Competitive Fire

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

You’re granted an “adolescent magic wand” with which you can provide the young adults you know an intense competitiveness or an above average ability to cooperate with others. Which do you choose?

Trick question because they’ll benefit from an intense competitiveness in the world of work and from cooperation-based experiences, knowledge, and skills in their personal lives.

An intense competitiveness will undoubtedly come in handy with the college admissions process, tightening labor markets, and the fluid, knowledge economy that an increasing number of Chinese, east-Indian, and Brazilian young adults are confidently entering.

Rewind to last week’s Narrows League Swim Meet at Foss High School in Tacoma, WA. Two hundred adolescent female swimmers exhibiting differing degrees of competitiveness. The mother and father in front of me sit passively until their daughter enters the water and then they go beserk. Their daughter, one of the top swimmers at the meet, seemingly feeds off their energy.

I’ve got the dad all figured out. Former national water polo player, then extreme fighter, and now UFC executive. He’s stolen my hair cut, but I let it go because I’m a wee bit intimidated by the tats running down his rippled triceps.

Event two for his daughter and I’m in full on eavesdropping mode. Dad is flexing for daughter and she’s eating it up from the behind the block. He air-shouts and she lip-reads, “GO HARD!” She eats it up as if there’s an electric current connecting them. Swims a 25 second 50 free and all I can think is the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

My approach to spectating is more cerebral. I’m in Phil Jackson-mode, sitting quietly focusing more on writing down splits than firing up my daughter. Afterwards, when I get real excited, I flash her a thumbs up sign. Forget electricity, I barely muster a spark.

It must be my fault that my daughters lack competitive fire. But just about then the competitive fire water got muddier.

I’m in the top row of bleachers, leaning against the cinder block wall next to the father of our team’s swimmer of the meet. She won the 50 free, beating rippled triceps daughter in the process, despite having only the fifth fastest qualifying time and she won the 100 breast going away (1:08). Her dad, who I know, stood passively next to me while she swam. Like me, he doesn’t have a bicep to flex. Two egghead peas in a pod, we talk philosophically. Wait a minute, where does his daughter’s intensity come from?

I ask if she’s going to swim in college. “No, we’re discouraging her from doing that it’s such a time-suck.” Mental parenting report card. Two points for separating their egos, minus one for not letting her decide herself.

Maybe competitive fire is like most things in life, part nature, part nurture. Most adolescents are wired like their parent(s) and follow their lead, but not all. What works for each family is different.

Returning to the magic wand, being comfortable with competition is important, but of course there’s a point of diminishing returns. We all know people whose competitive nature gets the best of them.

Once a young person gets into college, and once they take a job, cooperation-based experiences, knowledge, and skills are more integral to their success. Not just their workplace success, but their happiness in life more generally. Which begs the question, why aren’t we more intentional about teaching young people how to cooperate with one another?

One Size Fits None

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

A warm welcome to DCRainmaker readers who are pouring in as a result of Ray linking to my recent “Where’s the Romance?” post. My most read post of all time, by a considerable margin, is one titled “School Mission Statements”. Do a Google search for “school mission statements” and it’s the fourth link, but whose counting? Ray gets 6,000 hits a day, a little more than me. If yesterday’s record uptick in readership continues for very long, “Where’s the Romance?” may give “School Mission Statements” a run for its money.

Now back to regular programming.

Read an interesting swimming article recently that detailed the different mindset of sprinters. Even elite Olympic caliber sprinters don’t like training and get bored extremely quickly. (Was that the rare double adverb? Is that legal? Shouldn’t I know that?) The ability to adapt to differences and individualize one’s coaching, teaching, campaigning, and sales pitches often distinguishes swim coaches, teachers, politicians, and salespeople as particularly excellent.

In teaching it’s referred to as curriculum differentiation. Curriculum differentiation occurs when a teacher adjusts his/her lesson plan so that it meets the needs of all students.

Amazingly, nearly all of the car salespeople I’ve interacted with seem to be reading from the same script. None of them have successfully read me. If they had, they’d bypass the small talk about what I do for a living and my family which I can’t stand and focus exclusively on the car’s features (which they often are unable to do very well).

The high school coach that I help and I sometimes get frustrated with some girls that don’t practice very hard. They sleep-swim, stop to adjust caps and goggles, stretch their shoulders, go to the bathroom during main sets, and in some cases miss practice altogether. But now that I think about it, they tend to be the sprinters. Their natural tendencies and our workouts are misaligned. They’ll probably never embrace the process, or the long, sometimes monotonous and always tiring rhythms of distance training.

If I’m ever a head coach, I think I’ll design three different workouts—a sprint one, a distance one, and a distance-lite one. The sprint workout, which will emphasize intensity and variety, will last about 60% as long as the others. Instead of coasting for ninety minutes, they’ll go real hard for 50 minutes.

Training the Mind

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Regretfully, only now that I am an over the hill marathoner do I realize I have not been intentional enough about training my mind for race day. I suspect there are as many ways to train one’s mind as there are successful endurance athletes, but I’m most in tune with three strategies.

The first, and probably best known and most commonly practiced, is visualization. I dabble with this. Last Saturday, I told Dano at mile 14, “We’re exiting Seward Park (the 14 mile mark in the Seattle Marathon).”

The second entails repeating short positive phrases like “smooth and strong”, “steady strength”, or “fluid motion”. Often though, another tape bleeds into that one, one that sounds like this, “Where the hell’s the mile marker?! Who moved the mile marker?!” “Is this pace sustainable?” And “Is that the hammie about to go?”

The third involves finding inspiration from harder core athletes like Terry Fox, Lynne Cox (Swimming to Antartica), Dave Gordon (still awaiting his book), and Joanie.

If you’re Canadian you know all about Terry Fox. If you’re not, do yourself a huge favor and watch this film.

Lately, Joanie has been in the news. From a recent New York Times profile:

Perhaps running best suited her Yankee upbringing of thrift and individualism in Maine, nothing needed beyond a pair of shoes and an open road. That is how she won the Olympics, running fast and alone.

See for yourself in this four minute clip. Start about 50 seconds in. Her transcendental focus in the 1:20-1:37 segment is mesmerizing. Filing away that image for my run into Memorial Stadium.

As I was circling the Olympia High track in the pitch black one recent morn, I was thinking something similar. The beauty of running is how primitive it is. Especially when compared to cycling. The perfect sport for a minimalist.

Read about Joan’s Chicago Marathon triumph here. Excerpt. “Did I think I was going to be back here running competitively, trying to get an Olympic marathon trials qualifying time 25 years later?” Samuelson asked. “Heck no. But it’s the passion that still burns, the challenge to see how fast I can go.”

The passion still burns. . . and inspires.

Running on the Edge

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Missed my fitness-related posts? My sister says nobody cares, but she thought the Cubs were winning a pennant this year. My sister aside, I’m proceeding as if everyone cares. :)

This is the first summer in a decade I didn’t race in a single triathlon. I was supposed to race (on two wheels) up Mount Baker a few weeks ago, but passed after receiving an early race morning email about extreme conditions and a course change. And I was thinking about doing the Hood River Gran Fondo (100 mile bike race) today, but pulled the plug on the cycling season earlier in the month so bagged that too. I should quit calling myself a triathlete. Is it ethical to continue wearing my Timex Ironman watch?

A running friend extraordinaire annually comps me admission to the Seattle Half or Full marathon the Sunday after Thanksgiving. His website advertises it and so they give him a bunch of pre-paid entries. Most years I run the half, which I really enjoy, but this year I signed up for the full since I haven’t gone long for two years. Everyone should do a marathon every other year, don’t you think?

Enter Dan, Dan, the long distance Man. Dan lives down the street and we train together. He’s of Midwestern stock and a stud, but he gets a little loopy when talking about supplements. We ran the Portland Marathon together two years ago. I was having GI issues at mile 21 and told him I was heading into a PortaPit. “Want me to wait?” “No, go ahead, I don’t want to slow you down.” Sixty to ninety seconds later, with my new and improved plumbing, I started chasing after him. SO frustrating, I could see him, but couldn’t close the gap since he was chasing a woman in a yellow bikini. He finished exactly one PortaPit stop ahead of me and I continue to give him grief for refusing to wait for me.

I don’t think Dan wants to race Seattle with me, but he does want to keep me company on my Saturday long runs. We ran 16 miles Saturday. He didn’t know I was marathon training. I explained I had just decided and that the Seattle race peeps allow you to switch from one race to the other up until race morning.

I’m getting a late start, so I’m kicking up my mileage faster than you’re supposed to. The general rule is no more than a 10% increase in mileage per week. I’ve increased it 20% the last two.

Dano, or the Supplement, or the Malamute, is convinced I’m going to injure myself. He thinks I should be running no more than four days a week, five at the most. I’m running six. Two years ago in Portland I ran well for 20 miles and then faded over the last 10k. Just looked at my late summer/early fall 08′ training log and my mileage was surprisingly modest, 35-45/week. This time I’m going all in with increased mileage with the goal of maintaining my pace through the last 10k. One problem. Miles 20-23 in Seattle are damn hilly. So not only am I increasing my mileage too quickly, I’m getting after it, doing one track and one hill workout weekly too. I almost felt a micro-tear in my calf as I typed that.

I told Dano that if he’s right and gets to say “I told you so” I’ll take 10 days off and run the half. No big deal. Saturday’s run started and ended at the “Y” because I had a massage scheduled for right afterwards. Sunday was a true Sabbath. Today, nine weeks from blast off, I feel (almost) as good as new.

In my next life, I hope to be married to a masseuse.

One Less Car

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

As I suspected, I didn’t make it twenty years and 200,000 miles. Sold the 1993 Camry wagon last week. Kelly’s Blue Book and Edmunds had it valued at around $1k which is sad considering I’m considering buying a bike frame for $2k. I sold it for $2,500 because of the $1,500 “The Positive Momentum blogger used to drive this” premium. Annual car insurance premium dropped $500. I was spending $1k/year on repairs. In 12 months we’ll have an extra $4,000. Past that point, we’ll pocket at minimum an extra $1,500/year in savings. At minimum because the three or four of us will drive slightly fewer total number of miles in cars that get better mileage (and as bonus, are on average, more safe).

Maybe one of the most vexing questions of 2010 is how does one meet daily expenses, save for children’s college education, and save for retirement when wages are flat? Economists report that it costs just over $200k to raise a child for eighteen years. Social security will be delayed and reduced. Medicare will cost more. Taxes will increase. The few people with pensions will see companies renege on promises and reduce benefits. Today, $100,000 in savings might generate $4,000 in investment income.

It’s easy to gain weight and fall into debt fast, but it takes decades to get physically and financially fit. A frustrating paradox. The question is whether you earn more dollars each week, month, or year than you spend on average.

I’ve written before about how financial journalists and pundits focus far too narrowly on the perfect investment strategy and not nearly enough on defense or reducing overhead. One of the best ways to reduce overhead and one of the quickest ways to balance a personal financial budget, is to figure out how to live with one less car.

Tammy Strobel, is a Portland, Oregon based blogger who has published an electronic book on how to live completely car-free. I’m not there, but appreciate the challenge. Note that one of her chapters is titled “Saving $8,000 a Year”.

Make Parents Accountable for Children’s Fitness

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

More positive impacts of aerobic activity. Wish I had a dollar for everyone of these types of articles I’ve read recently. Key paragraph from a NYT blog titled “Can Exercise Makes Kids Smarter?” “. . . the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit may ‘enhance neurocognition’ in young people.”

Later in the post the blogger references research that claims 25% of school-aged children are sedentary. The conventional conclusion, recommit to physical education in schools. Before doing that, it’s important to ask who should be accountable for K-12 students’ relative fitness, their teachers or their parents and guardians? Recommitting to physical education in schools assumes it’s their teachers, but I assume two things: 1) public school teachers are being held accountable for far too many non-acacademic social/economic/health-related problems and 2) parents or guardians should be held most accountable for their children’s relative fitness.

Consequently, I propose doing away with traditional team-sport based physical education in elementary, middle, and high schools and in its place breaking up the school day with two or three ten minute-long calisthenic/walking/yoga breaks. In addition, I propose mothballing every school bus in urban and suburban districts and banning parents and guardians from driving their able-bodied students to school. Similarly, I propose banning urban and suburban high school students from driving to school. Under my proposal, every able-bodied urban/suburban K-12 student will have to walk or ride bicycles to school every day.

The protests will take the following forms: 1) it’s too far and will take too long; 2) at times throughout the year it’s far too cold, dark, and wet; 3) the neighborhoods we’d have to walk/bike through aren’t safe enough; 4) it violates freedom of choice.

In order. 1) Move closer or enroll your child in your neighborhood school. My tenth grade daughter lives 1.75 miles from her locker. Most people can walk 16 minutes/mile, so in her case it would take approximately 28 minutes to walk to school or about 15 more than in a car given the before school traffic jam on the streets and in the school lot. She’d have to go to bed 15-20 minutes early which is tragic because she’d probably miss “SuperNanny.” So it’s an extra 30 minutes a day, but not really since I’ve eliminated physical education. In actuality, she saves 25 minutes a day. If she rides her bike at a comfortable 12mph, she’d reduce her commute to about the same time as a car. I can hear her, “What about my gargantuan textbooks and violin?” “Get an iPad and I didn’t hear you practice last night.”

2) Inevitably, parents/guardians would have to walk with young children which would create community and also contribute to their fitness. And a little physical toughness would be a very good thing.

3) This might be just the impetus to make them safer. It’s illogical for some to claim we’re the “greatest country in the world” if some of our neighborhoods aren’t safe enough to walk through. Again, groups of parents taking turns escorting children in the mornings and afternoons would most likely have a very positive ripple effect on the safety of dicey neighborhoods.

4) True, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Consider not just the health benefits, but the economic ones. Imagine what school districts could do with their transportation savings. Reduce property taxes, offer more extracurriculars, reduce class size, update their technology tools.

To make my proposal more pragmatic I propose letting any student (and all bass players) that can verify that they’re getting at least 30 minutes of cardiovascular activity a day (through after school sports or independent play that a coach or non-parent/guardian adult can vouch for) opt out. Ideally, this will lead to swimming, cross country, and other teams being overwhelmed by new students turning out, which in turn will require districts to devote some of their transportation savings to these activities. It may also provide coaching opportunities for the displaced physical education teachers, the only real losers in my proposal.

Or parents and other citizens can keep blaming teachers for problems mostly outside of their control.

Mailbag

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Whad’ up in FL? Mother Dear isn’t getting any younger. Love her a tad bit more than I hate flying. Just hangin’ with her. Helping her with her new iMac, swapping stories from the last several months, even accompanied her to Ybor City for the Saturday morning Cuban coffee/toast confab with the girlfriends. And there’s no (provable) truth to the rumor that I timed this trip to overlap with the Cal Lutheran college roommate reunion at the crib.

Where are the fitness updates? Stopped moving? Nah, still moving. Weird summer in that regard. One week, no teaching, getting every work out in, pushups, stretching, planking, solid 12-15 hours of swimming, running, cycling. Next week, full-time teaching, missing some workouts (no bike in Eastern WA), cutting others short. So not enough of a rhythm. Zero races and I’m skipping our local triathlon breaking my nine year streak. A couple of new events on the calendar over the next six weeks. Average swimming/running shape, slightly above average cycling shape. Getting soft(er). Niece asked me if I wanted to work out with her today at 1p. Heat index north of 100. I politely declined.

Starting college in a few weeks, top three suggestions? 1) There are power outages, dropped internet connections, empty printer cartridges. Never leave printing until the morning something is due. Even if it’s 2 a.m. the “night” before, print all final drafts before going to bed. You’ll sleep better and “tech glitch” excuses are tired. 2) Backwards plan. Who are you going to get to write recommendations to grad school or other post-grad first steps? Go to office hours with genuine questions about the course content and/or your work in the course and get to know at least one prof a quarter/semester. 3) Study abroad. Bonus suggestion: call or (even better) email your dad regularly.

Best blog discovery of recent weeks? The best five books on everything.

Nature Day

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

When was the last time you were intentional about spending time in nature?

I live only two hours from one of the world’s most beautiful mountains, but don’t visit it often enough. And usually when I do, I’m working too hard on two wheels to truly enjoy it. It’s trippy driving through the Paradise parking lot and looking at license plates from all over the country. Its proximity probably contributes to my taking it for granted.

Amazingly, the sky and hija’s social calendars opened up last Thursday, so the four of us spent the bulk of the day hiking to Bench and Snow Lakes from the Stevens Canyon trailhead. Highly recommended. Spotty snow through the first mile and solid snow the final 400 meters. One daughter with a 3.9 g.p.a. wore sandals which proves good grades and common sense are not inextricably linked.

At one point I found myself 30 meters behind the galpal. I fired three snowballs at her and each landed right between her shoulder blades. My mad John Elway, Will Ferrel Elf-like snowball skills never cease to amaze me.

One half of the family makes A LOT of noise when they hike. Wonder if anyone at Saturday Night Live would be interested in a “Loud Hiking Family” sketch?

After lunch at Snow Lake and the hike back out, we visited the nice, new Visitors’ Center. The 20m long movie was excellent.

Do yourself a favor, unplug and make time for nature this summer.

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