Kick Me When I'm Down

So I'm sitting at the computer, watching from the window my neighbor run a boot camp for the locals, and I'm thinking wow -- he's slow, she really can't do a pushup, they make spandex in that size?  Which is ironic because, you know, I'm just sitting here at the computer. But hey, once a coach always a coach.

Today my task is to imput entries from the national postal event that I created, the 400 Kick For Time.  It's a competition open to all registered United States Masters Swimmers, where they just send in their results and a program sorts the data into age groups and placings.  I mail out the awards, t-shirts for those who want them, cash their checks and receive the glory.

Except that it's kinda labor intensive, on my part.  And I'm not even kicking.

So you can enter online, where with a few clicks of your finger all is done.  Entry accepted, all forms of credit accepted, safe and secure. Or,  you can send in a check (except for the four-and-counting that forgot, sigh), fill out your paper entry form (but don't really try to print legibly because you don't know how to hold a pen anymore), and then be over the age of 18 and still not know how to fold a letter-size piece of paper in freakin THIRDS.

I'm a little tense.  Maybe watching the joggers will help.

Once I correctly imput all the data, then the program will sort out the winners.  And it turns out that over half the people like to mail in their entries.  Who knew?  My deal with the computer brain people is a $100 flat fee plus five percent of the credit card processing.  Maybe a quarter of the folks buy a $20 shirt and the rest cough up only the $10 entry fee.  So I lose between 50 cents and a buck fifty for every online entry.  Which, now in retrospect, is not only fine but would make me really very, very happy.

It's fun to see the entries coming from all over the country, Alaska to Connecticut, and it's fun to see how fast some people really are at this event.  This is a low-key way to compete, that's for sure.  Mail in your time and receive your prize the next month.  No shivering or sweltering at a meet for the better part of a weekend, no scary competition setting, no pressure to make the time standard.  Just kick, at your local pool, with someone timing you.

I've gotten lots of emails too.  Some are asking for clarification on the rules, others suggesting new rules (yeah, thanks buddy!) or asking about the shirt in detail before they decide to squeeze out a twenty. Are t-shirts even being made in polyester anymore?  Do you realize this event originates in the Bay Area?  It's all free-range, non-bullied cotton here, baby.

So back to work.  Paper entries must be received by January 17, so I have a few more days of data imput.  Good luck to all of you who entered.  And if you haven't, please use the online entry form next year.  Or learn to fold in thirds.

Trading Families

It's good to get out, once in awhile. It's not that I miss picking up after the family (no way!), or making lunch, or doing laundry -- which is kinda like a dream job. But when I got the chance to be on the coaching staff of the Western Zones All Star team in Grand Junction, Colorado, I jumped. It was six days of coaching, small talk, meetings, nagging, chaperoning, bus and airplane riding, and lots and lots of waiting. It was six days of the world's worst food too, but eating to win wasn't quite as important for the coaches.

The meet is a competition between all the United States Swimming All Star teams located in the West. There were over a dozen zones present (California has several, while some other states combine to make one); I was with Pacific. The host team Colorado won, beating us narrowly, 1,543-1,536.5, due to their superior altitude lungs (Grand Junction is 4,593 elevation). I was in charge of Pacific's 13-14 boys, a hardy subgroup of humankind that eats vast quantities of anything on plates, napkins and/or carpeting, and loves superheroes and the thought of girls -- but not actual girls.

I spent a little of my free time going from Zone to Zone, recruiting for next year's Maccabi Games in Israel -- where I am also coaching. That is a meet for Jewish athletes, and more about that in another post. But I'd go up to all the coaches from the other Zones and ask if they had any Jewish kids that were fast, who would consider applying to Team USA. Let's just say pickings were slim. One lady from Utah (in retrospect, that was a longshot) actually knew a Jewish swimmer, which made her quite pleased. So there were no Jews, no non-Whites except for us, and no Peet's Coffee. I was the only married coach from Pacific and the only one with a teenager. My roommate just graduated from college.

Grand Junction was very hot and surrounded by the beautiful uplift known as Colorado National Monument, though we were inside at Colorado Mesa University. We got a few short tours of the area by our bus driver, a budding and yet terrible tour guide named Charlotte. Other days we got the near-toothless Crazy Man bus driver, who on the last day hugged all the kids while I watched horrified from afar, like seeing a car go through a plate glass window. Colorado is also one of the big "swing states", and we were blanketed with advertising for both presidential candidates. A Romney bus was parked in our hotel parking lot a couple of days, but I'm pretty sure it was just filled with staffers, because even one bite of those eggs would've brought his campaign to a quick end. Obama also flew into town while we were there, delaying the Crazy Toothless Man bus.

Like most of Pacific Swimming (and team Hawaii), my group was predominantly Asian. Living in the Bay Area and teaching at Laney College, it felt normal. All but two of my daughter's friends are Asian, and except for her current obsession with all things British, she is a future Asian history major (sigh). My group of boys was super-Asian, as they all could do all the things that one ever sees Asians excelling at. Swim fast -- check. Build computers -- check. Play Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven -- check. Take pre-calc in 8th grade -- check. Rubik's Cube under a minute -- check. Quiet on the outside, party on the inside -- check. Those are so my-kind-of-people I could just weep.

On All Star teams you get a pile of free clothing which you wear in a rotating order, like attending an incredibly fit Catholic school without having to roll up your skirt. We'd go to breakfast wearing the shirt of the day, where we'd see the same "eggs" in the chafing dish, and then gather in the lobby before boarding the bus to the pool. On the way to the lobby was a baby grand piano where, on the red-shirt day, one of my boys sat down and whipped out the first movement of a Mozart concerto. As we walked to the bus I asked him if he'd studied the Suzuki method, as my daughter had when she learned to play violin. He said not for piano, but he did with the violin. So that's nice that he can do both. And be at the freakin All Star meet.

The next day (blue shirt) saw the same eggs and same walk to the lobby. The junior Mr. Rubik sits down and plays something equally majestic. However, he doesn't also play violin. In school he sits first chair clarinet. On white-shirt day yet another kid sits and plays equally amazingly. He's the one in pre-calc. He finaled in all his events. To be fair, I did have a couple of non-Asian kids, one of which was a budding frat boy inside a 6-2 frame, with phenomenal good looks, and the other two were loveable dorks. But the quieter kids are just easier for me to relate to.

Due to a weird bit of scheduling I was on different flights in and out of Oakland from my 13-14 boys. Who wouldn't like to report to OAK at 3:30 am? And sign me up for the fabulous 10 pm return flight, when my real family and I were leaving for vacation 11 hours later. I didn't have any laundry to do when I got home (red, white and blue Pacific Swimming shirts were not so valued on vacay), but I had to water the plants outside in the dark, check the home answering machine, and make up some quality cat time for a few hours. Did you need to save all the junk mail for me, really? And the rubber bands from the morning paper?

In Hawaii I did miss the 13-14 boys a little, though I was glad to be back with my real family. We did take the bus around the island, but no toothless crazy man was at the wheel. The only sign of politics was the bobblehead Obama doll wearing a lei and beach clothes, giving us the hang loose sign. No one can sit down and play piano concertos in my real family, but the breakfast was way better. And it's back to the home team.

Is That a Scythe in Your Backseat or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Much of my time parenting a teenager is spent thinking of her feelings, empowering her to speak up for herself, and trying to replace the word "no" with "yes" whenever possible. HAHAHA! Help me, I can't get up -- my side has split from laughter and my spleen is rolling down the stairs!

No, most of my time is spent embarrassing her (okay, often accidentally), teasing her, and nagging at her to do all the things any reasonable human being would do, if they only had hygienic standards equal to those in a refugee camp in Sudan. And it's really easy for me to embarrass her because it's so fun. I mean, who doesn't love doing the arm movements to Y-M-C-A, while singing along? On BART. I'm not completely insensitive, you know. I'm there when she needs me, blah, blah, blah. But when you've got an overachieving kind of kid, I consider it my duty to make sure she doesn't come off as a know-it-all, and change the benevolent dictatorship (which seems to work quite well) into a tail-wagging-the-dog family dynamic.

Which leads me to the scythe in my backseat.

Among the many things in my late father's house are vintage tools. There are woodworking tools, blacksmithing stuff, machining equipment, and farm implements. He was born on a farm in South Dakota, before the Great Depression, and so I guess he collected the scythe as some sort of memory-inducing device. The other tools he probably actually used, as his hobby was restoring antique cars. But the 6-foot scythe, with a 24-inch blade -- not so much. I'd been walking around it, carefully (cue rimshot), for over a year, and decided it had to go.

I knew the perfect place. My wonderful Masters team, MEMO, swims on Sundays at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park, and afterwards we often go out to eat as a group. We found a great breakfast/lunch place near the lake called Jim's. After only a dozen or so times of eating the restaurant down to the foundation (open water swimming appears to increase the appetite), I noticed all the antique tools nailed to his walls. This would make Jim's look even toolier.

So the last time I went to my dad's house (with one of my Masters swimmers, Jane, who unbelievably seemed to enjoy seeing all this stuff), I took it home. Of course it sat in the car for a week because the handle was too long and the blade was too well packed under the passenger seat to remove it and then put it back in. So I drove my daughter around for a week with a scythe handle sticking up in the backseat, like some sort of Grim Reaper Convention attendee. We went to swim practice (careful of your bag, honey -- watch out for the scythe!), my job (where I hid the handle under newspapers, as not to be surrounded by the Oakland SWAT team), the grocery store, the gun dealer (more things from my dad's house, but best left for another blog), Target, Michael's, the Post Office, etc. It was always easy to find my car.

Of course my daughter was mortified that the scythe was always in the backseat. Weird things seem to bother 15-year-olds, I guess. Photoshopping yourself into a picture with the members of the band One Direction and then posting it on Instagram, however, is really cool. She sat in the front seat with me for the week, headphones on, trying to make herself invisible while I cheerfully explained the Story of the Scythe to anyone who parked next to me at lots all across the Bay Area.

And what does this all have to do with my Swimming Life? Not that much, really. But embarrassing my daughter is a little like how I act when I'm coaching. I just try to make all my swimmers laugh. I tease them like my daughter, in hopes of making them feel recognized; I nag them to improve their strokes and work harder. I do this not because I don't want them getting big heads, but because it's pretty hard getting up at 5:30 every morning and driving to the pool. It's got to be entertaining; it's got to be be fun; and you've got to feel good about yourself afterwards. Helping people to get a great workout is fine, but it's more than just designing clever sets and correcting strokes. Coaching adds the little bit of parenting that most people want. Young man, young man, are you listening to me? Young man, young man, what do you wanna be? Not the grim reaper, for sure. Just happy to be swimming.

My Cup Runneth Over

I was filling out my daughter's application for the North American Challenge Cup last week, a big international all-star meet for juniors that happens each year in early August, when I realized that forms just aren't what they used to be. Long gone are the days when a scribbled index card in your best imitation of mom's handwriting could excuse you from Algebra. Not that I know that from personal experience.

There were at least 20 pages in the damn thing, and it included consent to have their picture taken, consent to have their name published in the results, consent to travel, signing of USA Swimming's Honor Code, complete medical history, order form for swag, food preferences, passport info and photocopy, times achieved out of our "zone," coach's cell phone, emergency

contacts, photocopy of insurance card, and finally, notarized signatures from both parents. Why you need to have this notorized signature is baffling, considering that only a saintly parent who spent many hours in labor agony would sit there for three hours filling out these forms in the first place.

So up and down the stairs I went, printing out times that were swum in Southern California, digging up the passports, finding phone numbers of relatives, dentists, doctors, and her swim coach, making copies, and rooting around for the immunization log. Of course once I find that log, I then have to google (again) which abbreviation means tetanus because there are like three diseases that could possibly be it. Then it's on to checking on sizes of all clothing, and figuring out which clothing is still the correct size because it has totally stretched out and which is really legit. I thought I totally knew the gimme question, sandwich preference, until I found out that sometime during the last year "nobody" eats turkey.

So then it was time for my daughter to sign off on her pages, me to sign after her, (print name, sign name, date), and then the notary to drive the stake in the overkill machine's heart. And just to make it even more complicated, when I was filling this stuff out my husband was a couple days post-surgery for a repair to a hole in his eye's macula.

The surgery itself was quite clever, where a gas bubble was inserted into the eye to squish the hole closed, like a bandaid keeps a cut together until it heals tightly. But the macula is in the front of the eye, so the bubble needed to be in the back of the eye at all times, until the hole had a chance to heal. Whatever you do, don't google the macular hole eye surgery video unless you are well past dinner time. Trust me. The point of this digression is that my husband had to recover completely face down for seven days and nights, 24/7. He had a special chair with a massage table head-holder and a tray to look down onto. Also from Vitrectomy Rentals (talk about specialty businesses), was a double mirror to watch TV.

So husband spent most of his time face down, with a silver patch over one eye, looking into a double mirror watching every "guy" movie available at our local library. World War II, Westerns, Steve McQueen, and any comedy where someone farts or gets hit in the crotch were big hits. After another hour spent googling mobile notaries and getting nothing, I had the inspiration of calling our neighborhood realtor, who graciously came by with his notary book to help us out. He walked in only to find a house in complete chaos (a decline from our normal 70 percent chaos), a man with an eyepatch staring face down into a mirror, machine guns going off through the speakers, and a dining room table overflowing with papers, printouts, vaccination records, copies, and eyedrops. Welcome to our home!

Doing an extrapolation back from the face down man before him, whose parrot had obviously just flown away with the bottle of rum, to the picture on my husband's driver's license went more quickly than I thought.

Then it was bundling everything up, writing a check for our share of the trip, and driving down to San Jose to turn it all in because it was too late to mail as I had neglected to read the page about the notary before I began filling it out. And now it's wait till Wednesday until we hear if this has all been in vain.

Time is on My Side, Yes It Is. No It's Not.

Well, this ruined my morning. On my Swimming News wire came a story about a man who decided to make it a goal to "swim" in all 50 states. And not just a hotel pool, no ma'am! He was going to swim in lakes, and go to actual workouts. Ooooh. So freaking challenging. But the kicker was that he was a lawyer and Washington lobbyist.

And that just meant it was another of those stories, ubiquitous these days, about people with too much free time and way too much money doing an "every" goal and then writing a book. Cook every one of The Joy of Cooking recipes. Run a marathon on every continent. Play golf every day on a different course. Climb every 7000-meter peak/the highest peak in every state. Have sex every day for a year. Go to every Major League ballpark. Save every piece of garbage generated for a year. Walk every inch of the continent north-south/east-west. Eat every meal at McDonalds/the Chronicle's Best 100 Restaurants. And that's not even counting the people who don't write books about this stuff, but just post every day on Facebook to irritate me: those folks who take a picture every day (worse if it's themselves), write a poem, do crafts, feel grateful, or write in their journals (blogs, of course do not count and are considered a community service).

Who has free travel and tons of vacation time, besides Washington lobbyists? Really. The only people I know who have that much time are unemployed, 88-years old, or on bedrest prior to giving birth. Everyone else can't romp across the continents or states or golf courses. We can't spend all day cooking, much less shopping or cleaning up, or even muster up the energy to explain what French foods are, translated. It's like grilled cheese, you'll like it. Tell me, who with kids could possibly have sex every night for a year?

And who has that much money, besides Washington lobbyists? Between mere day-to-day existence, any extra monies accumulated around here go to things like gum, sponsoring every friend's disease triathlon participation (another column on THAT), and every third new product made by Apple. Home improvement has slipped to now include pillow fluffing, and landscaping has plateaued at Live and Let Live, unless it dies. Flying to Antarctica to run a marathon? Oh, sign me up!

I'm happy to do any one of those things, except the saving garbage stuff. Most people I know just put one foot in front of the other each day, and find joy in their family, friends, work, and surroundings. I do. I've got the greatest job in the world; my little city has the fewest number of ridiculously hot days and the least amount of pollen (okay, kinda high on the dumb people percentage); and my family and friends seem to tolerate me well, considering. That's about every thing I want.

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.