, hearts, and the soles of our shoes in Washington DC. We went to Kalaloch for the first time, and our beloved Stu Chin for the sixth. I watched football on television, even when the ironing was done. I had not one Girls Getaway weekend to sunny climes, but two. I tried cross country skiing for the first time. I swam 3 miles in rough salt water. I swam 3 miles naked in broad daylight.

I woke up one morning in August and weighed 118 pounds. And never felt fatter.

I second guessed my knee and its treatment, blessing and cursing the kind of doctors who are determined NOT to stick a knife into your body unless they are sure it will help fix you.

I celebrated how lucky I am that I have the kind of friends who ask:

"How is your knee or are we not talking about it tonight?"

And understand when you answer:

"I love you for asking, but indeed we are not."

I will get better.

Over the last few days, friends have reflected on the year that was. One lost both of his grandparents, and just last week, his uncle, too. Another lost his dog, and then deck fell off his house. So many lost their jobs. Some lost their true loves, one of them very suddenly on the day after Christmas.

What about me? I lost a year of triathlons. And gained a year of experiences I would not have had otherwise.

How's that for perspective, adventure, and, dare I say it, maturity?

Happy Old Year, and Happy New Year, too.

Thankful

The last of the kneedles

I had the last of 5 Supartz knee injections on Thursday morning, and was given the green light for low-impact exercise.

Friday morning I logged 15 minutes on the elliptical machine, ramp at 1, resistance at 3.

This morning I went for 20 minutes at 1 and 4.

So far, so good.

Bobcageon

As I curled up on the blue couch this morning, with a hot coffee in hand and the fourth installment of Twilight on my lap, I looked out at the fog hanging over the lake and thought to myself: there's no way.

Of course I was torn, because I've always wanted to swim outdoors on Halloween. All Saint's Day...so much the better.

I remembered the good-natured determination on Joseph's face yesterday at practice as he cajoled DT and me to consider swimming in the lake today. He said it would be fun. And also that he felt the need for some closure to what had been such a happy and memorable swimming summer. And that resonated. I had hoped for a goodbye swim at Madison beach a few weeks ago, but we ended up swimming elsewhere and all I got was cranky.

Was a November swim was more of a story I wanted to tell than something I truly wanted to do? There was only one way to find out.

By the time I reached the beach, the fog had burned off, the sky was clear and bright, and the water, while not perfectly smooth, was invitingly close.

The costume was not glamorous. Scuba hood with tunic (excellent second neoprene layer), wetsuit, booties, cap and goggles. I think Joseph added earplugs to his ensemble, and DT went old school with just a regular cap and wetsuit.

The water was a brisk 56 degrees. The initial ice cream headache took a few minutes to subside, but once we were moving, the water was actually was fairly pleasant. I think we were all surprised how comfortable we were. After a quick gut-check at the 9 Minute Dock, the Boys of Summer went "Cove or Bust" in November, while I went as far as the red slide at the tennis club. I think I was in the water just under 40 minutes.

And when we returned to the beach, we all acknowledged that it still might not be over. Another sunny weekend morning might find us back.

Happy 50th birthday to DT, who swims like a man half his age.

No symbolism here, but this song will always remind me of today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qxGYnZCeTY

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

I spent last weekend in Palm Springs with Julie, Megan and Kari, celebrating our collective 40th birthday.

While I was there, I finished a book about another accomplishment. It's the new Glenn Stout biography of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Trudy was a member of the 1924 U.S. Olympic team, the first year a women's swim team was fielded. She swam to two bronze and one gold medal in the Paris Games, disappointing because her achievements up to that point had proven her the best American woman swimmer, if not the fastest female swimmer in the world.

She was crushed, but it didn't take her long to set her sights on the even greater challenge of the Channel crossing. It took her two tries, but when she completed the 21 mile swim in 14 hours and 31 minutes on August 6, 1926, she became not only the first woman to successfully cross, but she set a record time, beating the handful of men who had traversed the Channel before her.

The book describes how Trudy would retreat into her own "sphere" while she swam. A state of almost automated bliss and communion with the water. Sound familiar, mermaids?

Another cool thing about the book was the discussion of the evolution of freestyle, which was an adaptation of an overhand breastroke style of swimming called the Trudgeon (which Kari and I tried to replicate in the resort pool in Palm Springs after researching it on youtube. We called our version the Curmudgeon).

After her swim, Trudy revealed that she sang the words to "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" over and over in her head as swam from Gris-Nez to Dover.

Trudy passed away at age 98 in 2003. She never married.

Trudy and the other women swimmers on the 1924 Olympic team were breakthrough athletes, at a time when training and participating in sports was still a considerable taboo. So in a quiet and grateful tribute, I have posted the long-promised "grinning idiot" Danskin T1 photo above.

Recovery

Still Here Dancing with the Groo Grux King

I did it.

The alarm went of at 5 on Wednesday morning, and by 5:30 I was handing a check for $195 to the coach at Mercerwood Shore Club. I am officially back in the pool, with a new home. Through the end of the year, anyway.

I liked the workout, but I am warped for pool swimming for awhile.

"How are you?" yelled Mike Shaeffer from the edge of lane 6 when he arrived.

"A little rusty!" I answered, red faced and panting after a mere 200 meters.

"A little lusty?" Mike yelled back.

Swimcaps across the pool popped up and swiveled to see what he was talking about. And hence I have a new nickname, at my new pool, before I even had a single workout in.

Tomorrow I will wear a different suit and cap and hope for anonymity.

There is a price to pay for four months of lake swimming, in the shape of 2-3 weeks of pool hell, but I will open my fitness wallet for that pleasure any day.

Today I'd hoped to swim in the lake with Brendan and Geoff, but the bank of fog that rolled in during the wee hours, combined with Geoff's last minute "I'm out" voicemail had me hopping back under the covers.

I'm back in the pool tomorrow, with plans for a mermaid swim Saturday morning. The air temperature will likely be below 40, the dew on the grass excruciatingly cold as we scamper from the sidewalk to the shore. But since the water is about 20 degrees warmer, I declare that lake season is still not officially over.

Which brings me to the Groo Grux King.

Every summer I have a theme song (last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE2orthS3TQ).

It's been a funny summer on that front; it's been a hard one to peg with lyrics and a beat without biking and running.

The early front runner was Into the Ocean by Blue October. Followed by Fireflies by Owl City. And then, sometime in July, I bought the new DMB CD, Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King. And played tracks 5-7 over, and over, and over, on the way to the beach and back, week after week.

So here it is. The theme song of the summer of 2009 is a dark horse...Driver Education by the Indigo Girls.

Reading the lyrics won't do it justice, but youtube has no quality videos. Try for me:

I fell for guys who tried to commit suicide,
With soft rock hair and blood shot eyes.
He tastes like Marlboro cigarettes,
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups,
A Pepsi in his hand, getting off the school bus.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

Now its tattooed girls with a past they can't remember,
Who pledged allegiance to a life of bending the curriculum.
She tastes like spring, there she goes again,
Drinking with the older guys, tripping by the lakeside.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

When you were sweet sixteen, I was already mean and
Feeling bad for giving it up to the man just to make the scene.
Where were you, back when I had something to prove,
With the switchblade set and the church kids learning my moves?

I ran for miles through the suburbs of the seventies,
Pollen dust and Pixie sticks, kissing in the deep end
Of swimming pools before I knew what's in there.
We come into this life waterlogged and tender.

The song resonates because the two things I remember my about my 15th summer were driver's education...and learning how to swim fast. Maybe because this summer was dedicated to swimming only. And because the song reminded me of things I hadn't thought about in a quarter century. Oh, and that last line says it all.

Honorable mention: Shake Me Like a Monkey by DMB. Somehow I just couldn't pick a song with that name.

Still here dancing...