The Fast Lane On The Right

In the fast lane on the right

I quit my triathlon team about once a week.  Sometimes twice.  I have perfectly reasonable reasons to do so.  I work, I have children, I now have a blog and triathlon training takes a serious amount of time and commitment.   I have the words I will tell my coach and this is it: I am tired, I am cranky, my kids deserve better, I quit.  Except that this all happens between my ears, in my mind.  My husband will sometimes hear it but pays no attention to it.  He “hears” it but does not listen – after all, of the hundreds of times I have told him I am quitting it hasn’t happened yet.  Chances are that it won’t happen this time either.


Triathlons means I need to train in three sports: swim, bike and run.  For swim practice my team meets on Mondays and Fridays at a public pool nearby.  We are divided into lanes, and contrary to driving, the faster you are the further to the right you go.  So the fastest lane is on the right side of the pool.  I am not sure this is universal in swimming but that is how it works for us.  Somehow or another I have made it to the right lane.  I wasn’t there before – it was one of my teammates that almost literally threw me into it.  And to make matters worse, I don’t keep up with the rest of my “lane mates”.  These are fast swimmers with nicknames such as “Iron Beto”, “kicktastic Julie”, and Mickey who doesn’t even need an intimidating nickname.  She just rocks.  In true team spirit though, they push me to go faster than I have ever gone before.

Yellow cap in the middle of the pool

Every Monday, or so it seems, if I am not quitting the team I am at least getting out of the fast lane.  I go determined to move over to the left at least one lane.  I have perfectly reasonable reasons to do so: I didn’t sleep well, my cat woke me up, I did my long swim over the weekend, I don’t want to start the week feeling tired. And again, all this happens between my ears.  When I get to the pool usually right on time at 5:59am I am told “Cris, lane 1”.  I sigh. And I dutifully walk to the right lane and jump in.

My mind is a terrible neighborhood to walk around by myself.  It can take me in all kinds of directions and distort whatever I see. I think reality, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  What is “real” is tainted by who sees it.  What I find appalling someone might find normal.  I thought it was appalling to eat at a table with your hands, and then I learned living in Morocco to use only my right hand when I ate exquisite meals sitting down at a fancy restaurant.  I have learned that many of the things I judge I end up doing.  I judge a parent yelling at a child, and then turn around and yell at mine.  I used to say I would never use a TV as an electronic babysitter and guess what my kids are doing right now?  I see God’s sense of humor.

I used to judge a lot more before.  I’ve grown up a little.   I used to be afraid that you didn’t think I was smart enough so I would put someone down to make me feel smarter.  Or funnier. Or wiser. You get the picture.  I didn’t realize I was doing this.  I was judging out of fear.

Triathlon training helps keep me humble.  I only compete against myself as most of my team is faster than I am in all three sports.  So when I quit my team in my head I have to look at myself.  What is it that I am afraid of?  Not keeping up? Being late for school? Feeling tired in the afternoon? Losing my patience with the boys at dinnertime? Dropping one of the many balls I juggle? 

But as soon as I get out of my head, as soon as I show up at that swimming pool on Monday morning I am gratefully no longer alone.  Something comes over me and I just focus at the task at hand and swim on Mondays, bike on Tuesdays, run on Wednesdays and so forth every day of the week.   Once I chit chat with another human being at an ungodly early hour who is probably on the same boat as I am, I no longer regret not quitting.  I realize that I am where I need to be.

I need to push myself and sometimes fail. I need to know that if too many strong swimmers show up one morning, I am the first one to be bumped to the left.  But if I get to the pool and am indeed sent to the fast lane on the right, I go there.  And if someone else judges me because I am too slow to be on the fast lane it may just be that they are too scared to try to get there themselves.

Tri2One at the pool

And so it is with life.  Woody Allen said “90% of life is just showing up.”  I am not a huge fan but I am beginning to think he was right on this one.  I just need to physically make it to where I have to be.  I have to let go of the fears, of the insecurities, of the tiredness or laziness and just go.   Because really … there is no doubt I AM going to drop the ball once in a while regardless of what I do.  It would be unrealistic and indeed arrogant to think otherwise.  So why not just show up?  That sounds easy enough.  This morning I showed up at the pool and decided to continue training.   If too many balls come down at once then I can revisit and quit again … next week.

The Censor And The Sea

"My" long swim beach

Some people enjoy long runs.  I don’t.  I enjoy long swims.  Fortunately for me I live on a beach and get to swim back and forth from ocean post to ocean post for a couple of miles each weekend.  Sometimes I swim twice in a weekend. I don’t get bored.  I hear my breath.  I look at the fish.  I search for stuff in the sea grass bed below me.  There is a sense of oneness with nature.  Of peace. Of calm.  And I love it. It is swimming that I find my voice, I work out situations, I meditate and I “write” my blog posts or at least  I come up with a story to tell. 

Today I thought about my grandmother Daisy, now 94, who has written on her journal every single day since she was fifteen years old.  When she left Cuba, her diaries where the one thing she made sure she got out.  To my knowledge she has never let anyone read them.  As she explains it, she writes events as she sees it at the moment, and at some moments she may be upset at someone and she wants to feel the liberty of writing about it.  She would feel bad if years later, someone read something they didn’t like or agree with and get upset.  She is afraid of what others might think of her given what she wrote.  But imagine, a whole lifetime is documented every single day.  World wars, civil wars, births, deaths, and family dramas all documented through the eyes of a single person.  She says she wants her diaries burned once she passes away.  I sincerely doubt anyone will let that happen.  Daisy censors herself.

I began blogging because I love writing and hadn’t done it in a long time.  I thought I wanted to get back to it and if I made a “public” commitment to writing then the chances of my keeping it up would be greater than if my stories stayed private.  Putting up the first post was interesting.  I was concerned about what someone out there would think.  I thought “I can’t write about this or that because so and so will think something or other”.  I was afraid of hurting someone and of being judged.  My husband Joe encourages me.  He wisely reminds me there will always be people out there that won’t like me or what I write regardless of what I do.  There will always be critics.  So what?  There will always be people that I don’t like nor do I like what they write.  I am also a critic:  one with nothing to hide.  I let go of much of that initial fear and while swimming I discovered a list of fun stories to share.   Mostly about how my experiences in my youth, and the many mistakes that came with it, has helped me become who I am today.  How the past shapes the future.  How I unconsciously try to either relive or run away from the past.  Deep, literary genius stuff.

So when someone who cares about me suggested I think twice about what I write I got stumped.  After all, this person pointed out, I am a teacher in a small community and still represent the school … even if in my blog.  Let’s say I write about something crazy I did in high school. We have all done at least one crazy thing in high school, but a parent at my school might read it and judge “how can someone like that be teaching children, especially at a Christian school”.  I get it.  I understand.  But I don’t like it.  As I began talking more about this I heard teachers at the public school cannot have Facebook pages, or colleges see kids Facebook pages and that influences admissions, and even employers asking for Facebook passwords from potential employees to see what is behind the private settings.  What the heck!  (notice my constraint in that exclamation!) That is crazy.  But from what I understand it really does happen. 

Now all of a sudden, that super funny story about when my sister Bia and I were backpacking in Europe during the summer of 1990 … is no longer suitable for my blog.  Or that one, or that other one, because to be on the safe side I have to stick to parenting stories.  I can’t go wrong with that.  And although I love my children more than anything, there is more to me than being a mom.  Or let’s say, the mom I am today is shaped by a whole slew of stories that someone else may deem inappropriate.  My mistakes and mishaps were mine and I learned from them.  To pretend I am a holier than thou seems fake, and if I have to be fake then I might as well write fiction.  Not that there is anything wrong with fiction, it’s just not what I wanted to do when I started my humble blog.  Or to be private and safe, I could write a journal, like my grandmother.  I could even write under a pseudonym to be private since then no one would read it at all given that most of my readers are my friends. 

So I am stuck.  Stuck because there are people out there who judge others instead of looking at themselves.  Because it is easier to see how someone is unfit to do something whether it is going to college, getting a job, or being a teacher, instead of looking at what really causes their upset.  Because someone’s moral standards might be so high that no one, at least no one who is honest with themselves and with the world, will ever be able to meet them.

And for the hour and a half that I swam this morning looking at the ocean floor I thought of tons of anecdotes and am not able to write about any of them.  Sure I will be able to write them later … I could probably figure out a politically correct way of telling the same story with less details.  Yet for today, the story that kept creeping into my thoughts as I blew bubbles underwater is the one I am writing now. This one, about the lack of a more appropriate one.

With Felipe after today's long swim

The Bike In The Kitchen

My blue road bike sits nicely against a sliding glass door of our already cluttered kitchen.  Penelope’s cat food and water bowl lay between the front wheel and the pedals.  Now-a-days there is reason to believe my bike is clutter: it is rarely used and occupies space in a place where more space is needed.

It wasn’t always that way.  I bought my bike in June 2010 right before my first triathlon.  Prior to that I had been sitting on the couch for 6 years. I bought it used for $300 at Key Cycling, my local bike store. Here I was thinking I had made a “ginaourmous” (in my son’s language) investment, and little did I know what I was getting myself into.

It’s a running joke that I asked the owner, Sergio, if I could put a little basket in the front as I still did not have a regular bike to ride around the island.  Yes, I live in an island paradise where we get around on bikes, golf carts and minivans.  He said “no” in an “are you seriously asking me this?” kind of tone.  Okay.  I did not know what I was getting into.

I was terrified.  The bike seemed so light, so thin, so …. wobbly.  My feet were going to be bound to the pedals so that I could go faster, I was going to have to ride up Mount Miami (aka the William Powell Bridge linking Miami to Key Biscayne) and if I wobbled then, I would fall because my feet were going to be *gasp* bound to the pedals.  It was quite funny, in a pathetic way, the first time I rode it.  I fell three times, all of them in the middle of some major intersection where half of Key Biscayne (the half I know, of course) saw me. 

So race day came and off we went.   Nothing went wrong.  On the contrary, everything went great and I was hooked.

Since then my bike and I have been through a lot.  12 triathlons in 2 years from sprints (.5 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run) to a half ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13 mile run).  I did it all with my blue faithful used road bike.  There were two things I loved most about training on my bike.  One was riding on a 3 mile loop we call Virginia Key in the pre-dawn hours.  There were few, if any, cars.   I felt the wind, heard the birds, and embodied the quiet.  It was perfect peace.  It was my alone time with the universe and it gave me all the energy I needed to get through the busy day ahead. I also loved riding my bike over the Powell bridge at sunrise and see how the sun would begin to light up the Miami skyline.  It was powerfully beautiful.

But my bike was always difficult.  My teammates and competitors fly by me with their $1500+, light as a feather, perfectly fitted bike.  In comparison, I am riding a heavily armored tank.  To give them credit, my teammates physical abilities are indeed stronger but I can only keep up with them for about 5 minutes.  As soon as we start heading up the Powell bridge (and that is 5 minutes into the training) I am left in the dust.  As my coach points out my bike needs to be upgraded.  I agree.  I understand but I can’t justify the expense.  Truthfully though, neither the speed nor the price tag are the reasons my bike is now clutter. 

The reason is this guy:

 

His name is Aaron Cohen.  I never met him.   He was riding on the Powell bridge, at the time I am usually there, in the pre-dawn spectacular hour I described before.  The time I enjoyed most in one of the places I found peace.  That is where he was hit by a drunken driver who then fled the scene.  Aaron died of brain injuries the next day.  This happened on a Wednesday.  Had it been a Tuesday or a Thursday, the days I ride, this could’ve been me.

There was another fatal accident on the Key Biscayne causeway a couple of years ago.  This was before I started riding.  It was another drunken hit and run of another father of two young children.

Both drivers, both hit and run drivers, live in the same building in the Key: my building.  Well mine before I got married.  The one my parents have lived in for over 20 years.  The building I go to at least once a week.

So in a weird, bizarre, self centered way, I somehow connect all this to me.  Some karma, some way of God telling me “don’t do it, riding is not safe.  You have too much to lose.”

There is this story of a man who had faith and a hurricane came.  I am sure someone can tell it better but the basic premise is this: there was a big flood and the police came around helping people evacuate.  The man told the police he was a man of faith, he would be ok.  The water rose and he sat on the second floor of his house.  A boat came to rescue him and he said, “no thanks, I am a man of faith”.  The water rose some more and he sat on the roof of his house and a helicopter came to rescue him.  He said, “no thanks, I am a man of faith”.  And he eventually drowned.  When the man got to heaven he asked God “what happened? I thought I was a good man, one of faith and you let me die”.  God answered: “I sent you a police escort, a boat, and a helicopter but you weren’t willing to listen”.

No real changes have been made to make cycling safer.  No one is really enforcing more accountability for both drivers and cyclists (because if you are from down here you are well aware of a polarized, hateful squabble between drivers and cyclists).  Cycling activists are doing all they can but change will be slow.  There is a whole lot of work to be done here.  And in the meantime, my bike is collecting dust because I promised my family I wouldn’t ride until change came and it were safer. 

So now I am a driver, and when I drive by the cyclists I look out my window and long to be there, riding.  I want to yell out “hey!  I am one of you too!  I am in a car now but I did ride once!”.  And then I look at the rear view mirror and see my two boys ages 4 and 6.  They are either singing, smiling, or more frequently fighting. But for a moment they take my breath away because the love I have for them is overpowering, so incomprehensible.  I think of the two fallen dads and their kids and my eyes fill with tears.  I don’t want to miss a second of my boy’s life and I don’t want anyone but me to be their mother.  Is riding my bike that important to me?  Is the risk really worth it?  It’s not like I have been a triathlete my whole life, and I do have a crappy bike anyways.  Then I don’t envy those cyclists on the road so much anymore because I have too much to live for.  I can find another way to exercise and I can find another way to find my peace.  And all of a sudden the bike in the kitchen turns more into a trophy, than clutter.  A sign of past challenges conquered.

I do still however, have this nagging inside of me that one day, one day, maybe I could do an Ironman triathlon.  But to do so would entail some riding.  Not just a a little riding but some serious mileage.  The Ironman distance is 2.5miles swim, 116 miles bike, 26.2 mile run.  Unfathomable right now.  But I know the impossible can become possible so who knows.

A type of moment I am not willing to miss

So today I am looking for an indoor bike trainer.  This thing that holds your own bike so you can train inside on the same bike you race.  Its one of those “if you don’t go to the mountain, the mountain comes to you” solutions.   I will be able to at least maintain what I have gained over the past two years of riding my good ole’ blue.  And if all this were to pass, my bike would no longer sit against the sliding glass door in the kitchen.  It would be nicely mounted on the trainer ready to do some spinning probably next to my boys watching TV.  And I will be grateful.