A month has passed since my last post, and my resolution to become a better blogger. I haven’t given up on the resolution: I actually have been spending a lot of time writing and pondering HOW to become a better blogger. Quantity counts, of course. But there’s got to be a factor of quality, too.
In the meantime, I have traveled: to Minneapolis for eight days and to Washington, DC, for five days, where I attended the public celebration of President Obama’s inauguration, and documented what I was witnessing via a Facebook live event and a Twitter live feed. One hundred and four people made their presence known on my Facebook event, and I received comments, likes, and greetings from people all over the United States. A good feeling.
I also have been moving my body.
Since Jan. 1, I’ve dropped two more pounds. I’ve exercised an average of six days a week, and I made a big decision over the past weekend: I registered to compete in an Olympic Distance triathlon. The race is the Fronhofer Tool Triathlon, and it’s in the Albany, NY-Capitol region where I live. It takes place Saturday, Aug. 3, and will involve a 1,500-meter swim in a lake, a 24.9 mile bicycle ride, and a 10-kilometer run. I thought an Olympic distance triathlon, would be a good step toward my goal of ultimately doing a half-Ironman and my dream of completing an Ironman before I hang up my endurathon training shoes for good. But I have to admit that when I saw that the swim was 1,500 meters, I nearly balked. Swimming (unlike cycling, for most triathletes) is usually my stronger discipline. But I haven’t been swimming the distances I used to swim in Hawai’i when the ocean was readily available, open all hours, and warm. My average swim of late has been about 500 yards … less than one-third of the total.
But my husband was reassuring. And so off to the pool I’ll go.
So what propelled me toward a triathlon? This year of all years?
As I’ve reflected on that question, I thought about how sports, teaching, and the writer’s life have long intermingled in my walk through this world. I began running marathons soon after I began a Ph.D. program: there was something about the long, slow patient discipline of marathon training that helped me understand the ebbs and flows, ups and downs, crises and joys of getting one’s self from coursework to dissertation proposal, proposal defense to comprehensive exams, comps to what we weird academic types call ABD-stage (all-but-dissertation, or, as a friend puts it, almost-bloody-done), through the writing which seems never-ending, the defense, revisions, and PhD (which I’ll re-label as Phinally Done). I completed nine marathons between 2000 and 2008. Oddly enough, I stopped when I was Phinally Done.
Since 2007, when I happily strutted around the University of Hawai’i campus wearing my father’s graduation gown and a couple of dozen lei draped over my neck and shoulders by my very supportive family and friends, I’ve felt myself in a new phase of self-definition as I’ve taught, written for academic and non-academic reasons, and embarked on a new venture with my husband into home-farming and self-sustainability. This phase seemed to hit a culminating point at the end of 2012 when I realized that even as I was in upstate New York in a tenure-track position as an assistant professor at a college whose mission and practices I deeply value, I was not (in the deepest heart of my hearts) a teacher but (this is scary to admit) a writer. A writer, first. Coming to this realization was aided by the fact that I had finally turned the dissertation that evolved alongside my nine marathons into a viable book manuscript and that I had been awarded a grant and a writing sabbatical to work on my second project. The realization also was aided by an understanding I had gained through my work with the Seattle Artist Trust’s Literary EDGE program that writers — real writers — almost always are more than just writers. To put this more bluntly, very few working-to-middle class people who are age forty or older can afford to live solely on income they generate as writers writing in genres and on topics of their choice. Most of us have “day jobs” that consist of teaching, journalism, or any other number of occupations. We live complex, multi-tasked lives that require us to aspire to creating superior skills of time- and project-management that allow for our day jobs, our writing desks, and our numerous other life-living pursuits that then turn around and fuel our writing.
How does this relate to sports? How specifically to triathlon training?
Some people whom I know who are writers are chronic non-exercisers. They are content to spend their days curled up with books, scribbling on notepads or typing onto keyboards, and do not ever need to experience the embodiment of writing through physical activity.
I am not one of those people.
Most of my days, I came to realize, revolve around planning: when and how I am going to exercise, what and when I will eat, and which work and which play projects I will take on.
One look at an average triathlon training plan makes you realize two things:
1. Finishing a triathlon in a strong, healthy way means being a pretty good all-around athlete. Besides training in the “disciplines” of swimming, bicycling, and running, one needs to incorporate flexibility (yoga and/or stretching), strength (gym workouts and weights), and some meditative grounding (for me, this comes with yoga and tai chi chuan) into a regime.
2. Doing a triathlon means being something — perhaps, like a writer — that is always already not just one thing but a composite of multiple parts. Just as I spend my days teaching, mentoring, writing, researching, gardening, cooking, reading, and exercising in an ever-expanding variety of ways, so do triathletes prepare for their great events by doing multiple sports.
My friend Kristin Heslop is one year older than me, a point that I mention simply to note that when one is over forty — and, well, yeah, over fifty — one cannot attribute what appear to be overly wild or ambitious aspirations to the rashness of youth. She discovered the joy of marathon running at about the same time that I burst into tears as I crossed the 2008 Royal Victoria Marathon finish line feeling — but not quite comprehending — that my body felt done, that this was the last. She thinks I still want to run another marathon. I think that maybe I do, too. But maybe not yet, because maybe my body is preparing me to embrace the multi-tasking of my present life.
If the marathon — like the PhD pursuit — teaches patience and discipline in the quest for a singular goal, perhaps the triathlon — like the life of a writer — teaches the juggling of multiple priorities, divided passions, and the honoring of variety as what the proverbs describe as that which adds spice to one’s life. I think I felt myself veering toward the triathlon path when I began to consider what it meant to be a better blogger. Or maybe when I drew a life pie on January 7 in my notebook and found that I could divide my priorities into eight fairly evenly divided pieces. Or maybe when I finished a Saturday workout that had me cycling, running, doing squats, jumping jacks, tai chi, lunges, jump rope, yoga, and swimming and feeling the bliss of a full life lived in my post workout soreness. Or perhaps it was the happiness that came when I registered last weekend for the Fronhofer Tool Olympic Triathlon, and realized that perhaps I had regained my footing and found for myself a place in the world anew.
Moving Your Body 