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Rug Burns and Bruised
Foreheads
By Lara Brown
“So if
ever someone says to you,
‘Life isn’t fair,
Get used to it’,
Then you should say,
‘Well it might be,
If folks like you
Would let it be’.”
“The Lowering” The Avett Brothers
Yesterday I tripped over my
backpack.
I found myself face down on the carpet with a
rug-burned knee and bruised shin, my backpack right
beside me where I placed it 5 minutes prior.
Aunt Janelle was concerned at first but
neither of us could contain our laughter when we
realized why I was on the ground.
On my way to creating myself, on my big
journey of imparting wisdom to all of you, I fell
over my own backpack.
30 May 2005, Memorial Day.
Derek Argel
left behind a wife, Wendy, and baby boy, Logan when
he was killed in deployment as a special operations
officer in Iraq.
Derek paid the ultimate sacrifice for his
country, for you, for me, for his son.
Tell Derek’s family that life’s
not fair, that their son, husband, father should
still be here.
Still known today
as the America’s greatest female middle distance
runner, Mary Decker-Slaney knows a thing or two
about what’s fair.
Stress fractures kept her from the 1976
Montreal Olympics.
In 1980 after setting four world records at
the Trials, the US boycott crushed her Olympic hopes
at the Soviet Games.
Holding seven American Records, and two World
Championships, she was considered a sure bet for a
medal in the 3000 meters at the 1984 Olympic Games.
A picture speaks a thousand words and one
taken 1984 portrays the most memorable tumble in
Olympic history.
Tripped from behind, Slaney crashes into the
infield, as the snap of a lens captures a heart
breaking image of a girl consumed by tremendous
loss, as yet another Olympic dream races away down
the track.
Tell Mary
Decker-Slaney she got the short end of the stick.
Brandon Jones has what it takes
to get to the next level, but more than that he has
the drive, the passion, and the memory of a
biomechanically sound body.
At 28 he’s bound for professional soccer, a
dream he put aside for 8 years to balance college
soccer with a military academy life and Air Force
career.
After years of overuse leading to multiple surgeries
Brandon now has no cartilage, no functional tendons
in his right knee, a broken foot, and now a failing
left knee.
He keeps playing, coaches realize his skill,
he’s a valuable asset to any team, he can’t stop, he
continues to play.
His body screams and continues to degrade,
his heart aches for the game.
He’d make a pro soccer team in a second, he’d
be a there if his heart could carry his body.
Tell Brandon it’s
over, confront him with reality.
Matt Dixon threw his life into
upheaval to pursue a career as a professional
triathlete.
To reach the potential that so many others
saw in him, to find out who he was on the race
course.
He saw a road in front of him, it was long and
incredibly bright, but along the way his immune
system suffered serious damage.
He could have been the “next top pro”.
Matt struggles now with long term damage,
forcing him to retire after a short unfulfilled pro
career.
Tell Matt it’s too
bad he couldn’t see where that road led; tell him
“jeez man, life’s a bitch”.
Phil Cutti threw a mean slider,
living every boys dream and pitching for the Indians
out of college.
But his elbow could only sustain so many
surgeries and malpractice suits in the major
leagues.
He made the unlikely transition to elite running,
towering above the skinny well-suited marathoners,
but running alongside them just the same.
Cycling was a natural progression on Phil’s
road to success in triathlon but after being
broadsided by a van while on his bike he was again
relegated to the bench.
Still years down the road Phil deals with the
rehab of a broken back.
Tell Phil maybe it be safer to
fold, just accept the cards he’s been dealt and cut
his losses.
Ask Phil if he’s done.
George Bernard Shawn said
“Life’s not about finding yourself, Life is about
creating yourself”.
At what point do you look at yourself in the
mirror and find who you are apart from your
accomplishments, aside from that “high” of running,
soccer, an Olympic dream.
I can tell you where Phil Cutti has found his
passion.
I see it in his eyes, his smile, the way he lives
his life, in his family, Gretchen and Kylie, his
time on the roads or the trails, and sharing his
experience and expertise with athletes at every
level.
Matt Dixon has built a name for
himself in Endurance Sports, he’s used his
experiences to guide others away from the mistakes
he made himself, he delved into science and
physiology to understand the stresses of training
and the adaptations of the human body.
He’ll still punish anyone on the bike, and
that happiness he still finds on the roads now
transforms into a true joy in seeing others succeed.
Matt could easily focus on the fact that
life served him up a raw deal, but you can hear in
his voice that he’s made the harder decision to
create his own fairness.
Take one look at
Mary Decker-Slaney today, and she’ll laugh at how
old ladies still remember her as “the girl who fell
over”.
Her smile, when she is with her husband,
daughter and two dogs, shares the same happiness
that radiated out of her eyes as a young girl on the
track.
At some point she refused to let the “unfairness”
define her life.
Tell Brandon Jones to stop
playing soccer, to let his body heal.
Really hear
him when he says he needs closure.
You’ll feel the pain somewhere deep down
where it hurts, as you see him struggle to leave
that behind him and walk on, fighting to create his
fairness.
Tell Derek’s mom Debbie you are
sorry for her loss and, like a strong loving mother
she’ll slap your wrist and tell you never to say
sorry, only to remember, only to carry Derek with
you, to be that person to others that he was to us.
At some point we are faced with
“two primary choices: to accept conditions as they
exist, or accept the responsibility for changing
them” (Dr Denis Waitley).
No matter if those conditions are highlighted
by Sports Illustrated, recognized by family,
realized by a look of true sorrow, remembered on a
gravestone, or felt for the first time deep inside
on a lonely drive at 4:30 in the morning.
It’s not about giving up, settling for second
best or continuing the fight no matter what the
consequence.
It is about marrying a smile, a
personally-found joy, with whatever life throws your
way. All
these people have two things in common, their
unforeseeable limits, be they physical,
environmental or circumstantial, and their refusal
to let their sport, accomplishments, events or
life’s “unfairness” define them.
Look
around and you will find unfairness everywhere, sad
stories, tragic events, but the only thing you can
control is the fairness in your own life.
If life deals you a rough hand, change the
game.
Limp off the track, step off the field, pick
yourself up, get back on your bike, change your
stride, lean on friends, learn from your
experiences, create yourself.
And on your way be prepared to trip over your
backpack, to end up on the ground looking up at
surprised faces, humbled.
Learn about yourself, learn that walking with
your head held high may not always be the proper
thing to do, take a minute, lower your head, define
your obstacles, pick a direction, define your path,
and if you run head first in to something while
counting your money from the ATM it’s about time you
pick your head up and run on.
WHAT IS YOUR
MOTIVATION?
By Lara Brown
PART
2 - Fights at the Pool
I could
start this piece by defining what motivation means
to me, not just at the pool, in sport, or at work,
but in life.
Instead I figured I would describe two people
in my life and you could figure it out for yourself.
These people are not family members, they
probably don’t consider me a good friend and you
won’t find them on my call log.
But these people have recently shaped and
directed my life, they have become my motivation.
Frank & Marin
Friday, April 25th Chase Barron
“Sunshine” Anderson was killed while riding his
skateboard in the University district of Seattle.
I know Chase’s dad Frank from masters
swimming.
Frank, a former water polo player and still
talented swimmer, is my “drafting buddy”.
After my five-week “knee surgery vacation”
from the water it was hard not to notice the
gasping, sinking, water works show behind him as I
struggled through practice a few weeks ago.
Half way through the main set Frank threw a
smile over his shoulder and said “Throw on those
paddles and fins, just don’t scratch my feet.”
I flew through that last 200, Frank leading
the charge.
That was the last time I saw Frank, until I
saw him on the evening news speaking about the death
of his son Chase “Sunshine”.
The Seattle times said Chase rode his
skateboard in shorts and flip-flops despite the
Seattle weather, always exuding a contagious kind of
happiness, which is how he got his nickname.
Frank smiles, still smiles.
He says “day by day” as he fights through an
unfathomable pain.
He talks about Chase and how he was blessed
with the time he had with his son.
Somehow Frank is making the choice to find
happiness.
To spread the sunshine his son did so
effortlessly.
I see Marin Morrison on the
pool deck.
Sometimes daily, but lately not at all.
At 14 years old Marin was less than 2 seconds
away from qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the
100yd backstroke.
Now at the age of 16 she is a member of the
Paralympics swim team bound for Beijing.
Doctors found a tumor growing in Marin’s
brain, the second brain surgery saved her life but
left the left side of her body paralyzed and with
what the doctors call “aphasia", an inability to
express clearly the ideas in her head.
Marin swims every day she is able, every
stroke with only the left side of her body, and she
smiles.
She is fighting what people have told her is an
impossible fight, she swims when doctors told her
she would not live to see her 16th birthday .
Today Marin is at the Seattle Children’s
hospital.
She’s been there for weeks and will be there
for quite a while longer.
She aches to get back in the water, she
smiles on the pool deck, and she smiles when you
crack a joke in the Giraffe recovery ward.
Slipping
subtly into my life with no appropriate timing,
Frank and Marin have become my motivation.
They make the simple choice each day to take
what they have and find joy, but make no mistake;
they put up a hell of a fight to do so.
There are things we all dream
of, changes we envision in our lives, ideas and
possibilities others convince us of.
But happiness is not for the past, it is not
something dependant on the future, another person,
an activity or possession it is a personal choice
for the present.
I offer simply to pause for a moment and look
around you, look at the people on the pool deck.
Don’t swim to attain a pace you could hold 5
years ago, don’t run with the discouraging thought
of how fast you should be in six months, but give
100% towards what you’ve got today, and choose to
find happiness there.
Be convinced that each day you fight with
what you have, you get closer to attaining your “Big
Picture”, your dream, your goal.
Remember, happiness is not something you will
discover at the end; happiness is something your
fight for each and every day along the way.
So when you find
yourself dreading that cold dive into the pool, as
many of you agreed you do, when the hot tub or nacho
plate calls your name, when you don’t feel even a
tickle of a smile warming your face, pause a moment
and look around.
Your motivation may be right next to you,
fighting an impossible uphill battle.
You might
find your Frank or your Marin, and you just might
see a fight from the pool deck.
WHAT IS YOUR
MOTIVATION?
By Lara Brown
PART
1 - The Big Picture and Blown Speakers
So the
front, right speaker in my Subaru Outback is blown
out.
I’ve often wondered why one speaker blows out before
the rest, but I guess I’m glad that only one of them
rattles these days.
I have to confess, it wasn’t the crazy nights
bumping around w/ my posse that caused the damage,
it was probably driving to swim practice at 4:45am
on a weekday morning, playing Radiohead much too
loud for the majority of the population.
Getting out of bed is hard, but
not so bad because my favorite part of those
mornings is the drive to the pool, the empty freeway
and even though it’s still dark the birds sing along
giving us false hope of an early northwest summer.
My seat warmer is on, my tea is piping hot
and my music, as previously noted, is for lack of a
better word, loud.
Stripping down to my suit and
walking out to the pool deck is painful, it’s that
sense of cold that creeps under your skin.
The competition (short course meters) pool
was completely empty, and there was no one behind
the blocks to indicate procrastinators intending on
swimming portions of the workout.
No coach either.
My other options are the warm pool (short
course yards and about 10 degrees warmer) or the hot
tub.
Eight weeks out of knee surgery and I hadn’t been in
the hot tub in what seemed like ages.
Hot tubs exist on pool decks for most
swimmers to stare longingly at, or to get verbally
berated by a coach for pretending to stick a toe in.
With no sensible thought of a long warm-up, I
parked it in the hot tub.
For 20min I sat and stared at the clock
watching and hoping no familiar swimmers would walk
out of the locker rooms towards the empty cold pool.
As I sat there I concluded that if no one
showed up I would just go home.
That got me thinking, what
motivates me?
What drives me to get out of bed before our
automatic heater turns on, and jump in a cold pool 6
days a week?
It was about five years ago when determined I
would become a swimmer and started swimming masters,
that’s when I started feeling that awful feeling.
The feeling of diving into cold water before
your body is awake enough to generate its own body
heat.
Just the thought of that moment makes me gag, diving
in and coming up for your first stroke with a chill
that pierces your bones.
Why do I do it?
I like competing.
I like going fast, I like pushing myself as
fast and as hard as I possibly can, and I like the
competition because they push me even harder.
I like the adrenaline rush of cornering full
speed in spikes through a cross country course,
tucking in aero bars down a descent worrying only
about how to get more aero and pass just one more
girl, the shiver that shoots through your entire
body as you realize you do have one more gear with
600meters to go on the track.
If you’ve ever felt your body near 100% at
just the right time, hopefully race day, then you
understand.
If you’ve ever surprised yourself by holding
a pace, finishing strong,
or surrounded by competitors you thought were
way out of your league, you understand.
If you’ve worked months at a sport and one
afternoon realized in the middle of a 60 minute pace
run that you were flying with minimal effort after
dragging your body through months of training, you
understand.
You may ask yourself, what is that feeling
worth?
An entire season of mornings filled w/ gag reflexes,
getting on your bike w/ no energy when everything
else inside of you screams couch and nachos, aqua
jogging because a sunny day run may put your knee
over the edge,…no not a season, numerous seasons.
I think back on my college running career and
think fondly of only one season, my senior year
track season.
Those few races in 2002 were well worth four
years of high altitude training and getting stomped
on repeatedly by much skinnier BYU girls w/
children.
So without completing a novel, I love
competing, but with all that intensity saved up for
race day, how do you keep your focus, where do you
find your motivation in training?
I like to think I’m a good
coach, but I would consider myself my worst athlete
by far.
I go into overload, become short-sighted and wrapped
up in the daily details of training and on certain
days or weeks I lose all sense of motivation.
In this state of overload there are only a
couple people who understand me as an athlete, or as
they otherwise refer to me, “retarded”.
And knowing this I know who will give me a
straight up no BS response to my tightly wound up
lack of composure.
The first one is my husband, who
unfortunately for me, I rarely listen to.
The second is my previous coach and good
friend who after a “freak-out” morning the other day
only told me 4 words,….but mind you he repeated them
about 5 times.
”You are not training!”
I’m rehabbing, that’s right, I’m rehabbing.
Just being reminded of my main objective put
me at ease, set me back straight on my path and
motivated me to take small steps to achieve that
goal.
And once I reach that goal I’ll renew my
motivation with another big picture, maybe it’s a
race date, maybe it’s a time goal, maybe it’s just
the goal of getting back out there and competing,
really competing.
So what is it that motivates
you to achieve your goal?
It could be as simple as feeling fit,
spending time with good friends, kicking a friend in
the pants up a climb (you’d be surprised what a big
motivator this one is), a release from stressors,
winning your age group or making an Olympic team.
The list goes on and on, but motivation is
something only you can find for yourself.
And once you determine what that motivation
is you need someone to really understand that and
hold you accountable.
To understand your big picture so they can
slap you in the face with it when you inevitably go
into overload.
And as much as we would all like to deny it,
self inflicted overload happens more than we
realize, and much too often for our family and
friends to stomach.
Any decent coach or training
partner can hold you accountable to your training
goals, so find those people in your life who will
remind you when you forget, which you will, what
motivates you.
Someone to kick you out of bed at 4:45am when
you’ve hit the snooze button one too many times,
someone to reprimand you for getting down on
yourself because you’ve lost sight of the big
picture, someone to laugh in your face and call you
a gimp during rehab because they understand what it
takes and what you sacrifice to chase your dreams
down a long steep, dusty dirty trail, blown speakers
and all.
The Sun Doesn't Go Down-
The World of Endurance Sports
By Lara Brown
The Flaming Lips put it quite simply:
“Do you realize…
Everyone you know,
someday will die.”
I recently spent a week in the Bay area.
I arrived in San Francisco last Tuesday, just days
after an accident resulting in the death of two well-known
Bay area cyclists.
Kristy Gough, also a professional triathlete, was
killed Sunday, March 9th.
While on a group ride she was struck by a police
cruiser when it crossed the double yellow line and struck
three cyclists, killing two of them.
I attended the memorial with a friend and fellow
professional Kelly Couch and her husband John.
Kelly and I talked for a long time about the shock of losing
someone so quickly, Kristy died doing what she loved doing,
living out her childhood dream.
She was happy, but she was gone in an instant.
I spent some time that week with Paul Lundgren of
Fit2Race who then sent me this video (link attached) of a
man named Randy Pausch.
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw
I won’t summarize Randy’s lecture here, it is well worth the
time if you get a chance to watch it.
Randy is dying of pancreatic cancer and with only
months left to live, he said goodbye to his students at
Carnegie Mellon University with one last lecture.
Randy talks about living out your childhood dreams,
something we all spend time thinking about, and something a
few of us lucky ones have had the opportunity to pursue.
That Sunday afternoon at Kristy Gough’s memorial, Kelly
Couch said something that I will never forget.
“I see myself in Kristy, I will remember her forever
and I will always race with her in my heart”.
I didn’t know Kristy that well, we knew each other
from racing and I spent some time chatting with her after
the Vineman 70.3 race last year.
As a professional triathlete and a superstar cyclist,
Kristy dealt with her own set of challenges.
She was without a doubt talented, but more than that
she was hard working and perseverant.
She never gave up, and even from the short time that
I knew her; she always suffered with a smile.
As Kristy’s mom put it at her memorial “she reveled
in the suffering”.
My 2007 rookie professional year was rattled with health
problems, limiting knee issues, the challenges of
relocating, a new profession, and new teammates.
Coming into my second year as a professional I’m now
faced with an unexpected long rehab from a recent knee
surgery. It can
be so easy to feel overwhelmed, frustrated and defeated.
But then I remember Kristy and the fact that I am
still here to fight for the boundless opportunities that lay
ahead for me.
And if I lose strength to fight for myself, I will fight for
her.
In the world of Endurance sports we become short sighted;
achilles tendonitis, torn meniscus, strained
hamstring, ruptured disc , crazy work schedule, and even a
common cold seems like the end of the world, but in reality
these are challenges.
How we deal with those challenges not only define us
as athletes but as people.
As Randy Pausch reminds us, you can either wallow in
self-pity and bring down those around you, or you can use
that challenge to motivate others and leave a lasting
impression.
I know my knee surgery will not be my last challenge as a
professional athlete, I will have many more after this, and
I find hope in the reality that each challenge ahead
provides me the opportunity to step up, define myself and
affect the lives of those around me.
Life is a temporary thing, it can be gone in an instant.
Kristy reminds us to attack each challenge as if it
was your last and to do it with a smile.
The Flaming Lips take it one step farther to remind
us that life has boundless opportunities, the world will
never stop spinning, life will go on “and instead of saying
all of your goodbyes,
let them know,
you realize that
life goes fast,
it’s hard to make the good things last.
You realize,
the sun doesn’t go
down,
it’s just an illusion,
caused by the world spinning round. “
Lara Brown a native of Portland, Oregon currently resides in
Redmond, Washington. After attending the Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs she served 5 years in the Air
Force. She is presently competing as a professional
triathlete, and works as a freelance writer and marketing
consultant. Feel free to email lara@larabrown.net
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