I am the Storm!

Fate whispers to the warrior,

"You cannot withstand the storm"

The warrior whispers back

"I am the storm."

I have not written in a long time....but to catch up......I did qualify for the National  Senior Olympics in the 400m track and also the 50 and 100yd. freestyle. This was my goal.  To qualify. I had a pipe dream and I achieved it with all the blood sweat and tears I could muster! 

Just this am, my coach asked me what are my goals in the pool and on the track.  "The reality is"...and she interrupted, "Don't be negative..." I repeated, "the reality is, that I will not swim a 1:07 100yds nor will I run 400m in 1:17.   My goal for myself is to swim  and run my best... holding my best form and going as fast as I can."    I have standards for myself that I am working to achieve.  These are goals that I have set for myself knowing that  I will not win....and that is ok.

Winning for me is being active. It is getting off the couch.  It is eating healthy and in  moderation. It is loving to run.  It is enjoying a swim or a cycle and YES!  I am competitive.  I love the challenges.....but right now it is competition within  myself,....and that is totally fine! I have a lifetime to do more...and hey...I plan to live till 120 so I have another 60 years or so!  LOL! 

In February I ran and cycled the Powerman Duathlon.  That is a run, bike run race in Arizona.  It was a dirty, gritty  rock and ravine laden run that a mountain goat would have been better at than me....but I ran it and I suffered it and I achieved it.  What could be better?  When I achieve something  hard...something that may  have been doubtful that I could achieve months ago  and I achieve it...it is sweet success! 

   Just last year, I never dreamed  I could run trail. For that matter, a few years ago I could not run.  I could barely walk!   Now I am running trail.  The sky is the limit!  I think a great motto is dream bigger!

I have a triathlon in the future, the Duke City and then next year a cycle trip to a sportif in Yorkshire!  The sky is the limit.  

I am the Storm! 

"Through Competition We Can Discover Ourselves."

Jet Li's film "Fearless" has always been one of my favorite movies.  It is a story of transformation.  It is a story about transforming the heart ,body,  mind and soul.

When I was a practicing martial artist , I came across this film and it was a great example of martial art's highest value of "Not Fighting."  There is a premise called the "warrior and scholar."  The right fist is the warrior.  The Left  hand is the scholar and it covers the  fist,,,meaning that the scholar applies thought to each potential fight to figure a way out ...so that you do not have to fight.  This concept has been a foundation to my life all these years.

In practicing marital arts, when it was time to spar,  I always had to check my emotions and my intent  on the deck.   Did I dislike this person, did I want to teach them a lesson, did I need to punch them hard, or just graze them?  Was I angry after a long work day and should not be fighting on the deck?

In the film, Jet Li wants to be the best fighter.  He fights and fights.  He challenges every good fighter in China.  His life becomes  all about winning.  About challenging.  About having the best reputation and being adored by all. His followers manage his fights and he has adoring fans.  His ego was huge and he treated people poorly.  He always  had  to be first at any cost and he was out of touch with his emotions and had a hair trigger temper.

In the film, Jet Li suffers many horrendous atrocities He ends up just about dead. He hits bottom and has to rebuild his life slowly and steadily. The story is about how he recovered and learned about the simple things in life.  Once he got back into competition , years later, he had an new perspective on competition and he had  learned about himself through it.

Like Jet Li in the film, I  too have learned a lot about myself through competition.  In the race yesterday, for example, as the pack ran away from me at the start line, I had to ask myself if winning was the goal.  It was not.  What was my goal?  What did I need to do at that very moment?  I just needed to keep moving forward and get to the finish line.  That was all.   I was competing with myself this day...and that was a great enough challenge to accomplish.  And I did it.

And as the Universe would have it, a competitor in my age group. came back along the inner field of the track and ran me in...telling me I was almost there...I could do  it.  And I did.

It is through competition that you learn about yourself and exactly what you are made of. 

Recovering What You've Lost

I met a new friend today at the track.  This is  our second get together as we  walk and run and talk and share our lives as we work out.  We are both working to get back into shape and become more slim.  Both of us agree it has been and continues t o be our  life long pursuit.  Both of us are  working to recover the health and fitness that we have lost....or working to recover the fitness that was had before a recent injury...or we are working to recover what we once were as athletes.

For me, I am recovering what was lost a long while back when I was a young teenager.  It was the time for the presidents physical fitness test.  We had to run a timed 400 meters once around the track.  Being already chubby and certainly not training to do this o r to run at all, I did not make it around and had to walk myself in. All the kids laughed at me and made fun of me.

In my adult life now as a runner, I went through a phase saying to myself, I wish that long ago,  some nice kid or the gym teacher could have walked me  in and companioned me to the finish line when I took that  physical fitness test long ago.For years, I could not make it once around the track. Then I realized that the adult Cece is a runner and she can now help the little girl of the past to the finish lines whenever that little one feels like giving  up.  After I realzed that, the track did not seems so large and  I knew I could make it!  I realized that I was carrying baggage in my brain about track running.

Now I know that I can recover what was lost on that track all those many years ago.  I can do this by  by running that 400 meters in the Sr. Olympics City games  coming up on 5/12/18.  This is a way, I can recover what was lost years a go.  Is it the exact same thing?  No, but I can prove to myself that I can do it! Actually, I have already proved to myself that I can do it.

As the universe would have it, in a run last week, I was on my way back into the finish line and all of a sudden I saw my coach come running out.  She companioned me in and ran me into the  finish line.   This fact also recovered what I had lost all those years ago,,, the desire for support and kindness.  ...and PS,  my coach did not know this story.

I believe that  in some occasions we really need to have a "do over" of a traumatic event...so we can do it correctly this time....so that we can recover what we have lost...so that it does not prevent us from succeeding in the future.

When I was teaching school too, when a child did something very wrong...at the soonest opportunity, I gave them the chance to do  the exact same thing over but correctly this time....it provided a healing element that allowed the child
 to" keep moving forward" on a positive rather than negative track.

So, when you see me crying my eyes out for joy on Saturday, you will know that  I have recovered the track race that the little one  could not run ....oh so many years  ago..
Cece/Sisi

Running in Heaven with Uptown Funk

This is Cece in her resurrection body! Perhaps in her heavenly life...if she makes it there...she will be a runner with a great physique, and a smile on!

But those of you who know Cece...know she does not run.  But confession..... she has been "trotting" here and there as her trainer pushes her to exhaustion and works her heart rate past threshold!  She is Chi running to the best of her ability.

But boy, was she mad today!  Run a 1/4 mile, do a grueling partner bootcamp (100 and 200s of things) ...then run 5 sprints and then finish the partner bootcamp section...AND THEN run a mile!

First of all Cece is 58.  Then she has been told not to run,...she has no knees left.  On top of all this, it was not long ago that was was barely able to walk across the room. And FINALLY, she is a cyclist...not a runner.

And so with a huge resentment, she began to run her mile.  Everyone passed her.  Even those walking ...passed her as she trotted along.  Thankfully she had "Uptown Funk" in her ears and busted a move here and there to make it more fun!

And so it is,  with her trainer, Cece always needs to watch what she prays for.  In her runners coma, she recalled telling him that she needed to be able to maintain her heart rate over 154 for  45 minutes.  In her  first half mile,  after all the above was accomplished,  her heart rate was 140-150..in .her second half mile her heart rate was 160-178. She thinks it's a  pretty good guess she met her goal! 

 If she had not been in a coma, she would know how long it took her to run that mile...it wasn't 45 minutes...not even close....but it was well on the way to much better cardio endurance...inch by inch.

Thanks to Cristen for running the back 1/2 mile with Cece!

Double Eagle Time Trial

It has become a tradition that Cece attends the time trials to support her friend and cycle buddy Stephanie.  This year was no different.

It was a beautiful day, Steph felt strong and Cece had music in her ears as she waited for Stephanie to come across the finish line.

Cece had climbed her personal sufferfest that morning...the infamous Tramway hill....repeating her personal mantra, "Its me, my bike and the road. " She had greeted the cows on 313 and thought of Ellie the Shark and her run ins with cows on her bike!  She had even laughed...but that was before she started climbing!  

 After all this, she had hurried home and changed and sped out  to the time trial.  She missed her friend take off  by 3 minutes.

But there are joys to waiting and watching!  Like seeing friends and seeing the bike porn...the beautiful bikes that the racers ride....the wheels...the helmets...men in skin suits!

 Stephanie sent Cece the time trial results and Cece started calculating.  The overall winner rode the 12.7 mile course with an average speed of 30 mph!  For Cece who is just back on her bike after a long achilles injury, that is just remarkable!

And then there was that mustache!  Years ago, Cece read the"Cat Who" murder mysteries by Lillian Jackson Braun.  The detective in the book had a mustache that turned heads wherever he went.  It was described as "luxurious."  Cece always wondered what a luxurious mustache looked liked...until the time trial...where she spotted that mustache!

She tried and tried to take a pic but the man on the other end of that mustache.....was too quick and was always on the move!  Finally Cece chased him down after his race and got that pic!

Gabe Aragon

He was very gracious and allowed the pic and they had a nice chat.  He joked that if he became famous from this blog that he would split the money with Cece...well unless he gets a modelling contract from this...but you never know!

It was a fun day in the sun, not a cloud in the sky on the high mesa!  What could be better?

Well , if you can imagine the friends then hoofed it up to the International Folk Art Festival in Santa Fe.... where they started to feel their quads screaming every set of stairs or ramps they had to walk up!  LOL.

Pics of the festival coming soon!

Who Can Guess Where This is?

Doing hill repeats on this road.  Can you guess where it is located? 

See the coyotes?

A Surprise Adventure on the Bike!

It looks so blissful doesn't it?  It was the beginning of my sufferfest of hill repeats on 4.6% grades.  The only good things about it was that when people see a big girl on the bike that is working hard, uphill, they have to be supportive!    "You go girl!" "You're awesome!"    "You're working hard!"  It really helped me keep my drive to do hill repeats during this suffer-o-rama!

In the midst of the repeats were flying downhills that were tremendously enjoyable!

After I finished, I decided that I would do what I most love...go on a surprise adventure on the bike...to explore!  So, I set off on the road to who knew where.

After a mile or two I saw a sign  for an air park.  Was that a hidden airport?  There was another hill to climb in to get to it...not too bad..so in I went. And then I saw this sign.

This is an air park that has been around since 1955 so that people can fly radio controlled , gas or electric powered airplanes that they have made.  At the air park, I met Charlie and Robert who were happy to talk about the their planes and how they flew them.
Charlie told me that as a kid, he loved to make model plastic car kits that he put together with glue. Then he moved on to model airplanes .  He followed the directions and made the models.  He did the same thing with his plane only on a larger scale.

Charlie and his plane

At the Air Park, they fly their planes 7 days a week.  They have a covered "picnic" area to keep out of the heat and they can eat their lunches and have coffee too!  They can fly for 20 minutes at a time (their rule) and they wait their turn although I was told sometimes several people fly at once on busy days.

When I arrived, Robert was flying his plane.  I watched it taxi down the runway and take off....then I watched it climb high and do a loop de loop then fly down straight into a dive!

This is Robert

I asked Robert if he ever had been a pilot and he said no, that he just enjoys flying this plane. I asked if any women flew planes and he said there was one, but mostly only the men do it...he said,"....because men need their alone time and their own hobbies.  Of course women CAN fly, but they just don't."

The men were very patient with all my questions about the gas they use and how much.  Charlie's plane hold 12 ounces of gas and he used about 2 ounces per flight.  He likes to keep his tank filled and doesn't want to risk a crash.  He says it takes a lot of concentration to fly.

Robert showed me his radio control system and it was quite complex....this one is the landing gear, this one is the computer screen....and he went on and on over my head!  Here is a photo of Robert's control box.                               
                                          

Radio Control System

Up, up  up!

What a fun experience learning about something I knew nothing about that gives many people pleasure!   What a fun day out and about!  I discovered,  on my way out, that there were two other sections to the air park....one for smaller "toy" remote controlled planes and one for  larger radio controlled helicopters.

You can bring your lunch and go sit in the shade and watch the planes go up and do their tricks...something different that I did not even know was available in ABQ.