Blog
Road Trip
So the Little Coaches and I went to Florida with Mr. Coach and the college team this year. Every year, all across this fine North American continent, swim teams of the college, high school and club variety head some place warmer (in theory) during their school breaks to train hard, work on their tans and spend waaay too much time together. By the time the 10-14 day experience is over, you know more than you will ever want or need to know about your teammates’ diets, deviated septums, dysfunctional love lives, and personal hygiene issues. On the plus side, though, you will find out that the kid from Wisconsin is an accent savant and does an Australian Christopher Walken that has to be heard to be believed.
I know this because, just to make this year’s journey a truly authentic experience, I decided that the kids and I would travel with the team. On the bus. In the past, I’ve always flown but this year, as I reviewed my options, I realized that every time I’ve flown during the holiday season, it has been an unmitigated disaster. It doesn’t matter where you go but if you entrust your carcass to an airline anytime between roughly Dec. 21 and Jan. 8, I can guarantee you will have a terrible experience. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a mother traveling alone with two small children: The airline agent will cover her monitor and attempt to convince you that you were booked on the previous flight. You’ll get bumped. You’ll sit on the tarmac for five hours of de-icing. You’ll spend the night in an airport you got re-routed to because of bad weather at your destination. You will regret ever leaving home, no matter how cold and ice-ridden it may be.
So I made the executive decision that the Little Coaches and I would join Mr. Coach and the team on the bus. And I don’t regret my decision in the least, especially not after reading that on a flight that I might well have been on the day we left Florida, some idiot stood up and announced he wanted to “kill all the Jews.” Who needs that, I ask you? Certainly not me. I’ll take 20-plus hours on a bus with two cases of intestinal disorders, six varieties of upper-respiratory disease, a “Jaws” DVD and a bus driver who may or may not have been part of a witness protection program over a bag of honey-roasted peanuts and the Second Coming of Hitler.
And it was a great trip, colder-than-usual weather notwithstanding. We went to the International Swimming Hall of Fame complex in Fort Lauderdale where the 318th edition of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America winter training forum was taking place. Part of the deal was that the Little Coaches and I also had to swim. Not a problem. There is something very empowering about walking around the pool deck there in Fort Lauderdale as a 20 mile-per-hour wind and 57-degree temps buffet your soaking-wet body, especially when you realize that most people in your demographic are, at that very moment, dry, fully clothed and doing something to earn money. (You say “clinically insane,” I say “empowering.”)
I also put a dent in my open-water phobia by going coral-reef snorkeling in 10-foot swells. It was awesome and I know the divemaster dude thought I was crazy for sure when I asked him what the water temp that day was, and he said, “About 73 degrees,” and I said, “That’s perfect!” He replied, “That’s not what I would have said.” And I said, “You obviously haven’t been in my husband’s pool during the high-yardage part of the season.”
I’ve got other interesting experiences to share in my next couple of blogs, but suffice it to say, it was an excellent experience. Although if I never see another Transformer movie, I will not complain.
AIQ
Most coaches are going to tell you they love to work with intelligent athletes, but most athletes will tell you that the competitors they fear most would flunk a CAT scan in search of brain activity. Why the seeming discrepancy?
Well, in the case of the coach, I think it comes down to a simple matter of communication. Who would you rather spend a 22-hour bus ride to Florida with? Egbert who brought the complete boxed set of “Arrested Development” with him and wants to analyze the influence of “Monty Python” on that TV show’s writing? Or Dortmund who’s been reading the same comic book for the last 275 miles – upside down?
Intelligent athletes are usually a dream to work with in practice situations. Maybe they ask a lot of questions but as long as you can drum up a reasonable answer, they’ll buy in and work hard. Toss in a research journal article with graphs to back up your answer, and they’ll work even harder.
But, as most coaches know, when it comes to competition, that’s where things get a little dicey. Egbert might have a sky-high IQ which is useful in the classroom but does him no dang good in a race. In races, it’s AIQ – Athletic Intelligence Quotient – that counts and a lot of very intelligent athletes don’t have a very high one.
In college, I’ll admit that I was an athlete with a solidly average AIQ. But I knew enough to know that the competitors who had trouble blinking both eyes at the same time were the ones I should take most seriously. And I studied them zealously, hoping to figure out what was different – besides the blinking thing. I can’t say as that I ever did figure it out. Some things you’re just born with – or without, as the case may be.
You see someone like Egbert – or me -- gets to the starting blocks. His brain has been rifling through the 3,578,913 different scenarios he has calculated could unfold during the upcoming race. He’s scanning his mental hard drive for his competitors’ previous best times. There’s a penny on the bottom of lane 5 and it’s really, really bugging him. He steps up to the blocks and the race is already over because, bottom line, Egbert’s brain doesn’t have an off switch.
Dortmund, on the other hand, steps up to the blocks. He doesn’t have an off switch either, but that’s because he also doesn’t have an on switch. Or at least no one’s ever found one. Dortmund can’t spell the word “scenario,” let alone envision one. And the only way he’d notice his competitors is if they walked up in high heels and blew him air kisses. All you do with Dortmund is tell him to go as fast as he can and, chances are, he will. Dortmund’s AIQ is through the roof.
Thankfully Mr. Coach, like most coaches, has learned how to work with the full spectrum of AIQs. You distract the Egberts with shiny mental objects (i.e., math equations) and you enjoy the Dortmunds for what they are.
And if anyone ever figures out exactly what that is, please tell me.
Poppies in the Stands
Last week, for the first time in many years, I got to actually sit in the stands and watch an entire age-group meet. I watched every heat of every race, jotted down times, chatted with a couple of mom friends, dealt with the Loudest Family on the Planet, suffered a mild case of heat prostration, and fought to get my heat sheet back from some free-loading loser who parked herself near me and asked to look at my program and then didn’t give it back until I demanded it back. It was all wonderful.
See, for the last eight years, I’ve had to spend most of my time at these meets “in camp,” where the kids wait to get summoned for their races. As I explained to one of my mom friends who wanted to know why it took me so long to get out of camp, it’s partially because I grew up near New York City. I assume the worst of everyone when it comes to my children’s safety. I also don’t have very high expectations of their ability to get to the bullpen or blocks by themselves. We used to get rid of our daughter for hours inside the house by sending her off with instructions to bring back a (fill in the blank). That didn’t work with our son. Even if you gave him a list of 14 things to fetch, he would fetch them all in about five minutes flat. But Little Mr. Coach would and has consciously chosen a Pokemon-card trading battle over an A-final. So in camp I stayed.
But now our youngest child has arrived at the 11-12 age group and he is showing signs of, well, some would say maturity, but I would say it’s just a Machiavellian feel for what he’s got to do if he’s going to get what he wants (either more games for his Nintendo DS or a later bed time). So at his first indoor meet this year, I decided I was ready to sit in the stands.
And I have to give myself props for how it went. I have come a long way in my ability to tolerate loud swim-parent behavior. It’s been an issue because I’m not a screamer. I find that if I yell during my kids’ races it short-circuits something between my eyeballs and my brain, and I end up not really seeing or remembering their races. So, you say, just videotape them. Not really a videotaper either. So I watch pretty quietly and that way I can absorb what I’m seeing. And I’m not alone in this regard, though I have to cross the Equator to find other parents like me.
A few years ago, when we lived in Australia during one of Mr. Coach’s sabbaticals, our kids swam for a club there. I’ll never forget the meet where I was sitting on the edge of the pool as my daughter swam by in the backstroke. Because I was right there and she could see me, I figured I better say something so I leaned over and, at a volume that would be considered conversational at an American age-group swim meet, I said, “Go, honey!”
About a dozen Australian parent heads slowly turned as one to look at me. Then they all slowly swiveled back to reaffix their gazes on the pool.
“What did I do?” I whispered to one of my new Australian friends.
“You cheered for your own child,” she whispered back.
“OK?” I said.
“You don’t do that,” she replied. “TPS.”
There are many things I love about the Australian nation -- their desserts and dairy products probably foremost -- but their swim parents rank way high up there, too. TPS, as I found out, is what they call “Tall Poppy Syndrome.” Tall poppies are “made to be cut down.” In other words, you and your swollen pride are just asking for trouble if you publicly express a desire to see your child do well at something. You can – and should – cheer for other people’s children, but you don’t cheer out loud for your own.
Call it superstition, call it unrealistic, call it a bit too much humility, but I think it’s a great concept. And you can’t criticize a nation of swim parents who, when their children make the Australian Olympic team, don t-shirts with the acronym POOS printed on them (which stands for Parents Of Our Swimmers).
So, ever since I got back from Australia, I haven’t felt bad about being a non-screamer. And this time, my first time back in the stands for an entire meet, I sat there, cheered a little bit at a conversational volume for my son, and I didn’t get riled up about other people screaming. It felt good to be a short poppy.
Disease and Dismemberment
It was about this time last year when I wrote a blog about thespectre of illness that starts visiting swim teams right around American Thanksgiving time. I think the topic bears revisiting because, let’s face it, this year’s visit has already begun.
And this year we have the added hysteria of the H1N1 virus. Few of the college swimmers have been able to get vaccinations for it yet. One girl on the team was smart enough to catch it during the summer so that’s at least one athlete we can count on for conference. Another girl was diagnosed with H1N1 just the other week and then, after that, she developed a sinus infection, strep throat and an ear infection – in both ears. After the last diagnosis, while she was still leaking from every cranial orifice, she asked Mr. Coach if she could get back in the water. Once the penicillin kicks in, we’ll know if her brain got infected, too, or if it’s always been that way.
But it isn’t just illness. It’s the dumb accidents that are on the upswing again. The other night, I was driving with Mr. Coach and he gets this phone call. Here -- and I am not making ANY of this up -- is his side of the conversation:
“So is it broken?...No, if the kidney was sliced, she would have seen blood when she peed…Well then the kidney’s fine…Oh, they recognized you from this summer?...Were they still mad?”
One of Mr. Coach’s athletes had tumbled off the wide, concrete natatorium stands when she was doing some kind of dryland exercise. One of the seniors had taken her to the emergency room and was calling Mr. Coach from there. As it turned out, the tumble-down athlete had a bruised rib and the senior chauffeur got to re-meet the E.R. staff. The last time he met them – which they remembered quite vividly – was after a cycling accident he had and he was not a “good” patient.
As for the tumble-down athlete, Mr. Coach told me, “She’s not exactly a land animal.”
“Are any of them?” I felt compelled to ask.
But, to end on a happy note, the tumble-down athlete still competed in their meet that weekend, bruised rib notwithstanding, and she swam close to a P.R. in her best event. Before conference championships, we’re going to drop her off a cell-phone tower and hope for a world record.
Supplementality
Here’s a random topic that’s piqued my curiosity recently: the issue of supplements, dietary and otherwise, in sports. I’ve always found the search for those extra little (legal) advantages interesting. In college, I had a coach who gave us Vitamin C tablets to chew all winter. I’m pretty sure all that did was wear down people’s tooth enamel and enrich the sanitary sewer system with citric acid. And there was a scary period when this same coach (who eventually got fired) gave a few of our teammates something called DMSO. It was actually a lotion that was supposed to facilitate workout recovery but we also heard it was made from petroleum by-products and it gave those who used it garlic breath for no apparent reason.
Holy crap. I just Googled DMSO and it’s short for “dimethylsulfoxide.” It’s a by-product of paper manufacturing and is now used as an agent for administering chemotherapy drugs and other “substances.” And one of its side effects is a garlic odor. Suddenly I feel a lot better about never having been a favorite of that coach.
Anyway, Mr. Coach hasn’t pushed it much with supplements. He’s had enough of an uphill battle teaching his student-athletes how to eat right, period. All the creatine in the world isn’t going to make a dang bit of difference if Trevor’s idea of dinner is four family-sized cans of Spaghettios, two boxes of Ring-Dings, and a liter of Diet Coke. Or if Buffy’s idea of dinner is a side salad without dressing, a carton of Eskimo Pies, and a liter of Diet Pepsi.
But I’ve always been a fan of the quick calorie after a workout. I’m all about the banana, granola bar or bottle of Ensure Plus – though not in the shower, I hasten to add (seriously: there is not one single woman I know who read that blog and could believe that guys eat in the shower. Not one.).
Anyway, lately I’ve been using this newish PureSport stuff (disclaimer: I’m not getting freebies here, nor am I looking to. Now Cheese Jax? That’s another story. I would give away naming rights to my children for some free Cheese Jax.). You’ll like my reasons for trying PureSport. See, last winter when Mr. Coach and the team were in Ft. Lauderdale for winter training, they did the city’s Ocean Mile competition. Reps for PureSport were giving away samples of the stuff – in the most adorable little pop-up plastic bottles, by the way. Mr. Coach brought me back the bottle but he was less than enthusiastic about the sample he had consumed.
“It went down OK,” he said, “but there was something wrong with the aftertaste.”
I was incredulous.
“No one is going to sell a product that has something wrong with the aftertaste,” I said. “That’s just insane.”
So you can imagine my excitement when the product popped up in our local grocery store (remember, I’m the woman whovoluntarily sniffed my husband’s sneakers when he brought them home, reeking of his English Channel adventure).
I bought one in every flavor, determined to find out if the aftertaste on any of them was “wrong.” They were NOT. All I can figure is that the batch Mr. Coach got must have been sitting out in the sun too long at the beach that day. Maybe I’ll try leaving mine out in the sun sometime, just to see what happens.
But I’ve kept using these powder mixes because, even though they make me pee like a racehorse, they do seem to have an analgesic quality. Better yet, they don’t make me smell like garlic nor, as far as I know, are they a by-product of any industrial manufacturing process.
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