A little Paleo feast (yep – that brownie is totally paleo legit) at mmm…COFFEE! on Santa Fe. Check out this caffeinated Paleo gem for sure! Great people and great food.

As trainers we continuously walk the line. How far do you ask our athletes to go? Do you drive them past control or do you keep them safely nestled within it? How much of themselves do you ask them to give? Or in the case of this last question, perhaps instead: how much of themselves do they trust you with to give? I am the first to admit that I like control. I like to be in control as an athlete and as a coach, and I like my athletes to feel in control at all times – almost. Continue reading →

I’m a serious prep-er. For reals. I like to glean all the information I can before I even think about embarking on some glorious venture. The problem with that life technique: I think I am some glorious ventures short. While preparation establishes the foundation for expansion, a preoccupation for the former can also stagnate the latter. To often I tell myself that I am not ready. In some cases: duh. Totally not ready for that business. Example: dog owning. Not nearly responsible enough, and have an odd aversion to picking up poop via a plastic bag – gross. But in other cases, I allow my lack of experience to excuse me from taking a risk. At some point we have to believe that we know what to do. We have to let go and trust that we’ve got this. Cause chances are – it might not be pretty – but we do. Continue reading →

Pretty much how I’ve been spending most of my time lately. AKA: gymnastics training!

Starting is terrifying. Like super freaking scary. Or rather, the moment right before the start, the instant before you commit – that is the truly terrifying part because it is in that moment that you need to make a decision: are you in or are you out? It was that instant I always dreaded when racing as a rower. All eight of you have your oars in the water and are just floating there (mind, you are floating in a boat a hair past a butt wide – you feel every fidget, every piece of nervous energy) waiting to hear the horn, and waiting for the race to unfold. On the one hand I would sit in my seat wishing that that stupid horn would never blow. Wishing that I could somehow be transported back to shore, back to a place where it didn’t feel like impending death and back to a place where I didn’t have 2000m of pain in front of me (well technically behind me if we’re being literal…) But on the other hand I would sit there, blade ready, willing that horn to blow so that I could dive into the experience – and also so that I could start kicking some serious butt. Duh. Continue reading →

We’re in it now, officially. 2013 has commenced. This is where sh*t gets interesting. The brief stint of frolicking blissfully into the unknown of the new year under the presumption of a clean slate has started to wear off a bit as the reality of the actual progression of a time begins to reestablish itself. January is always a curious month. It is grounded in a sense of newness and yet it is overlaid with the continuation of whatever came before it. It is a renegotiation of sorts. A reorientation of the person we are, the person we have established over the last year, and the person we aspire to become in the next one. If you have ever been to one of my classes, you will know that one of my favorite cues is: set the tone. You hear a lot of times in an athletic setting that it doesn’t matter how you start, it matters how you finish. Yeah, I guess I endorse that statement. Sort of. But to be honest, it matters to me how you start; how you progress; AND how you finish. I find those first two thirds rather crucial. It’s not that you have to start out like a rock star, but that you have to be willing to start. That you have to be willing to throw yourself into the process without totally knowing the outcome. That you have to be ready to struggle. And that you take the opportunity, the responsibility to set the tone, to establish how that business is going to go down, not just how it is going to finish. Continue reading →

Climbing trees in CA!

I acknowledge that this would be a very appropriate time to write a snappy New Years resolution piece. In fact, it would be the perfect time to do so – to have all of my NY resolutions wrapped up in a happy little bow, with a perfectly extrapolated message to boot. Love that theoretical blog post. Here’s the thing though, and I’ve tried to flirt around this fact in every one of the 800 drafts that came before this one, but when push comes to shove I get a little anxious about New Years resolutions because often people (I’m including myself in this broad statistic) just don’t follow through. Come January 1 it seems like everyone is making resolutions. Come February 1 – not so much. I resisted this blatant pessimism in my, ought to be peppy and uplifting, New Years post, because let’s be honest, not as warm and cuddly as the other options. Continue reading →

My blog writing ritual: large almond milk latte

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what I want. Who I want to date. What I want to do with my life. Where I want to live. Who I want to be. I’m running out of concise, fragment sentences, but you get the idea. So I was driving in my car the other day trying to figure out what I was going to write about this week. To be honest – minus one 24 hour run-in with the stomach flu – this week has been pretty freaking solid for a myriad of reasons. Pat on the back me! Slash, it’s so much easier to write though when things are, let’s go with, slightly shy of awesome. Such unfun moments require a little more reflection versus merely basking in my newfound streak of kick-buttedness, and thus they promote more profound pieces of eloquence instead of extended periods of smiling into space (which is just sort of creepy – I need to get that business in order.) Continue reading →

Ok, I freaking love my mala beads. No I am not a yogi, and no, I do not really know what they mean in the deeper spiritual and philosophical sense, and no, I do not care. I love them. In fact, I’ve started to feel a little lost when they aren’t around my wrist or my neck. I’m also totally that awkward too much information kid when someone says they like them – oh, that’s nice – let me know give you a five minute explanation on exactly what these colorful beads mean to me, and yes, I know you just wanted me to say thanks. Yep, it’s gotten a little weird. I think the craziest thing though, is how these beads have transformed on my wrist. They originally found their little energy creating home on my left arm when I was physically not feeling like a champ, and emotionally rocking the good ol’ trudge through life experience. As I have transformed so have they. Sure, they may appear to be merely devastatingly stylish beads, in that, I’m a hip yogi sort of way – granted you could grasp that image from this one here only if you stopped at the beads and didn’t move up my arm – but they have evolved into something greater, something more substantial as they have camped out on my wrist.  Continue reading →