Mental Toughness

As many of you know, I was a ski racer when I was younger. I loved it: being outside, skiing, competing, being with my friends. It was also a family thing in my house; 4 of us skied all day and my mom was always in the lodge waiting with lunch and warm hands to warm up our toes. I learned so much from ski racing. I learned time management, how to deal with disappointment, how hard work pays off, sacrifice, and mental toughness among other things.

One of the most important things I learned was to try all the way to the end. A race course can be anywhere from 25 seconds long to 2 minutes long (approximately). The courses are never the same although they have the same elements in them. The mountains are all different that we raced on, the coaches setting the course all had their own ideas, but the one thing in common was that there was always a little space between the last gate and the finish line. We were taught not to stop trying on that last gate, but to think of the finish line as the last gate. If we thought the race was over at the last gate, we just might relax enough to fall, stand up straight or just not push through to the finish line. Since everything is on a timer, gliding through the finish line could cost valuable tenths of seconds and be the factor between 1st place and 4th place.

This is an important factor to remember in any sport. My daughter, B, swims competitively. I try to get in her head and explain to her that sports are 90% mental, 10% physical. The girl is a power house, but sometimes she lets the girl swimming next to her psych her out. Yesterday, she said she glided into the wall at the end of a race instead of pushing. She is in high school and is just beginning to realize little things that could make her faster. She has made great strides this season and it is beginning to dawn on her that mental toughness and fighting for the wall at the end of a race is crucial.

Last night's Super Bowl was a perfect example of not giving up in the final seconds. The Patriots were looking at losing another Super Bowl. Did the defense give up? They could have. But mental toughness prevailed and they kept fighting. Malcom Butler made one of the most fantastic plays of the game. The winning play of the game.


Mental toughness is not something only for sports. It's for believing in yourself and all that you are capable of. I think it's time to take some of my own advice....

Sporty Weekend

It was a sporty kind of weekend.

There was lots and lots of swimming....

There was skiing on some challenging grassy backyard terrain...

And then, of course, there was football....

And to round it all off, a sunset beach walk....

How would you describe your weekend?

Rhode Island or Bust

It was a beautiful, frosty day today!

A great day to drive to Rhode Island for a swim meet!

B and I went with our friends Jen and J. 2+ hour rides are much more fun with friends. We got the kids there just in time for warm-ups and then we hit the Narragansett Beach area. So pretty and a lot like Maine! My next mission is to bring Jen to Maine because she has never seen the Maine coast.

What?!

Anyway, RI is beautiful, too!

After climbing rocks for 15 minutes, we went back to the pool and watched things like this

for the next 4 hours. All in all a great day!

Swimmers, Penguins, Belugas, OH MY!

This weekend was the Championship swim meet of the YMCA season. We had to go all the way to Connecticut for it. Not just over the bridge to get off of Cape Cod, but through the whole state of Rhode Island! Crazy, right? (I am being sarcastic, it wasn't that bad.)

B was set to swim Saturday night. She and some of her teammates passed the time by taking selfies. They were cracking me up. 

I do not have any pictures or video of her swimming (much to her dismay) mainly because some of the coaches were walking back and forth, jumping up and down and screaming their heads off at their swimmers. Basically, getting in the way. The coaches on one team dressed like construction workers....were they channeling the Village People?

The meet was fantastic! B had 3 personal bests which means she beat her previous times in her events. And by beat them, she really slaughtered them! We stayed the night in Mystic, CT with one of the coaches, his wife and their son. I am not sure if it was the fact that we were exhausted by the time we got to a restaurant at 9pm or that we really are funny all together, but boy, did we laugh!

The next morning Coach Bob, B, T and I went to breakfast while Laurie lounged in bed (haha, right Laurie?). We got T laughing so hard that T spit eggs across the table. Bob was telling us that one of the coaches on another team was telling an 8 year old boy, that "it's all on you!" as he walked up to the start. No pressure on the poor kid or anything. We also brainstormed on how this lady made her poof. One theory was that she hid all the bacon in it. So, ignore T laughing so hard in the picture and look behind him.

We went to Mystic Aquarium for a chunk of the day. It is a great aquarium and there are a lot of outside exhibits. I am sure it is even more beautiful in the spring/summer, although the occasional snow flurries were fun. Poor T, he found out what it was like to be part of my family. Pictures galore!!

I do not know who this little girl was, but I had to take this picture. It was so cool seeing the Beluga's through these big windows.

Here are B and T "patting" the Beluga. 

One Beluga was playing with this green ribbon. He/She was having the best time letting go of it and grabbing it again and again.

All in all, a fantastic weekend!!  My ab muscles may never be the same from laughing so much, which is the best kind of workout ever!!

My Invisible Shield Rocks

So, I am in a corner stretching and pretending I am invisible. My "fierce" (read: slow) 25 minute walk on the treadmill has netted me a loss of 87 calories and a chapter of the latest Danielle Steel novel.

My "brisk" walk on the treadmill is the result of starting to work out a month ago. In my head I am 27, but somehow my body has aged quicker than my head. I hurt my good knee walking too rigorously on the treadmill in week 2. That has really annoyed me but, of course, has not stopped my day-to-day activities. Activities that include hauling little kids around, cleaning the house and carrying 40 lb camera bags around wedding ceremonies.

So far at this gym, I have kept to myself. I hop on my favorite treadmill ( 3 from the wall with a view of the parking lot) and read a book. I guess I trained myself to read on a treadmill a long time ago to fight the immense boredom of it. I haven't braved the stretching/mat area because it is right in the middle of the gym. Who wants to see a 44 year old woman doing sit ups? Poor planning on the gym's part. Plus the high schoolers on the swim team are usually in this area. Have you ever gawked at high school swimmers before? Beautiful, in shape, non-flabby bodies. Not people I ever want to work out next to.

So I stretch far away against a wall, next to a scale that basically taunts me and very close to a leg machine. Not room to do situps, but an ok place to stretch and observe for a few minutes.

What I see is older people walking on the treadmill, in shape older men cruising on the step machine, sweaty people, laughing people  tatooed people, men with too much body hair, serious excercisers and the smiley lady that walks around and checks in with people. She's never checked in with me, though, probably because I have my invisible shield around me and she can't penetrate it.

One of the swim team moms, asked me to do a class with her because she noticed that I was working out in the gym (my shield must not have been working that day). This mom runs half marathons for fun. She must have mistaken the 'now me' for the 'best shape of my life college me'.

Hmm, if my invisible shield can alter people's perceptions of me, then maybe I can start doing those sit ups in the middle of the gym?

That Awkward Moment When....

Yesterday at swimming, unbeknownst to me, B and her friend were playing the game "that awkward moment when....". From the lobby it looked like they would swim a lap and then crack each other up while they waited to start the next lap. The funny thing was is that the adults in the lobby were sort of playing the same game.

For the girls in the pool, it went like this:

That awkward moment when... your coach tells you you did a good job, but tells everyone else they did a great job.

That awkward moment when.... you pee a little in the pool while you are doing the breaststroke.

That awkward moment when.... you have to stop swimming to let half the lane pass you because you are so slow.

For the moms in the lobby, it wasn't that we were actually playing the "awkward game". It was just that we were listening to one woman tell us of her trials and tribulations with Match Dot Com. Combined with a few other dating disaster stories I have heard, I came up with this list...

That awkward moment when.... your date proceeds to nod off throughout dinner.

That awkward moment when... you realize your date has left his ugly sweatshirt in your car and you really were not planning on seeing him again.

That awkward moment when... on your date, you realize that you have a mutual friend in common and wonder why your friend has never tried to fix you up before.

That awkward moment when... you find out your date is a lot older or heavier or balder than his Match picture.

That awkward moment when... you figure out that your date is only visiting the Cape and really lives in NYC.

I got up this morning thinking of how I was going to tie the "awkward game" together for this post, walked into the living room and opened the curtain to look out at the lawn on this beautiful day.... and there it was, the clincher to this post...

That awkward moment when... you open your curtains to find a dead raccoon in the middle of your yard. *

*Totally not kidding and am still skeeved out by it! The girls and I got out the snow shovel and removed it to the unclear border between our yard and the neighbors' where there is lots of ivy growing. 

Less Than 6 Degrees of Similarity

B started swimming on the team at the Y in September. She has made many friends and has improved in her swimming tenfold. It has been very fun to watch. But it hasn't been all about her.

I jumped into the swim parent arena not knowing a soul. It was OK. We all had a common reason for being at the Y for one hour, 3 nights a week. I started learning people's names and matching them with which kid they belonged to in the pool. We were a group of parents from all over the Cape, but we began to find common bonds with less than 6 degrees of separation. A few months into the season, 2 of B's friends from school joined the team as well. I was already very good friends with their parents, so it was easy to bring them into the "swim" fold.

What have I learned about these new friends?

*Lee once worked at the May School. The same school that brought me to the Cape with my first real job. Suzy worked there, too. One day we had a field day going through the "did you know so and so"game!

*Laurie was in an almost deadly car accident 8 years ago and already knew Lee because Lee was her OT.

*Laurie's husband Bob works with Suzy's brother.

*Bob LOVES York Peppermint Patties.

*Mark is the mayor of the pool and can fill you in on anything you need to know.

*Dan videos his son every single night, but is also a wealth of info about the team.

*Men can have hour long conversations about septic systems.

*George did some of the remodel on Lee's kitchen.

BUT.... what I learned the other night was the best of all! Lee and I are sole sisters because we worshipped the Red Sox in the late 70's. We were one upping each other with stories for one hour. It was hysterical. We went from sending Carlton Fisk birthday cards every year, to asking Fred Lynn to an 8th grade dance, to kissing Rick Burleson's mailbox, to making scrapbooks of the team, to keeping stats for every game, to comparing who we had signed autographs of, to who lived in our town, well you get the idea..... It all started because I had been going through some old pictures and found a bunch of my Red Sox paraphernalia and brought it up while we were watching swim practice.

I am not sure where I am going with all this except to say that I am so grateful for meeting all these new friends this year. They have provided me with hours of laughs and a bond into a "new" group. My advice is, jump into a new situation and put yourself out there. You never know who you are going to meet and you just might find someone who  is less than 6 degrees similar to you.