Holy Smokes!

Today I got a call from the head of the USA swimming delegation for the 2013 Maccabi Games (kinda like the Jewish Olympics, only no one knows about it unless you read really small print every four years). He said, "Hi Coach," which is what old guys usually say to me because they can't remember my name. But because he wasn't an old guy, what he was really saying was YOU WIN THE FREAKIN PRIZE, as he congratulated me for being named to the coaching staff of team USA.

Whoa. That's pretty much the biggest accomplishment I've ever received in my career. I've had a pretty good year, having my MEMO team do well at the Pacific Masters Championship; being selected to speak in the 2012 Pacific Coaches Clinic; and being named as one of the All Star Coaches at this summer's Western Zone Championships in Grand Junction, Colorado. But this is international -- wearing the gear, walking in the opening ceremonies, hearing "U-S-A, U-S-A," and coaching some really fast folks.

Okay, it would help if I'd ever dreamed about this. It's not the same as my day job where I remind people to keep their "eyes on the sky" in backstroke. The only time I've ever been named Coach of the Year was in 2006 on a display plaque at the local trophy store. They needed to show off their new eco-friendly sustainable wood model and so I suggested my name. It really wasn't a tough sell, as it was going to be either John Smith or Bud Weiser.

I've toiled in the trenches for 20 years, and am still amazed that anyone picked me. Usually coaches are named to big teams when they have lots of their own athletes qualify for that same meet. Someone works with kids for 12 years, getting them from DQing every race to Top 10 in their age group; then that kid goes to college and improves the same percentage that everyone else there does - and the college coach has rose petals thrown at her feet as she flies off to the Olympics. The developmental coaches (we have a name now) are pretty much forgotten, and are generally considered to be inferior. Granted, the high-achieving athletes are high maintenance. But at least they know what an interval is and how to read (not to mention actually see) the clock. I am on my 15 millionth time (next Thursday) of saying "streamline."

But, lest anyone think I want that, I've got to say that this is the place for me. This is the job that I was made for. I've coached a high-powered high school team for five years and was consumed by their training and their problems, both in the water and out. I assisted at San Francisco State for five years, refereeing so many personnel battles that I could get a great job with the WWF. In my years coaching the women at Laney College I've coached workouts with only two people and then had to seperate them because one had stolen the other's boyfriend. But I've found my niche in Oakland. I've found my team with MEMO. But it's great to get out once in awhile.

Meet Me at the Meet

Yesterday was the final day of the Pacific Masters Short Course Championships,held in Moraga at Campolindo High School. Campo is just your typical high school -- with a 50 meter pool, two extra 8-lane pools, a riding stable, and manicured fields that look like the cover of Turf Illustrated.

I had 11 swimmers entered in the meet, along with four extras that just swam relays. We also had a nice entourage that included two swimmers that I currently train (or train occasionally) who are registered on other teams, two spouses, a curious but dry teammate, and six kids.

My team, MEMO, ended up 11th in the Medium Team division. When having 11 registered swimmers makes you "medium" I think our organization needs to do a little more advertising. But we did score a lot of points, which means that we were competitive even among the large teams. The high point of the meet, besides picking our MEMO team colors (brown and turquoise -- now working out a big deal for replica jerseys) was watching the thrill of several swimmers participating in their first-ever meet.

Thrill may be too strong a word for some. Terror (pre-swim) and Relief/Coach Hatred (post-swim) might be more appropriate. Several of my old hands really love swimming in competitions, but by the large number of people who resisted my persistent pleas for signing up for the meet, not all people do.

I'm one of those people who just LOVE competing. I have personal best times for all my swim events, of course, but also the "run" (see previous blog) around Lake Merritt, and the drives to all points in the Bay Area. I even know my workout bests, my workouts when I'm out of shape, workouts when I have my orange suit instead of the black one, workouts when the pool is under 80 degrees/over 80 degrees, workouts with an illness, and workouts after 1 p.m. I also have a PB for writing this blog, which will not be broken today due to its low quality and the many distractions outside the window.

And yet despite all the things I measure, it's really the meets that keep me going. When I don't have a short-term goal it's hard to motivate myself to get in the water. When the Masters World Championships were in the Bay Area I never missed a day of training, as with the Masters Nationals we traveled to in 2007. But I'm more content these days to spectate at my daughter's goals. When she heads off to college in two more years (pause for uncontrollable crying), I'm sure I'll find something.

And so I'm more than satisfied watching my novices conquer their fears and get up on the blocks, and seeing my veterans' pride when they do everything they've been working on and it comes up great. It's not easy standing up there on the starting blocks, all alone, with all eyes watching you. The quiet before the starting beep is so thick with anticipation that the only relief is how way too short it is. Then those novices fling themselves into the water (so cute -- kind of like a dive, but not exactly) and churn off. All the other MEMOs are at the turn end of the pool cheering them on, and every one of the new swimmers weakly raised a triumphant arm after their big race.

In my daughter's meets, the mainly lunatic parents are at the other end screaming at the top of their lungs giving pathetically technical advice to kids that aren't listening at all. At Masters meets, the spectator swimmers are all positive screamers at the other end, with no idea what advice to give. It's much nicer. Even cuter are the kids who yell "go daddy" and aren't affiliated with the Internet domain registrar.

And now that this meet is done for the year, we all have great memories to look back on. The swim meet Swimmer's High is even bigger and more satisfying than the workout Swimmer's High. If we could just work on those dives a little more.

Running into a little trouble

I pretty much suck at running.

You'd think someone with knees that are virtually fresh out of the box (having avoided jogging since high school gym class), and someone who can swim laps of Shadow Cliffs Reservoir would at least be an average runner. But today, at lovely Lake Merritt in the heart of downtown Oakland (cue sirens, helicopters, and distant gunfire), I saw my shadow and it wasn't pretty.

Oh yes, I can pass all the people walking, but getting passed by really slow runners is a little depressing. I do have small triumphs, as when I am able to overtake elderly Chinese men wearing Dockers. But today an elderly Chinese man wearing denim shorts and crew socks blew by me like I was in a lane next to Michael Phelps. But at least I passed the guy doing tai chi.

I run because I'm so bad at it that it's a great way for me to lose weight. Swimming is so easy for me that I have to train really hard for a really long time to burn any calories, and there aren't many days that I have the time to do that. But a lap around the lake, even with periods of walking, is an easy way to get things done. It's just . . . I hate to look so bad.

I'm working on an idea for a t-shirt that says something like "I look much better when I'm swimming." That would empower me, I think.

I try to always wear swimming t-shirts (of which I have like 1.5 million), so that people can infer that I'm really an awesome athlete that is doing something else with her free time. I can only run on dry days because then I'd have to wear a rain jacket that would cover up my swimming t-shirt. And I can't run on really hot or cold days because wearing dryfit-type clothing would say to the world that I buy this kind of gear because I run in all conditions -- which is so far from the truth I just pulled my hammy.

The alternative is to throw sartorial caution to the wind (not that I feel much of a breeze), and hop on the treadmill at home. Overcoming the George Jetson vision of looping around and around till my husband arrives home from work to turn it off, I manage to climb aboard occasionally. But, dang, it's boring. I know people actually say that about swimming -- but they're just so wrong.

Swimming is the real deal. And it's what I look good at. Trust me.

Go the Distance!

My daughter is in Colorado Springs for four days, at the US Olympic Training Center, for "Distance Camp." This is a couple dozen kids from all over Pacific Swimming (Northern California and Nevada) who "like" the distance events (that may be too strong a word) and do well in those events. The sprinters do the 500 free, and the specialties move up to the 1000, 1650 and 5K/10K, with the 400 IM thrown in just for fun.

The workload is completely insane, with four different coaches supervising. Each workout the

coaches get into a virtual muscle-flexing contest (HA -- as though coaches still have muscles!), trying to make the workouts even more challenging than the last one. And at 6,000 feet elevation, that puts some serious hurt on the swimmers. The picture at right is of swimmers leaving the pool after their last workout.

The kids stay in the USOTC dorms, eat at the fabulous cafeteria (where the cooks are no doubt selected for their ability to remain calm as they read recipes that begin "take 24 dozen eggs . . ."), and mingle with the amazing athletes there from all over the country who are using the facility's other venues. There are fencers, triathletes, gymnasts, weightlifters, pentathletes, shooters, wrestlers, track and field, and various paralympians milling around, some in residence there. I'm sure there are some pretty ferocious card games at night.

My child-free four days was almost the complete opposite of what she's doing right now, except for the eating in bulk. I swam for half an hour (I did, however, look really good), had three beers consecutively last night, and kept it smooth but steady as I transferred clothes from the washer to the dryer. I've had months of training like she's doing, and I'm a little over it now. I appreciate the importance of the work, and I remember how proud I felt each day, but I have lost some of that need to do more, more, more. About 90 percent of the need.

I feel the same way about basketball, and I know how that happened. I spent five years as a high school Athletic Director. I hired the coaches, processed eligibility, collected forms and fees, ordered and inventoried all the uniforms, organized the meetings and banquets, and went to a jillion meetings where every person there was wearing brightly colored warmups, as though we could still rip off our jackets at any moment and throw down a monster dunk at the buzzer.

One of my jobs was working the gate at basketball games. At first it was fun; the action was fast paced and the crowd and loud buzzer made it seem almost professional. But after a few hundred games -- boys and girls -- it all became a blur. Too much, way too much. Can't watch another game ever. And that's too bad because the high school kids were basically good. It's not like the NBA, where the rosters are filled with folks that have methodically checked off all the categories of felonies on their bucket lists. I wouldn't go to an NBA game if you could peel off center court tickets on the back of my Cheerios box.

But I digress. So I'm glad my daughter is training hard, and loving to train hard. She's had a well-planned career (ouch! my hand got a cramp patting myself on the back) that's left her enjoying the sport and continuing to improve. She'll look back on those days in Colorado Springs one day and say -- what the hell was I thinking? -- but she'll be proud, as I am of her.

Lap Me and Lap Me Again

I remember my wake-up moment like it was yesterday, or better yet -- today, when I actually woke up. I was swimming with my team, Lamorinda, and we were doing our monthly test set: a timed 3000. My swimmers today think a 15-minute swim is bad, but this was something even I dreaded. I was in Lane 6, the Distance Lane (thus my car's license plate), in Heat 2. We six swimmers had counted laps for the swimmers in Heat 1, and now they were doing the same for us. I was next to Laura Alonzo, a Junior National qualifier in the 50 free and 100 back. While I was the "old lady" of the team, 30 years old compared to the pool full of high school kids, I was one of the better endurance swimmers. One of my proudest moments ever as a swimmer was the 12x100 I did once in workout, on a 1:30 interval, with all of them 0.3 seconds apart.

A couple years after this swim Laura went to college at Harvard and then to Med School at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she does diabetes research and is a professor at Pitt -- all of this info just to clarify that even at 16 she was really, really smart. Not the kind of gal who had no freakin idea how many laps she did (which I hear routinely), or someone who would say "crawlstroke," (ahhh, you're killing me here!), or the kind of swimmer who leaves two seconds early, does illegal turns, and is incapable of holding her breath more than four strokes (roll call: Present!). No, Laura was mature and incredibly talented.

Laura and I didn't do the same sets often, but I felt that I could hold my own with her on the freestyle sets. When the 3000 started she moved ahead early. Like a true distance geek I was checking my 100 times on the paceclock while I was swimming, and I was consistent. In those days I could repeat 1:12s or so all day, and oh man are those days LONG gone! Just typing this makes me and drool uncontrollably as I suck in my gut and try to curl up from my stoop. Laura was holding around 1:06s and lapped me every 24 laps. When she came close I'd try to hang on and pick up the pace, but she soon blew by only to reappear exactly 24 laps later. It was like Wet Groundhog Day. Every 24 laps I couldn't believe it all over again. Every single 24 laps she came by (that's 120 total, for the math-impaired), never slowing, never tiring, always in the exact same passing place. I was getting more and more frustrated: hey, I was the distance girl here -- how could a backstroker be putting up such a beatdown?

Finally she finished, and I was forced to endure the most humiliating 250 yard solo swim ever. I think she warmed down, staying in the pool till I finished. She could have showered, changed, done a few calculus homework problems, and whipped up a souffle, but thank goodness she didn't.

I had to take a super serious look at myself that day, wondering what the hell I was training for, when a backstroker (okay, one of the top 50 high school backstrokers in the United States, but still!) could crush me like a grape. I didn't have any answers. If only I had a scoresheet that listed "poor technique," "old age," "mental lack-of-toughness," "no kick," and "feel for the water," I could have selected some really good answers.

Brooding about it for days, I finally asked my coach, Ray, to explain it to me. He said, "Marcia, sometimes people are just more talented than you are." And I thought, whoa -- that was deep -- because that had never even occurred to me. I thought that all hard work pays off kind of soon, or soon-ish. But in reality that's just not going to happen as often as it should. Sometimes there's a Laura Alonzo waiting to run you down like a unlicensed guy at the wheel of a WalMart semi, playing Words With Friends on his cellphone.

Anyone can be a good winner, or their coach. But it's a lot harder to lose or be that person's coach. And today in my daughter's high school championships, as a mom, it's hard to take a sobbing 14-year-old in the shower, hold her close and tell her it's going to be okay if you haven't experienced it yourself. While I eventually did beat Laura in my best-ever 200 free at a meet in Texas (one time only, and she must have had some disease which she later went on to find a cure for), I learned way more from the 3000 than that victory. And the next time my daughter does a best time, I'm sure it will be even sweeter because of what happened today.

Dress for Success . . . in Swimming

Besides hunting free-range bison and weaving baskets from reeds I gather myself, part of my weekly chores in San Leandro involve going to a little organic dry cleaners, aptly named "Organic Dry Cleaners." The sweet young Korean owner, maybe tardy a few ESL classes, is always behind the front counter. The other day she said to me, "Ooooh. New style in shirt!" It was about 70 degrees and I was wearing a print top, which I'd pulled out of the closet that morning after months of wearing heavier clothes. She continued, "Usually say 'swim' on shirt!"

Oh man, busted.

I have devolved now to wearing swim t-shirts and/or swim sweatshirts with my jeans or capris on a daily basis. I do not, however, own the shirt on the right.

When I was a high school athletic director I was involved in athletic governance at every level I could. I organized our school's teams of course, but I worked at the league and section level as well. Meetings, meetings, meetings. The AD dress de jour was a warmup suit (matching polyester pants and jacket) with a polo shirt underneath. As I was clearly moving up in the world I always wore dresses or suits, makeup and jewelry at those meetings. That's right, you're still in Marcia's blog! I really did. Dress for one level above your current position, they say. Why I would have wanted to be League Commissioner and go to 750 playoff games each year (including thrilling 24-20 Varsity Girls Basketball games) was inexplicable.

After I left the AD job I moved on to coaching swimming exclusively. My dressing up was then limited to awards banquets (perhaps "banquet" is too strong a word for lasagne and green salad) once per season. After my last college coaching gig ended I have stabilized here at the Masters coaching and college teaching plateau, where dressing up is never required. But as I still compete occasionally, and those competitions usually come with free t-shirts, I have been accumulating many swim couture items. So, I wear them.

My daughter, a freshman in high school, dresses exactly the same. My first thought is 'Whew! Saving some money here!' and my second is 'Dang, she needs a little exposure to the effort it takes to be a grown-up.' It just about killed her to get into a skirt for her Bat Mitzvah, and she begrudgingly wore a cotton skirt and white blouse to every Bat Mitzvah party she attended, oblivious to all the other seventh-grade girls wearing size 00 miniprom dresses and heels.

She comes from a decade where casual rules (and that would be squared because we're in California), and because she's so comfortable being a jock she wears the uniform with pride. Many of her swimming buds dress the same way, but there are plenty who do the whole Hollister/Nordstrom's thing. I've seen really good swimmers do an entire 5000-yard practice with mascara and eyeliner. Like you need eye makeup when you're half-naked and wet with three high school sophomore boys in your lane.

But I guess she'll figure it out when she needs to. I do dress up occasionally (anniversary, Thanksgiving, Passover, and the occasional trip to the Grand Jury -- wow, that's more than I thought -- but not so much. I'm confortable and happy. So is she.

Here's Looking at You!

To say I'm a competitive person is a little like saying that Raiders are kind of off their game this season. It's probably why I have such a hard time posting this blog with any regularity, because I really need the time to focus without distractions. And my life is all about the distractions. In fact, I'm not sure I'm living a life, just little pauses of silence between distractions.

My latest competition was against all my other fellow alumni at my high school class reunion last weekend. They didn't know they were in competition with me, which was just as well. If they had, they probably wouldn't have been so happy to see me. I trained with Olympic fervor, jogging and swimming and aerobicizing weekly, till I was actually able to overcome an elderly Chinese man wearing Dockers and a buttoned shirt, while doing my lap around Lake Merritt. Man, that felt good!

I like my Pilates class and my general exercise class too, because I can look in the mirror surreptitiously and see how coordinated I look except for those rare 20-30 times/class when I fall off the damn Bosu ball. I really enjoy competing and can't understand when people tell me that they like to just do the workouts and never compete. Seeing measurable progress is what keeps me going.

So I figure out ways to compete in Pilates. Besides counting the number of times I fall off the stupid ball each day, I check out all the other women in the class. I see who has the heaviest weights, who leans into the stretches the farthest, and who has the best posture. These (almost all women) classes at the club are supposed to be about shared community goals, but I can't help it. When I walk out of there I want to say to myself, man -- I totally kicked their ass today!

Some people just love the addiction of fitness, never getting out of shape and trying new challenges. While I enjoy being in shape, it's just too hard to do now with all my distractions. I'm on a ridiculous number of committees and boards, mostly having to do with swimming. Stop me before I volunteer again. And I've got a daughter that never says no to any new activity. So I compete wherever and whenever I can. Sometimes it's in the pool, sometimes around the lake. Sometimes people don't know it, but they're about to get crushed in aerobics. And sometime soon, the Bosu is going to hide when I walk in that room.