The next big thing

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be an Olympic gymnast. I would stay up late at night watching tapes of meets. Every day after school I would go to our local gym and stay there for hours. There was a series of books somewhat like the babysitters club, only about gymnasts, and I would read them over and over, literally hundreds of times. Sure I was six inches taller, six years older and many pounds heavier than the successful gymnasts, but that wasn’t stopping me. Surely heart would get me there.

 So how did I end up? Heart didn’t get me .. nothin’. I started as a beginner and ended as a beginner with a fear of flipping backwards. The girls I started with were, by the time I quit, practically elite gymnasts, while the greatest distinction I ever achieved was being the first in our gym to do a cartwheel on the beam. When I was in high school my obsession turned to cheerleading. I decided on a whim to try out for the high school team in eighth grade and holy moly, I made it!

For six years, I spent nearly every day after high school and college practicing chants, dances, and stunts. After that, I would go to practices at night for an All-Star competition team which meant more gymnastics, dancing, and stunting.. But what I really wanted was to be a flyer. You know, the girl that gets thrown up in the air and gets to do the cool stuff… scorpions, heel stretches, basket tosses etc. Unfortunately for me, just as in gymnastics, the most popular choice for flyer is not the 5’7 1xx lb girl. Turns out, when we briefly had a coed squad, I was actually not the Worst flyer in the world, but I was Surely the one that my base and spotters most hated to pick up!

Pic of my Samford cheerleading days!

Of course the most obvious thing to do in this situation was to diet my way down to where people didn’t moan and groan picking me up, but that didn’t work out either, no matter how hard I tried. Stopping every morning for breakfast at Mcdonalds and every afternoon at Taco Bell or similar probably didn’t help either. Again, lots of heart, little success.

The coolest thing I did as a cheerleader was wear the cute outfits and occasionally get to ‘fly’ in a stunt while my support team cursed me from beneath. I could tell similar stories with pole vaulting, pageanting, (Although I DID win the titles of Miss Teen Polk County, and Miss Winter Haven… hello big time!!) and a gazillion other activities.

If only I had spent all that time working on something that could actually help me now, say running, or swimming? I wasn’t smart enough to realize at the time, that you should look for something where the odds aren’t completely stacked against you. I thought running was something one did to avoid getting fat, and I thought swim team was dorky. Well, the swimmers I know now sure are getting the last laugh now!

All that brings me to present day, where, I like triathlon so much that I am writing a public blog where I mostly philosophize about triathlon. I spend a lot of time training (duh), I have a coach, I got certified as a coach, I spend my time reading, thinking, and talking about triathlon.

I’d say I’m pretty entrenched. I’m entrenched yet concerned. How is this time any different from before? You see when I first started all those things, I was truly naïve enough to believe that I might be able to succeed at gymnastics, cheerleading, diving (yes, that one was quite short-lived. Let’s get the tall, tubby girl who’s afraid to flip backwards for the varsity dive team!) despite all the odds that were against me.

In the beginning you see progress, but after a few years, you realize that the progress is a lot harder to come by. Success comes in many forms and there’s plenty of people who never made the cheerleading squad, or could do back tucks, etc. who would look at my foray into those endeavors as successful. And there are many other people who were ten times better than I could ever dream of being who were in turn comparing themselves to the people just ahead of them!

Bailey.. she ain't worried about progress!!

I was thinking about this whole process in the pool. I feel frustrated right now, because as much as I’m swimming, I’m not seeing any progress. To someone a few lanes down, I’m probably ‘fast, ‘ to me, the person leading our lane is ‘fast’ and that person knows that their swim is laughably slow compared to a ‘real’ swimmer.

For where I’m about to go, let’s stay focused on SPORT as I’m close to getting mired in the deep end here. Thinking about this logical progression and where it eventually ends, I was wondering if it’s ever truly possible to be satisfied for a certain personality type to be satisfied with ‘the status quo’. When do you just say ‘ wow, I did good, I am happy with my progress/performance’ and REALLY mean it.. without any caveats or little voices you don’t admit to that say ‘If I could just do x,’ then I would be Exactly where I want to be? Food for thought 

Type A Plus : 'Be-er' versus 'Doer'

My fellow type a kindred spirit....

Type A from Wikipedia

“The theory describes a Type A individual as ambitious, aggressive, business-like, controlling, highly competitive, impatient, preoccupied with his or her status, time-conscious, and tightly-wound. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving "workaholics" who multi-task, push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence.”

I decided to do some ‘research’ and take a test to determine personality type. The following was one of the questions with which you were to indicate how strongly you agree: “Unless you are walking with a destination in mind, you are losing time.”

Yes! Someone finally understands me! In fact, that sounds like a good signature quote.

I actually didn’t score 100 percent on the Type A test, but I think that’s only because answering “absolutely true” to a few of the questions made me feel a bit guilty.

This is my personal definition of Type A: wanting to always ‘do’ instead of ‘be.’ Not just do as in straight hyperactivity, but to improve, to succeed, to win. Whatever #winning means to you.

I got the idea when I was young that it was somehow wrong or bad to be competitive. Consequently, I squelched the overt competitiveness, the kind that would have gotten me somewhere, like trying to be good at sports, or get great grades, and instead it came out in subversive ways:

-When I was in middle school competition centered on who had the cutest boy vying for their attention and/or who owned the most sets of Bongo shorts and Explorer shirts.

-When I was in high school it was being a cheerleader or on the dance team, as well as having the cutest boy vying for their attention (this last one, by the way, is a paradox because everyone knows the very definition of the cutest boy is the one that Doesn’t pay attention to you)

Now looking back these things were ridiculous and in fact, quite superficial. But that’s not really the point. The point is that you can make any activity or daily task a game, and the point of a game is to win.


Here are some things that I readily admit to:

-Putting a time limit on everything, including tasks, social events, and.. Every. Thing. Else. I plan how long walking the dogs will take, what time I must be on my bike trainer, and what time I need to be in bed. Even if there is no really good reason for these arbitrary deadlines.

-Finishing other peoples sentences - Hey I am helping them by assisting their completion of a task more quickly and efficiently!

-Turning everything possible into a game or competition. How quick can I fold this laundry? How many lights can I get through without having to make a complete stop? How many cups of tea I can drink during a boring day of meetings? How many days can I have the same grilled chicken salad from Chick-fil-a in a row?

I have to stop giving examples now before they sound too much like DSM-IV criteria for Type A Personality Disorder. Which is something Completely different, I assure you.

And contrary to popular belief, Its not that I CAN'T relax, its that true relaxation to me occurs within the constructs of goal -oriented activity. Like say, running. There is nothing that clears my head more than a hard run, preferably one where I have faster people to chase. (And that my friends, answers the question about why there is nothing more satisfying than running/cycling/swimming till you puke or collapse. I know you wondered.)

As a type a plus, I find myself gravitating towards other people who are the same. It doesn’t really matter if they aren’t into the same things as me, I feel like I understand them somehow.

My older dog Sadie and I are kindred spirits. Sadie is happiest when she is working towards something. Typically her work involves one of the following:

-Asserting herself as dominant dog over poor Bailey, her little sister or other dogs at the park.

-Wrestling and running harder and faster than the other dogs.

-Chewing on a huge rawhide till it’s completely gone.

-Stealing food, generally eating as much as possible,

- protecting her pack, aka barking at people

When she's not doing one of these things, she’s waiting to do one of these things. And unfortunately for Sadie, that is a pretty much an exhaustive list of available competitive outlets for dogs. Which means poor Sweetums is bored a lot.

There was a time when I felt like I needed to pretend to be more ‘B’, but fortunately in recent years I have become comfortable with the good or at least neutral aspects of being Type A, and trying to improve the negative ones (Think extreme impatience and intolerance for delay s of any kind.) This process has been good for my self-esteem but perhaps unfortunate for those who I successfully convinced that I was an easygoing free spirit and now have to continue to put up with me!

I also spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating the “be-ers.” Why are they so content to ‘be’ and why are they not incited to action by my suggestions on improving their be-ing? Ex “you spend every Saturday looking at antiques? Are you trying to find the most antiques? The Best antiques?? Why why why do you look at antiques if the purpose is just to look?? !!

Sometimes I think I’m a little jealous of people who can just be rather than do all the time. But I also don’t want to BE them if that makes any sense. And they sure as heck don’t want to be me either! Trust me, I’ve been told so. More than once.

Anyways, the world needs both A’s and B’s. Without B’s civilized society would devolve into a complete chaotic lawless meltdown. Without A’s there would be less competition and competition makes society better. Also there would be no wars. And less heart disease. Hmmm…

In any case, I have to end this blog post now because I allotted myself exactly 15 minutes to work on it and I have to be on the trainer by seven sharp!