Got a mom to buy for? Check out this year's CMP Mother's Day Gift Guide.

• Agnostic Mom
• Halushki
• Mom-101
• Mrs. Flinger
• One Plus Two
• red stapler
• Surrender Dorothy
• The Caffeinatrix
• The New Girl
• Where am I going...and why am I in this handbasket?

Visit this site to find a great Chinese Restaurant. London restaurant reviews can be read here too.

Make a treasured gift for friends and family with a custom made desk calendar. Options to add text to individual calendar dates available.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

This blog saved by:

Lijit Search

Bloggy-linky-meme-y

Bwahahaha!

Daring you to disagree

Dirtying up other corners of the web

Home on the range

Inside the Beltway

Kids say the darnedest things

Look at me, look at me!

Miss Goosie

Miss Mousie

Olliepop

Professional butt-wiping AKA child care

Professional butt-wiping AKA project management

Repo woman

Round on the ends, high in the middle

The city that never sleeps

The king of beers

The wild blue yonder

Uncategorized

Who me?

Youthful indiscretions

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter

I’m not athletic. I’m not even coordinated. I will be the first to admit that I look pretty damn stupid attempting any sort of athletic maneuver.

Growing up, my brother and I were the only children in our town who never, ever played soccer. EVERYONE played soccer. Granted, neither of us ever CARED to play soccer, so it’s not as if I feel deprived. But it probably would have been good exercise (and a bit of comic relief for the other players and their parents).

I took ballet from age four to age eight. I wasn’t good. My legs – from the knees down – grew a little crooked. I walked on the insides of my feet (while my father walked in back of me, shouting, “Walk on the OUTSIDES of your feet!”). They noticed it pretty early, and the family doctor gave my mother two options: break her legs and have them re-set and wear special shoes and braces, or enroll her in ballet.

Ballet helped, but my ankles remained weak enough that when everyone else was going on point, I decided to go home.

My fear of gym class began in elementary school on the first day of first grade. I was wearing saddle shoes and a dress. I was not prepared for gym, and yet I was expected to participate that day. I stood there and cried, not realizing that it really wasn’t a problem, that I wasn’t expected to have my sneakers – just that I try to join in with the rest of the class.

I wanted to take gymnastics, but the nearest gym was a good twenty minute drive away, and my mother was not interested in chauffeuring me. She refused to drive me to piano lessons right there in our neighborhood, so driving to Miamisburg was definitely out of the question. And I’m pretty sure I would have been a lousy gymnast anyway.

I didn’t learn to swim until I was seven, and by then I had developed an unhealthy fear of the water. It didn’t help that one of my swim teachers was a bit heavy-handed. Literally. He would thunk kids on their heads if they didn’t do as instructed. And I saw him dunk a female swim teacher whom I really liked, and since I was scared of the water, I thought he was a big jerk for dunking her.

In middle school, I wanted to join the drill team, but since my parents had just bought me a harp (and bought a car in which to haul said harp), I decided not to press my luck and opted not to try out.

In middle school gym class, I participated reluctantly, except during the unit on karate, where we were expected to do pushups on our fists and on our splayed fingers (vs. the typical way of doing pushups on flat palms). I got my harp teacher to write a note to my gym teacher prohibiting me from doing pushups, as I might jam one of my fingers and not be able to play.

I did do a lot of swimming over the summers. Back and forth and back and forth in the pool – crawl, breaststroke, backstroke, sidestroke, and even butterfly. I had been to four years of Girl Scout camp where I had learned quite a bit, and I enjoyed diving for pennies in the deep end and playing Sharks and Minnows, but I never swam competitively or had any sort of coaching.

In high school, it took two years of tryouts and a year on the reserve squad, but I finally became a member of the drill team. I wasn’t good. But I showed up and worked hard and really did have a good time. It was actually quite an athletic endeavor, especially in August when we practiced twice a day for three hours at a time.

I actually enjoyed high school gym class. I took gym in summer school – 8-10am, Monday through Friday for six weeks. Every morning, we headed out to the track where we would run two laps (which was more than enough for me – I developed a stomach ache each morning on the way out to the track), and then we were free to do our own thing for the rest of the class. I played tennis. Not well, but well enough that I had fun and learned to keep score correctly. I did get in trouble once for putting down my tennis racket long enough to participate in a political debate, but for the most part, gym class was uneventful.

My non-athleticism didn’t become a problem until I pursued an appointment to the Air Force Academy. The application process includes a physical fitness test, in which I had to do nine pushups and one pullup. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? I hadn’t done a pushup in years – not since I had gotten out of those pushups in middle school gym class. One of the soccer players in my homeroom took it upon himself to coach me every morning and brought in doughnuts the day that I was able to do ten pushups.

Pullups were harder. Much harder. My father installed a pullup bar in our basement, and I practiced and practiced. The day of the physical fitness test, I still hadn’t done a pullup yet.

And as fate would have it, the pullup was the first event in the test, and I couldn’t do one then either, even under the intense pressure of this do-or-die situation. I managed to pull myself up until my forehead was even with the bar, but that was it. I didn’t receive an appointment to the Academy for other reasons as well, but my failure of the physical fitness test was the main deal-breaker.

I tried for an Air Force ROTC scholarship instead. I went for an interview with one of the officers at the ROTC detachment at the school – unbeknownst to me – that I would eventually attend and from which I would graduate. The interview went well, even when he asked me what part of ROTC did I feel would be the most personally challenging. I admitted my concern about my lack of athletic ability.

He asked, “You’ve heard the commercials for the Army, where they say ‘We do more before 9am than most people do all day’, right?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, in the Air Force, we try not to GET UP before 9am.”

A slight exaggeration, but it reassured me nonetheless.

In ROTC, each semester we had to run 1.5 miles in a specified period of time (14:24 for women, 12:00 for men), and complete a physical fitness test in which five events were completed within a specified period of time and points were awarded based on the number of pushups and situps, number of seconds spent in the flexed-arm hang position, inches cleared in the long jump, and number of seconds required to run 600 yards. I didn’t enjoy either of these tests, but I passed them every semester. Just barely.

In ROTC, we also had to attend field training for four weeks during the summer between our sophomore and junior years of school. Every day at field training, we had to complete (and pass) one of these two tests, in addition to the rest of the physical activity throughout the course of the day – both scheduled (running everywhere we went and evening team sports) and unscheduled (pushups done as punishment for a multitude of infractions).

In the weeks before field training, I began running on the high school track behind my grandmother’s house. Morning and evening. I was exhausted. And apparently, I was doing damage that I didn’t even know about yet.

At field training, I developed shin splints almost immediately. I recognized them; I’d had them during August practices in drill team. But these were much worse. Within another couple days, I was limping.

I went to sick call, much to my chagrin, where they promptly identified the shin splints, but also decided to do a scan for stress fractures. Basically, they injected me with a fluid that contained an isotope that could be seen in an x-ray, concentrated heavily in a few places on both of my shins, which confirmed their suspicions. I had to go home; there was no way I could successfully complete the rest of field training. Not that summer, anyway.

The next summer, I headed off to field training again. Due to some injuries sustained at some of the encampments the previous year, a few adjustments had been made, including the requirement that each cadet had to pass the run and the physical fitness test every single time. The new rule was that each cadet had to pass ONCE in the first seven days. Pretty lame in retrospect, but that adjustment saved my ass.

Sure enough, I developed terrible pain in both shins yet again. I went to sick call, but I resisted the doctor’s suggestion that I be scanned for stress fractures. I had to complete field training that summer; not only was my future in ROTC dependent on my success there, but if I didn’t complete field training, I couldn’t be commissioned. And if I couldn’t be commissioned, then I would serve a two-year enlistment as a cook in Greenland as repayment for my scholarship monies. You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

I limped my way through the rest of field training and promptly resumed my sedentary life upon arriving home.

I didn’t realize how sedentary I was until I saw some pictures of myself. Oh my. I wasn’t fat by any means, but I didn’t look the way I had. Something had to be done.

I started going to the gym. Nordic Track, Stairmaster, Nautilus – I became familiar with all three. Sometimes I went twice a day. I really enjoyed it, and my progress was evident the next time I took my physical fitness test and ran 1.5 miles (in 11:40 – not spectacular by any means, but better than I ever had before). Best of all, I didn’t care if I looked stupid. I was having fun.

I have managed to keep up the fitness habit, with a hiatus during each pregnancy, and moving out here has only served to bolster my interest in physical activity. It’s just so beautiful here – being outside seems only natural. I’ve also gotten involved in Pilates and yoga classes at the rec center. But I haven’t signed up for any organized physical challenges. Until now.

The rec center is holding a triathlon challenge. A triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 26.2 mile run, and 112 mile bike ride, all completed within a 24-hour period. This challenge allows two weeks to complete the swim, run, and bike ride.

Sounds like a lot of time, doesn’t it? To complete the challenge in two weeks, I will have to average 300 yards in the pool, 2 miles on the treadmill, and 8 miles on the bike – EACH DAY. That’s a lot, given that I work full-time and have a family and the routine life maintenance that can’t be put on hold.

But I believe I can do it. And I will be so proud of myself when I do.

Published by mothergoosemouse on February 6th, 2006 tagged Home on the range, The wild blue yonder, Who me?, Youthful indiscretions