Running to meet the fall

The end of the summer brings about changes.  I know the freedom I have enjoyed with the kids is slowly going to be taken over by school, activities and other obligations.  It is all good, but it is a change.  With it this momthlete begins to change as well.  With the local Xterras over with, I now start to focus on running.  The air gets cooler and my memories of racing cross country in school resurface.  I feel a bit like a salmon that needs to return to its spawning grounds.  I have almost no choice but to run, it is simply in my blood.  The Mac Forest in my back yard has endless miles of flawless trails to run on.  And I get to feel the wind slowly creep back from the Pacific Ocean, bringing cooler temperatures that slowly tell the big leaf maples that is time to start thinking about dropping those leaves.   Year after year I need to run out and meet the fall.

I love the simplicity of running.  I love quickly throwing on my shorts, shirt, socks and shoes and running out the door.  There is nothing else to rely on but my body. No bikes to fix or clean or break.   Almost right away I hear my breath, hear the rhythm of my feet hitting the ground, feel my heart beat.  My body becomes an instrument.  I hear music.

Let’s talk about music because it is the other thing that has been coming up this fall, lots and lots of music.  I just can’t get enough of it, listening to it, dancing to it, singing it.  Our band (The Brutal Bridges) has just wrapped up our first CD, and we are starting to play outside of our living room for people who are not us.  I am beginning a new relationship with music, taking on the job of sharing it with other people and accepting the risk of everything that entails.  Dealing with my own judgment, the reaction of those gathered, are we good, are we not? Learning about microphones and having my voice thrown out into a crowd, or not. 

Matt and I had a pretty crazy week, starting with an amplified band practice on Monday. Tuesday was the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros concert in Portland. Wednesday was our bands first show at Les Caves.  Friday was a jam in my friend’s garage.  Saturday we played a wedding.  Monday we wrapped up the crazy week at the Ninkasi brewery in Eugene at a benefit show for the GOATS trail building group in Oakridge. It was a fitting end to the week for this old mountain biker. Oakridge is where Matt and I spent our 10^th wedding anniversary on August 24^th this summer riding our bikes on some of the world’s greatest cross country trails.  I felt honored to share music with these amazing folks.  The free Ninkasi beer was also a nice perk.  It was the first “mini tour” for the Brutal Bridges and I feel like I have learned something in this last week.

Band practice was great, trying out the amps and microphones.  Microphones are interesting.  My voice goes in and then comes out a speaker that is far away from my body that just produced that sound.  There is a delay to my voice being sent out and my ears hearing the sound, because the sound I am making is no longer coming out of my mouth (which is close to my ears), it comes out of a speaker, louder than I have ever heard it before and takes a moment to return to me.  If I wait to hear my sound to adjust to the note I just made, than I risk stepping out of time with the next note I need to sing.  However if I don’t listen to the sound, how do I know I am singing in tune? This is a new skill I have never tried out before and I fumble along much like my first day on a piece of single track.  If this were a race I am not sure I am at the point where I should be on the start line. But I suppose I need to start somewhere.

The next night was the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros concert.  My friend Jamie Simpson sent me a link to the song Home back at the end of the school year and over the summer it occurred to me that if this band produced one great song, perhaps they have more.  But it took me awhile to check, even though it is now so easy to do with the internet.  Sometimes I think I am nervous that the rest of the music may not be as good as that one song and I will be disappointed. But Edward Sharpe did not disappoint me, the more songs I listened to, the more new songs I liked.  Soon I had bought both their albums and was listening to them almost nonstop.  It was like making a new friend. I now had all these great songs to follow me through my house work, dance with the kids to, drive around town with, sing loudly as I ran alone through the burned forest wilderness area at Waldo Lake (I believe I chose “Man on Fire” as my cougar repellent).

When I found out they were coming to Eugene in September I knew I had to see them.  I couldn’t tell you why I had to see this band.  Taj Mahal has played in Eugene and I did not have to see him even though I really love Taj Mahal.  But I had to see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.  “No matter what” I told Matt.  He said ok.  We were close to booking our Eugene tickets when Adrian (our band leader/lead guitar/singer song writer and recording engineer) got us our first real gig at Les Caves.  Hmmm.  Well the Portland show was Tuesday night.  “How crazy would it be to see them in Portland on Tuesday leaving our 3 children with an all-night babysitter (Uncle Adam Hadley) and play a show on Wednesday?” I asked Matt.  Too my surprise Matt replied, “Not that crazy”, even though we both knew it was a bit.

I was actually surprised to find myself driving to Portland on Tuesday night to see our first big live show since our pre children Tragically Hip days back in Canada. We were late and had to run from our hotel about 20 blocks to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, but we know we could run it faster than a taxi could take us (another strange perk of being an athlete).  We whipped through the Portland streets, Matt navigating using the wonders of his new iphone. We arrived a bit sweaty at the concert hall with enough time to grab a Bridgeport IPA (which has to be drunk with a lid and straw in the concert hall, who knew that was a good idea? A piece of information I feel will be useful in other situations).

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is no small band. There were twelve musicians on stage including an accordion, trumpet player, two keyboard players, bass, violin, two lead vocalist, and two drummers.  This added up to a lot of sound in this turn of the century concert hall that I don’t think was quite designed to hold this much amplified music. I could barely make out the lead singer Alexander Eberts’ amazing vocals in the huge wash of sound.  At first I was almost disappointed, but that feeling was quickly replaced by just feeling the amazing vibrations that soon made their way straight through my body.  It was the first time in over seven years I had heard this much sound with this many people.  It felt amazing, feeling my body respond to each song, this one making me so happy, this one making me feel so sad, the next one lifting me back up.  It was a giant reminder to my body of what my emotions actually feel like.  It was one of the most amazing things I have ever felt, and there is nothing I can write that would explain it without me sounding more ridiculous than I already do. 

At one point Alexander asked everyone to raise their hands if they were cool. There were many beautiful and very cool Portlanders in the crowd that night.  I was in awe of their stylish clothes and beautiful hair.  Probably a third of the crowd raised their hands.  He asked them to stop dancing and have a seat. Then he asked everyone who wasn’t cool to raise their hands.  Slowly Matt and I added ourselves to this group.  If you know me at all, you know I have not a cool bone in my body.  I have absolutely no ability to keep myself at one cool level of being for more than three seconds.  I get too excited, too happy or too sad or too angry at almost every experience I encounter and this makes me fundamentally very uncool.  “Stand up uncool people” Alexander asked us.  Matt and I obeyed with about a third of the crowd.  “Now, you don’t have to be cool to dance, I bet you never dance because you don’t think you are cool, but it is not about being cool.  It’s about feeling the music. I want to see you dance”.   Slowly and maybe not as awkwardly as I expected myself to, Matt and I started dancing. 

By the time we got to the song “Home” the fullness of how great life is hit me hard.  I sat there with Matt after 10 years of marriage, three kids, death, sickness, health and happiness and realized how amazing and beautiful my life is.  And that I just couldn’t have known that as fully as I do if I hadn’t of held Miles in my arms for those first 5 minutes of his life waiting for him to breath, sat with Matt’s Dad for three months at the end of his life, or been with Ava for days in the oncology unit in New Hampshire.  I could only truly know how amazing my life was by fundamentally understanding that life is by no means guaranteed.  It is one crazy, amazing, sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful gift.

Is that the power of music?  It matches the vibrations of our emotions and makes them clearer to us than words maybe ever could? I believe music helps us feel all of our emotions, good and bad and accept these feelings without as much judgement as we sometimes feel in the heat of life's moments. And I really think it is feeling this full range of emotions and feelings that our bodies can produce that truly makes us human. Without the good feelings life is just too miserable, but without the bad feelings we don't fully understand just how beautiful those good feelings really are. Is that why I love running so much? It allows me to hear the rhythm and the beat of my own body until my emotions surface and I can deal with them in a reasonable and healthy manner? Is this what being a human being is really all about?  Not just going through our days and doing what needs to be done, but truly feeling the full range of feelings that life has to offer?

 The next day was our first gig at Les Caves. It was my turn to share as much of that feeling I got the night before as I could.  We played and had fun, our friends came out and drank beer and listened and clapped for us, and we put out our music for whoever would listen. Perhaps we livened up the atmosphere a few shades that night.  But it wasn’t until the wedding, when we got to play the first dance for the bride and groom that I got that feeling.  We played a song I wrote for Matt a few years ago and soon other couples joined in and danced, and I realized we were all together in this moment, and that was a very cool feeling.

We finished our mini tour in Eugene.  It was just Adrian and I and we were amped.   I tried to enjoy the feeling of my voice going out into the crowd; finally I could sing quietly and not have the sound get lost.  I tried to back off on the p sounds that were causing the mic to make a loud, distracting puffing sound.  I tried my best to stay with the music and not worry too much about the resulting sound.  Then Etouffee performed.  Two guys, violin, rhythm guitar, Cajun music.  The first song brought everyone’s ears and eyes to the stage, focused on them.  It was fun, uplifting, fast, and very happy.  We all were captivated by the sound.  Before long my friend Danielle said, “These guys need people dancing”.  Well, since I don’t need to worry about being cool I figured we may as well be the dancers.  And that was probably the first time I have ever found myself dancing in public on a Monday night.

The next morning Miles, Anna and I listened to more Etouffee and danced around our living room together.  I want them to feel this with me, the music filling up our living room making us spin in circles until we fell down.  I want them to sing with us around the campfire and someday make music that is all their own.  I hope we figure out how to make more and more people dance.  Perhaps I will figure it out, that perfect song as I am running through the forest, listening to the rhythm of my feet, feeling my heartbeat and meeting yet another fall.

Thank you for reading. Start dancing:

http://edwardsharpeandthemagneticzeros.com/music/ 

http://www.etouffee.com/

Racing to Happiness

I have a reoccurring theme in my life.  It goes something like this.  I start to race, it goes pretty well, I want to race more, I do race more, other parts of my life need attention and then I have to make a decision – do I continue to race no matter what and continue to chase my racing goals, or do I attend to the other parts a bit more and let go of the race. 

I think this is a very human problem, whether you are a Mom, Dad, athlete, musician, actor, professor, whatever.  Where do we put our energy? What is good enough?  Matt asked me the question long ago – “When will you be satisfied with racing, when will you have achieved enough?” Winning the local race, national race, world cup, Olympics? Where is that magic line we are looking for, so that when you cross that finish line, in that position, you finally win satisfaction?  And does satisfaction bring about happiness?

I remember the day when I had to make the decision to continue racing with Ava – do I want to keep pushing forward, or is it time to slow down or stop.  But the real decision I realized I needed to make was “What do I want out of this life?” And after some reflection, I realized what I wanted was to be happy.  Now this sounds ridiculous I know, but at that point, I think it was probably the first time I realized that the main thing I wanted in this life was to be happy.  This for me was a turning point.  Realizing for my first time that my primary goal was happiness, I now only had to ask myself, “What makes me happy?”. And believe it or not, for me this was an easy question.

There are thousands, and perhaps millions of things that make me happy, and they are luckily, amazingly easy to find, and obtain.  Being with Ava made me happy, taking her for bike rides to beautiful places made me happy, playing music makes me happy, spending time with Matt makes me happy, talking to my friends, my family makes me happy.  Seeing fireflies makes me ridiculously happy.  Racing can make me very happy.  But here I begin to approach a line.  For racing to make me happy, I still need to be able to enjoy the little things in life.  If racing starts to take up so much of my attention that I no longer have time for music, family and friends, then I begin to sacrifice the many things that make me happy for the goal of racing. 

And there it is – my answer is so clear, perhaps clearer to me than ever as I write this.  For my life to run well my first goal is happiness. For me to be happy, I like to do and experience the various things that make me happy.  If I am not careful, it is easy for me to let racing start to edge out happiness as the primary goal in my life.  And that is when things start to get out of balance.  I don’t have time for friends and family because I am racing.  I don’t have time for music, I am racing. And I will admit to this – I don’t have time to be happy, I am racing.  I will be happy when I have finished racing… oops.

And this is the point at which I am out of balance, I want more time to train, but life is in the way, that pesky life thing that stops me from training. If only there was less life so I could train more and be a better racer.  And it is only writing these words that I can laugh at how ridiculous these thoughts sound on paper, because they seem perfectly justified when I hear them in my head at the time. And luckily I have my brave husband, who gently steps in the way of the race track, and says as carefully as one can hold a red flag up to a charging bull “are you sure you want to be racing right now?” and yes we crash, because I was racing and he asked me to change my pace. But as I slow down a bit, I am able to look around at all the things around me, this life, that I was just rushing past, and it slowly starts to occur to me that I started racing through life, instead of just racing a race. I am then able to reset my goal to “happiness” and return to life.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love racing, but sometimes it is that wrong kind of love, like when you obsess about someone and you start to become that creepy kid stalking your loved one, or holding on to them too tight and too often.  It is when I let racing be a fun thing that I do along with the other things that make me happy, that my life really works.

Yes, this entry comes about after I needed to make decisions with my family about how we were going to spend our summer, our precious few months of warm, beautiful sunshine, precious weeks off as a family.  Do I train to be the best triathlete I can be? Does our family travel to the races and does that become our focus? How much of that can we balance and still show our children the alpine wildflower blooms in the mountains, tent in the mountains under fields of stars, spend long afternoons at the pool swimming with our friends, riding bikes around town to get snow cones?

We decided on two races, that were fairly close to Corvallis, Black Diamond Xterra and Portland Xterra.  I trained when it fit into our summer activities.  I was able to do two huge road rides as Matt and I traded off riding to our vacation spots on the coast and to Bend.  They were beautiful days on the bike seeing miles of Oregon from the uninhibited view of my bicycle.  They will stand out in my mind as some of the most beautiful rides I have done in my life.  Matt also gave me a whole day to go running in the mountains.  I ran Iron Mountain, Cone Mountain and Browder Ridge in one day while the wildflowers were in peak bloom.  My mind could barely understand the colours I was seeing all at once.  There was one spot on the shoulder of Cone Mountain where I actually had to run back and see the flowers for a second and third time. 

Then my friend Diane Leclerc arrived from Quebec with her three beautiful children and husband Joel.  Diane actually radiates happiness so vividly I am pretty sure she creates her own magic.  Our family was happy to fall under the spell.  Diane fills every moment with beauty and fun.  We would all ride our bikes to get snow cones, go swimming at Osborne, pick fresh blueberries, make a quick batch of berry sauce with no recipe that was perfect.  We climbed mountains, swam in hot springs, mountain biked through old growth forest giggling wildly and whooping as dark approached.  Our children played tag, picked endless bouquets of flowers, ate far too much candy and had the kind of time only children (and Diane) can have in the summer.  Diane is what happens when I live life for happiness.  And yet it was her that insisted I go race.  “You love it Karen, you need to do it,” She said, giving me the most serious look she could muster before bursting out laughing.  She understands at once the seriousness of doing what I love and the silliness of what I do.

And Voila, I am able to race with lightness and ease and sense of humour again.  Ava and Miles also raced and had a wonderful time playing with Mel’s wonderful sons.  Matt bought a fishing rod and everyone went fishing in the lakes.  And though I struggle with that line, I know that I crossed the finish line of these last two races with my life in balance – at least for now. I know that I will get out of balance again, and I will need Matt to bravely stand in front of me and say “Karen, are you racing for happiness or for racing?” and I will have to examine my motives.  This will happen over and over.   And that is why I am glad I married him, he makes me happy.

The Power of Gratitude

Last weekend Matt (my husband) and I did the local 50 mile Test of Endurance mountain bike race. This race is put on by Mike Ripley, a man who seems to be able to successfully pull off six jobs at one time. He is a father of three wonderful girls; husband to a lovely wife; has created Team Dirt, a community based mountain bike race team that includes everyone from beginning mountain bikers to pro racers; he runs mudslinger events, which puts on five awesome mountain bike races every year, and he is a member of the OBRA board, helping to run cycling events and advise on cycling issues all over Oregon and the US. This man is at the very heart of the cycling community in Oregon and his work is nationally renowned.

Before the| race Mike spoke to all the racers giving us the directions we would need to complete the 50 mile race. Then he took a moment to tell us about another racer in our Oregon cycling community. Mat Barton was racing in the Portland short track series when he hit a series of bumps and was thrown from his bike. The crash left him paralyzed from the chest down. A surgery had already been done, but doctors felt the damage would be permanent. Mike went on to tell us that a fund had been set up to help cover Mat's medical costs. In one day the fund had raised $29,000, but the goal was $50,000. Mike had t-shirts for sale and all the proceeds would be going to Mat's medical expenses.

It occurred to me as we all stood there together, that we are more than a group of mountain bikers meeting here today to race one another. We are a group of friends, and training partners. We will all take turns during a race to push each other to race better, faster, ride a better line, try harder and to inspire one another. And when one of us goes down, we gather around that person to fill whatever needs arise.

Mike left us all with this simple message before we rolled out to start the race, "Take care of each other out there." These are probably the words every racer should carry with them on and off the race course. These are the words that make a community.

Throughout my life I have been lucky to live in community after community of people who take care of each other out there. I was born in White Rock, Nova Scotia which is perhaps the dictionary definition of a community. White Rock has approximately 500 residents, each living in their own little home on an acre or more. There is a church, a hall, a general store and a mill (the last two are now sadly closed). But it is the people who still make White Rock a very special place.

I grew up in on a road with three houses, ours was the middle. The doors to all three houses were always open to the neighbours, I don't remember anyone knocking. Often as kids we could choose where to eat supper by who was having what. In this environment I was essentially the youngest sister of seven children, and I had three moms and dads. If my mother was baking and she was short an egg or a cup of milk it was no problem to run next door and get the needed ingredient. When Mom finished baking, she would send me back to the neighbours house with a plate of cookies. This saved us a trip to town, and they got some baked goods. It also made it ok for them to borrow from our family when they needed something. I would argue that it is small gestures like this that lie at the heart of every community. A need arises, help is asked and help is given. From this stems the trust and strength that comes from knowing you are not alone.

When I left White Rock, I moved to Fredericton, NB, where I had to find a new community. As a young adult we get to choose our next community if we move away from home. It took time, but I started to find more and more young people who loved to ride bikes, nature and music. We shared meals together, rode bikes all day and played music at night. With time and support from my new community I began to take cycling more and more seriously. An opportunity eventually arose for me to join a mountain bike race team that would travel around to the US national series. Generously, all of my travel expenses and equipment would be covered. I just needed enough money for food and lodging for the summer.

I had only one small problem, as a student I had no money, in fact I had only accumulated debt since starting university. So now what? I wrestled with the problem but saw no solution. I had a great opportunity but I couldn't take it.

Until my friend Norm Seibrasse just gave me a check for $800. And then my friend Diane LeClerc began the Wolf Foundation and began asking all of her friends, family and even her entire choir if they would help me live my crazy dream to become a mountain bike racer. My brother soon got an email from Diane. He was overseas on his Naval Ship the HMCS Montreal at the time. He soon did a fundraiser for me, shaving his head, and riding a stationary bike for 24 hours. He sent me a check for $1500. My community sent me across Canada and the US to race the Canada Cup and the NORBA series that year. I was not just sponsored by Dried Plums and Harpoon Beer, but the Canadian Navy, the Fredericton Community Choir, Andrew Arsenault's Dental Practice, The Radical Edge, Rhino Bike Works, all my friends and family and all of Diane's friends and family.

I won a Canada Cup that year and I realized during the race that it was no longer just my win. On the hills I could feel my community pushing me up the hills, believing more than I did that I could go fast enough. It took all of my friends building crazy trails for me to ride, teaching me how to ride the crazy trails. It took Ben Moody and Rhino Bike Works fixing my bike race after race so it could work like new again. In that race I felt immense gratitude to many people, and I believe it is the strength of that gratitude that won the race that day. The race was not won by me but rather my whole community.

Susan Fenzl is a member of this community. Susan was my doctor in Fredericton, NB, seeing me through my first pregnancy with Ava. She is the mother of two beautiful children and an amazing cyclist. When Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer she was on her bike almost every day, despite her chemo treatments. She beat breast cancer and kept on riding her bike. When Susan was diagnosed with liver cancer four years ago it sent shock and saddness through our community. But Susan is not only calm and kind, she is tough, strong and determined.

It did not take long for word to spread to Catharine Pendrel, who at that time was winning world cups in cross country mountain biking. Catharine grew up just outside of Fredericton in Harvey, another wonderful Maritime rural community. Born to two loving and supportive parents (Johanna Bertin and Bruce Pendrel) and brother Geoff, a member of the Canadian National Downhill Mountain Bike Team, Catharine quickly rose up through the ranks of the mountain bike world. She is now an inspiration for many people, but Susan always held Catharine and the rest of the Luna Chixs Mountain Bike Race Team in high regard. Luna Chix have been raising money for breast cancer for years and this, along with the fact that Catharine was a member of our community obviously made the Luna Chix a special team in particular for Susan.

Soon a package arrived in the mail for Susan from Catharine containing an entire Luna Chix Team cycling clothing kit, and photos signed by all of the team members. Included was an invitation to meet the team at the Mt. St. Anne World Championships, just seven hours away from Fredericton.

In the months that followed Susan underwent many surgeries. The cancer had spread throughout her body. Our friends who were doctors helped us understand how serious Susans cancer was. It was unclear how long Susan had to live. But when World Championships arrived about 6 months later, Susan was there to meet Team Luna and Catharine Pendrel.

Last year Catharine became World Champion. This year she will be compete for the gold medal at the Olympics. Susan will be watching her compete from her home in Fredericton, still strong and beautiful and cycling. Catharine will be riding with much more than her own strength, but with the strength of her entire community behind her - and trust me, it is a huge community that has a lot of gratitude for not just an amazing athlete, but a really amazing person.

Communities give us strength and I think I may be getting close to understanding how it works, so let me tell you my theory so far:

You often need help in this life just to get by, to be happy, to chase your goals. When you need help you can ask for help. Your community will help you. This will fill you up inside and give you the strength you need to do whatever it is you need to do. When you do it, you will realize you did not do it alone. Your community was with you the whole time. This will make you feel so grateful you won't know what to do with yourself. So when someone asks you for help, you are going to want like nothing else to help them - and right there is the power of gratitude - it just keeps on growing.

So in the words of Mike Ripley, "Take care of eachother out there". Because you just don't know how far that can take you.

Donations to Mat Barton:

www.bartonpdx.com/updates-progress/

 
                              

***** A Note to those who may still be reading****

 

I wrote the first draft of this in my car after racing Picketts Charge in Bend. Anna was sleeping in the car and I was writing this in my journal and listening to the car radio. Matt took the two older kids to pizza further towards town. I was to go pick them up when Anna awoke. After finishing my entry I tried to turn the car on only to discover the battery had died. I tried calling CAA on Matt's new cell phone but Matt had the CAA card so they informed me I was out of luck. I went into the coffee shop to ask for help. No one working there had jumper cables, but I noticed a man wearing a Bend Fire and Rescue uniform. So I asked him if he could help jump my car. He brought over his fancy truck and got my car going in no time. Dave Howe reminded me that our community is not limited to who we know. It extends to anyone we meet who may be able to help us or us them. Dave told me the story behind Pickett’s Charge, named after a man who was one of the key members of the cycling community. He organized a criterium around a subdivision he designed and built. Sadly, he died of cancer some years ago.  They organized Pickett’s Charge soon after he died in his honour, and I am sure his spirit lives on as all of us racers fly around that race course having the time of our lives. Thanks Dave for entering my community, because of you I was able to quickly find Matt and the kids downtown Bend and get to the Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers concert with plenty of time. I believe this is a good way to end this blog.

www.nickibluhm.com

Thanks for reading!

The Miracle of Generations

Matt and I got ready for a race this weekend, Return of the Jedi in the Siskiyou Mountains in Southern Oregon.  We needed camping gear, race gear and food for two days for us and the three kids.  No problem.  But it was, and then we had to put the bikes on.  We were a little tired from staying up on Friday night and indulging in a Sherlock Holmes Episode.  It took a half an hour and perhaps a few of my tears to get all four bikes on the back of the car, and I was not the one loading them.  We did make it into the car, all packed up missing only a few essentials and had an amazing weekend.  But boy the loading of the car, cleaning the house, rounding up the three kids did feel...hard.

But lets talk about hard.  When I am whining like my children about loading up our car and doing a super fun race with my awesome husband, sweet kids and good friends, it serves me well to take a minute and reflect on my grandmother.  Elsie Kinsmen just turned 93 last week.  My mom told me many stories about my grandmother as I was growing up, and I can honestly say that even as a child, I recognized the goodness of my life relative to the harshness of my grandmothers.

Elsie was born on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, outside of the small town of Chester.  Nova Scotia's south shore is both beautiful and harsh. It is the first part of mainland Canada that the Atlantic Ocean meets after leaving England.  The summers are pleasant enough, not too hot or too cold.  But the late fall, winter and early spring can be quite horrid.  The Atlantic ocean is so large that it can hold onto the summers heat and release it slowly over the winter months. Therefore instead of the rain mercifully turning into snow, it often warms up just enough to come down as a slush like substance only slightly warmer than freezing.  It can creep through your skin and sneak into your bones making you a kind of cold that is hard to shake.  It is like winter and spring are locked in a continual battle, a seasonal war zone that doesn't end for months at a time.  It is in this environment Elsie spent her childhood.

Elsie was one of six children that my great grandmother and great grandfather were raising on a farm. The farm house was heated by a wood stove and all the wood needed to be cut, dried, loaded onto a cart and drawn by horse to the house.  This was usually done in the winter in Nova Scotia since there was less farm work at this time of year and it gave the wood almost a year to dry.  My grandfather was pulling a load of wood back to the house over the ice when a horse went through.  Horses were very valuable - they were the cars and the major worker on the farm. He had no choice but to get that horse out of the freezing water even if it meant him getting into it.  He was able to free the horse and get back to the farm house, but his health began declining from that day on.  Pneumonia eventually set in.  This simple accident ended up costing him his life.

Now that left my Great Grandmother with six children to provide for through the winter. It was not long before she got very sick as well and all but the oldest of her children were sent to live with different families in Chester. My Grandmother was sent to live with a very nice and well to do family in town.  She was quite happy. They wanted her to be a teacher or a nurse.  She was given beautiful clothes and a warm jacket.  She lived happily with these people for many months and loved them, and they loved her.  My great grandmother regained her health though and Elsie was sent back to the farm to help with the many jobs that needed doing.  My great grandmother did end up remarrying and having three more children, a total of nine. 

When my grandmother was fourteen she started working in the lobster cannery every summer.  When she was sixteen she left home and moved to the Annapolis Valley.  The Annapolis Valley is protected from the Bay of Fundy by the North Mountain and from the rest of Nova Scotia by the South Mountain.  Its summers are warm and pleasant, the farm land is excellent.  Elsie worked as a house keeper on various farms. She met my grandfather while working at a farm close to where he grew up. They soon had one, then two more babies and then my grandfather joined the Canadian Army and was shipped overseas to fight World War II for three years. This left my grandmother with three young babies to raise on her own in a house with a wood stove and no running water.  The water had to be lugged from a pump across a large field.  The diapers had to be washed by hand.  The winters in the valley were snowier and colder than in Chester.  The spring and summer was filled with mosquitoes, black flies and no see ems.

To be honest, I sometimes feel like three kids is a lot of work.  I have to change diapers, do their laundry, take them to their schools, wake up early with them.  Matt works a lot, earns a good wage I can stay at home with the kids and we live well.  But sometimes I feel I could use a break.  Then I think about my grandmother, washing diapers by hand, with water she had to carry back to the house, heat up the water on a wood stove to boil the diapers.  This is before we even talk about food, growing it, canning it, preserving it, baking from scratch.  I think of little things like - what did she do with the kids when she had to carry the water?  It would be agonizing to carry a bucket of heavy water walking at a toddlers pace and carrying a baby.  And this is not a weekend of camping, this is three years with no husband, with a very real possibility he would not be coming home at all.

He did come home though.  He was shot in the arm and spent the rest of the war working in a greenhouse.  I honestly think I would take the gunshot.

My mother was the next baby born and then there was Uncle John a number of years later.  There was also the baby that didn't live.  My grandmother told me about this last summer.  Her mother in law was the midwife in the community.  She took the baby and buried him in the backyard.  That was what was done.  No more and no less. 

Miles did not come into this world easily.  Anyone who was watched him on a bike knows he is a crasher.  He learns, as I learn, by crashing first and doing it right the next time round.  His birth was no different.  His arm got stuck behind his back and though his got his head out, his shoulders were still trapped inside. I knew something was not right for hours as I would have happily left my body at any point during the six hours between midnight and 6 in the morning even if it meant dying.  It took my midwife 3 minutes to figure out how to get him out, knowing full well he could not breath the whole time.  Miles did not breath on his own for 5 minutes after we got him out and his arm was badly broken.  He was completely blue and lifeless and when I held him I knew my life was going to be over if this did not change.  My heart was breaking, and I needed this boy to be ok, if I was to be ok.  He had a name already, I had know him for 9 months already, he had a life already as my son, Matt's son, Ava's little brother, Mom and Dad's first and only grandson. He was to born on the same day as Matt's father. Nothing was going to be alright if he did not make it.

Now I know my grandmother felt the same way after carrying her own baby for nine months and labouring for hours and loosing her baby. Her life was not the same after that. But it was not the same after loosing her father, or after loosing her nice family that would have given her a life very different from the one she was living. Yet she survived, and she kept going.  She survived this harsh, harsh life to have my mother, and my mother had me, and I survived to have Miles.  And every other person in my line survived to have every other person in my line.  And this I realized two months after having Miles, is the miracle of generations.  We have all survived.  If you are reading this, you to are a member of this crazy line of survivors.  Women and men so tough that they would pull a horse out of freezing water to bring you back firewood to keep you warm.  So tough that they would carry water for years on end to cook your food and clean your clothes.

My grandmother went on to work 6 days a week in the Graves Pickle Plant while raising her five children.  My grandfather also worked six days a week.  By all accounts sometimes they would yell at the children for lack of manners, misbehavior or missing chores.  They were perhaps not always the kindest parents one could imagine.  But they loved their children enough to work themselves to levels of fatigue I can only imagine to keep their children alive and healthy.  On Sundays they would even enjoy a Sunday drive to local swimming spots, the ocean, friends houses. 

My grandmother was cared for in her home by all of her children until she was 91.  My grandmother was still gardening, playing cards with her friends and cleaning her outside windows.  She also is known to have killed the odd rabbit with a rock if it was eating her plants.  Elsie is still surrounded by all her children in the nursing home.  They take turns visiting her daily and though they feel terrible they could not keep her in her home, they are doing everything they can to keep her safe and as happy as possible.  This is the sign of a deeply loved mother.  

Last night I was tired.  I tried to go on the local group road ride but when the pace picked up I had to drop off the back and knew I didn't have it in me to keep up.  Not even close.  Perhaps I don't have the stuff my grandmother was made out of, my easy life can still wear me out.  But after the group disappeared over the horizon I began to enjoy the ease of my peddle strokes, the quiet of the outdoors, it was blissful.  It is an ease my grandmother perhaps hardly ever enjoyed until after her children were fully grown.  This is how I know her, a beautiful, thin older woman who lived quietly in a nice clean modern house that was built after the old house burnt down.  She could sip her tea in piece, eat food that came both from her garden and from the grocery store as she pleased.  She could simply flick a switch and a light and heat would come on.  You got the feeling when you were around my grandmother there is nothing more she could ask for in the whole world.  Once a week she would even go out with the family and have a meal out in the local tavern.  I am sure it all felt a little like a miracle, the ease of modern life.  But I see a miracle every time I see my grandmother.

The Teachers

I had a bad race this weekend.  I got passed by most of the Pro/Cat 1 women's field shortly after the beginning of the race.  There was nothing I could do as each woman went by.  Nothing was wrong with my bike.  I was just flat. I felt surprised at first. "Really?" my brain said. "Those spin classes I have been doing are not enough?".  Then I kind of laughed at myself for thinking a spin class or two a week was going to prepare me to race against these women who are training hard most days to ride their bikes fast.  They are doing the right things to go fast.  I then settled in as best I could to race as well as I could.  I could relax and enjoy myself.  This I can do because of Ben Moody.

Ben Moody is the kind of teacher you are lucky to meet once in a lifetime.  He is probably the best athlete I will ever meet in my life.  I have seen him defy laws of gravity of his bike.  I have seen him keep up with Cat 1 roadies up climbs when he was a mountain bike racer. I have only heard legends of his downhill skiing abilities.  But perhaps his greatest gift is his ability to share his skills with other people. 

Ben teaches downhill skiing at a local private school. He has taken a number of athletes to the national level for downhill skiing.  It was Ben who taught me more about mountain biking on single track then perhaps anyone. He would ride in front of me just fast enough that I could follow his lines.  He rarely gave me instructions, he knew words did not help me much.  But the most important thing I learned from Ben was how to laugh at myself. 

1. Laugh at Yourself.
Ben often lead by example.  When I had one of the worst races of my life, Ben was nice enough to listen to me drone on about my tragedy.  My terrible race, the end of my mountain bike career, I was finished, washed up, done.  He finally took me swimming at a nice swimming hole so we could jump off waterfalls and I could have a bit of fun and stop feeling so sorry for myself.  He reminded me there was another race the next weekend and maybe I wouldn't do so badly at that one.

Now go forward one year when Ben had his worst race ever.  He had just found out he had athlete induced asthma and had a horrible first race at the first NORBA at Big Bear. The race began at 7000 feet and we had no time to acclimate.  His asthma made it almost impossible for him to breath in the high desert air.  He came in dead last.  We raced for California Dried Plums that year.  The results recorded his team as simply Team Dried.  When Ben saw it he honestly laughed for 10 minutes, and it became a running joke for our team for the rest of the year. 

Ben had enough experience and self confidence that the race result meant very little to him.  He was still funny, light hearted, a great team mate and no race could change who he was, for better of worse.  I am still learning from that example, but Ben taught me how to lose with a bit more grace and a sense of humour.

I have another great teacher in my husband Matt Betts.  Matt goes as hard as he can at whatever he does almost all the time.  If you ask Matt for racing advise you will get this answer in reply (and this is lesson #2).

2. Goes as hard as you can for as long as you can.
Matt gives everything 110%, maybe more.  He can do everything faster and better than me no matter what.  His brain just operates more quickly.  His body simply follows orders.  I think during my horrible race last weekend I heard his voice telling me to stop lallygagging and get going.  That and hearing a women behind me working so hard.  "I can't work that hard anymore," my brain thought, "but I can probably put out more effort than I am" and I would try and keep up with someone passing me just a little bit longer than I thought I could.

Matt can do the impossible.  He doesn't take no for an answer, he can drive himself to do whatever he really wants.  Yet he always appears calm and always takes time to be kind to those around him.  It is this amazing balance of kindness combined with extreme effort that makes me like him so much.  I continue to try and strive toward this balance daily and feel lucky to have this teacher with me everyday.

As I dug a little deeper and got into the single track (my happy place thanks to Ben) I ran into another great teacher of mine.  Mel Norland is riding super fast after only 2 years of mountain bike racing
and had passed me not long after the start.  Her chain had fallen off however, so I was able to see her again and ride with her in the single track.  Mel is much fitter than I am but I have more experience on the trails.  She let me in front and let me lead the way through the trails.  Then she was able to jump out onto the more open roads and ride fast again.  Mel has been teaching me how to learn.  Her mind is completely open.  She is willing to learn from everybody.  This brings me to my third lesson.

3. Learn from everybody.
Mel picks up things faster than most people and I am starting to understand why.  Every person she meets, she meets with openness, kindness and respect.  If they are doing something amazing she gets excited to see it and never jealous.  Then she watches, asks questions and learns from them whenever possible.  I believe it is her openness to learning from everyone around her, withholding judgement until she has tested out information for herself, that helps her learn so quickly.  I watch her pass me on a bike with ease now after training for only two years and I feel amazed and honoured that I am able to train with such a remarkable athlete.  It is truly amazing to watch her athletic development and know this is only the beginning.  She has learned (by being open to everyone around her) in two years what most folks could learn in five. 

Mel is also a very efficient person.  Every weekend Mel figures out how to get her two boys, and husband (all of whom are racing) to the race, find someone to watch the kids and feed everyone healthy, organic food that she has prepared.  She does this with an ease that is impossible to understand.  Then she is able to help me try and do the same thing, often finding me a babysitter as well or finding family members to drive us to airports and pick up my bike that needs major repairs.  I call her the Team Manager only half joking.  I couldn't race with my three kids without her.  She is teaching me how to do it.

I have had many great teachers in my lifetime, I have been very lucky.  From my amazing parents to my own children now.  But I couldn't finish my blog without mentioning Anna Healy.  Anna was the first woman I met who could keep up with "the boys".  In Fredericton, New Brunswick where I first started racing, there was a group of men who pretty much dominated the cycling scene.  They still do 15 years later.  There were people who rode bikes, and then there were the "Radical Edge Guys".  They raced bikes and were unimaginably fast.  There were no easy rides so there was no learning from them.  They set a high standard for what a racer was that served many of us well in time.

Racing bikes was something only they did as far as I could tell.  Then Anna came to town.  Anna was a Professional racer from Calgary, one of the fastest women in Canada.  She could actually go for a ride with "The Guys" and keep up.  But even more amazing than the fact Anna was that fast, was the fact she would ride with mere mortals like me.  "You should race" she said after we rode one day.  I gave her a long story as to why I couldn't.  "Well, you should probably race if you want to." She said. She gave similar advice to Catherine Pendrel over 10 years ago. Last year Catherine became the XC Mountain Bike World Champion.

Anna is now a mother of two boys, a triathlete/mountain bike racer, a computer scientist/mechanical engineer and still one of the most generous people I know with her time, knowledge and kindness.  I have yet to see her in a bad mood.

I will sum up Anna Healy's teaching in these words.

4. You should race if you want to.

But please, substitute whatever your dream is for the word "race".  Racing mountain bikes was just my dream that lead me to all of these amazing teachers and many others that I haven't yet mentioned (including the Grand Master who will require a post dedicated just to him). 

I will have more bad races and maybe even some good ones.  But the point of all this is that it doesn't really matter.  The journey racing bikes takes me on has lead me to amazing people from the moment I started to this day.  It leads me to people I want my children to be around and be like.  It leads me to people I want the whole world to know about.  It leads me closer to who I want to be.

Thanks for reading.

Why did I bring a Row Boat?

It was almost seven years ago that I had my first daughter.  We all have our ideas of how life will look after kids.  I am always surprised looking back just how wrong I can be, except when I look at other things I have tried to predict or plan.  It is possible that the one constant in my life is my amazing ability to have plans blow up.  Picture my plans as a little row boat.  Now picture life as a giant ocean.  Now put my row boat on the ocean.  Now add a hurricane. Or at least a small series of pretty good storms. Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

Now, the other thing I will say is that I wouldn't have things any other way. I think I may not mind riding out a hurricane in a row boat. Metaphorically speaking only, I actually get really motion sick but that is a story to save for a blog on traveling alone with children...

I am a mother now of three children.  I am also an athlete.  I think these things are both pretty natural to me.  As a kid I would run laps around my house just for fun, and spent most of my time practicing gymnastics in any space available.  As a mom I have quit just about everything so I can be with these kids.  They fascinate me.  Watching them learn about this world makes me learn about it all over again, but much better than I could have without them.  I want to spend as much time with them as possible before they don't want to anymore.

So I still need to fit in athletics.  Before kids I was a mountain bike racer.  I expected to continue after kids and did with Ava for half a season.  As a nine month old baby Ava would come to my races and we would work out child care, some loving friend or relative would have her after I fed her and pass her back shortly after I finished.  We were still breast feeding a lot as Ava did not love solid food and had a very loud scream like cry that would make most people fear babies for a good time (think years) after they heard it.  Most people had 2 hours before Ava would get angry that I had gone and then commence screaming.  I therefore had 2 hours to finish my races if I did not want to traumatize both friend/family and baby.  It took a few races before I thought this might not be right for my family at that moment.

Seven years later we have added two more kids, my husbands tenure track job, a move across the border and continent, various illnesses and mishaps.  So were does mountain biking fit in?  

On Exercise:

I began riding and running with Ava after she was 3 months old. Many naps took place in the moving crib (or the Chariot), as I got in work outs while she slept.  I also learned I could combine errands with these workouts, as there was a good chance I could roll right into a grocery store with a sleeping baby without missing a beat.  This is where Momthlete was born I believe.  I needed to get the family food, I wanted to work out still and be outdoors, and I had a baby.  I simply began combining all of these activities into one strangely efficient outing.  

As we had more kids I would simply add one more child to the mix and make a destination out of a kid friendly event.  Storytime at the library on Thursday became 5 km hard run to the library (I am always running late), storytime, bagel at the bagel store, 5 km run home as perhaps two kids napping.  If the older child needed exercise I would just throw the run bike in the chariot and walk some parts with Ava as she "biked" along.

I now live in Corvallis, OR, perhaps the most bike and child friendly town in America if not beyond.  Bike lanes and paths lead me everywhere in this town.  The town is home to more PhDs per capita than any other town/city in America.  Really, my husband is an ornithologist (he studies birds).  There are 32 ornithologists living in Corvallis.  That almost freaks me out. People are smart here and have created programs to make smart, happy, healthy kids here.  It may be the perfect place for a momthlete. There are always cool things to run my kids to in this town,

With the third baby, it did get harder.  Sometimes I would do 10 km runs with 120 lbs of kids in the Chariot. That thing that saved me was this:  For some reason kids know not to fight in the confines of a Chariot stroller. It works out so badly so fast, it just doesn't really happen. They also learn to bike on their own as it eventually gets better than sharing the seat with their sibling. 

Now I can actually do 10 km runs with just the toddler having her nap while the older two kids are riding beside me.  We stop and look at things along the way and may stop for candy or ice cream at the halfway point, but whatever works. We all love these trips.

On Racing:

Racing became pretty much limited to local events.  I never had another baby that was so attached to me so I was able to do some longer races.  My strange new fitness from my strange new workouts did not make me faster, but they kept me strong and my endurance was growing.  I ended up almost by accident doing a 100 mile mountain bike race in Oregon called the Cascade Creampuff thanks to Mike Ripley of Mudslinger Events.  It was the longest I had ever been on a bike period, but I finished without too much of a problem.  At that time 11 hours on the bike seemed a bit like a nice break from the daily Mom job.  A welcome change for the day so to speak.  Still I would rather be a Mom most days.

There is also a local 50 km running race in the McDonald Forest that borders my backyard.  When I get to run or bike alone, this is where I go.  The chance to run a huge portion of the forest in one day had captured my imagination for a few years thanks to Mel Norland, another momthlete who teaches me more and more everyday about how to race and be a mom.  Last year I finally got the opportunity to do the race.  I had pushed the kids around enough that year that I was pretty sure my body could handle it.  It was almost dreamy to run for almost 5 hours in a beautiful forest with someone providing all my food every 10 km.  After 6 years of being a stay at home mom I will a lot of crazy things for someone else to make my food.

I am still trying to race.  Still trying to stay in shape, but the row boat is not always on calm oceans.  It does not stay on a very steady course. And it seems that I neglected to bring a better boat to this ocean so, I just try and ride it out so to speak the best I can.  And I try to enjoy the adventures along the way.

Stay tuned for more. Thanks for reading.