I came. I surfed. I applied ice.

It was an amazing thing to finally get into the ocean and surf!  With its sandy bottom and the absence of rocks and reef, Cocoa Beach, Florida was a great place to learn.  I had one hour lessons for three days from August 9-11.

It’s a really good thing I researched surf schools and instructors because I hit the jackpot with Lauren Holland from School of Surf,  www.schoolofsurf.org. Lauren is a former pro surfer and champion, as is her husband, Todd. Together they own and operate the school. Lauren is very good at what she does - she's professional, keeps you safe, works her butt off and yet manages to be very cool, laid back and good company.

Each lesson started at the School of Surf with instruction from Lauren (technique and safety) and then she'd load the surf board on a cart and we’d walk two blocks to the beach.

I was excited as we got into the water and made our way out. When it came time to give it a go,  I got into position for my first wave. Lauren turned the board toward shore and started pushing it. The wave came, she yelled “pop up,” and surprisingly, I did!

I don’t remember how long I stayed up, but I do remember when I came down on my foot. Ouch. The experience quickly taught me the importance of falling flat off the board without trying to break my fall with any limbs.

The next two days we were in deeper water and I never hit the bottom again (and I think I almost always fell flat and covered my head and nose to guard against the board hitting me).

The lessons went really well and I gradually put things together enough to feel like I was getting the hang of it. I even rode a few waves all the way in. There were a lot of wipe-outs which were useful as Lauren could usually pinpoint what I’d done wrong and I could try to correct it next time. 

Surfing was exhilarating. I loved that it required total focus and kept me completely in the moment. I feel like I should be writing that it was fun, but for some reason, that word doesn't fit. Fun is playing tennis with my kids. This was more than fun.

As the surfers would say, this was epic.

P.S. About that ice, between falling on my foot and the general strain on both feet,  I seriously needed it. (Icing sore stuff is brilliant. I am a total convert). A million thanks to my husband, Greg, for his many ice deliveries to me and my aching, elevated feet. And for his great photography and videography. And for the way he drives a Camaro.  

Surf practice on Lake Wingra

It's not an ocean, but Lake Wingra proved to be a nice spot to put the finishing touches on my preparation for surfing with some stand-up paddle boarding. On Monday, I was lucky enough to be joined by my friend Rebecca (who is the wife of my trainer, Jeff, and is also a fitness instructor at The Fit), who provided some great moral support and a trained eye to troubleshoot my surf pop up technique. 



First, I gave things a try as intended, standing and paddling. I climbed up to stand from my knees and got a feel for the balance of the board as I paddled around a bit.  Next, it was time to see if I could pop up on a board - albeit a big, thick one that is not a surfboard.

  

I paddled hard to get a little forward motion and then...

 

a quick (though somewhat awkward-looking in a photo) movement to...  

STANDING!

I practiced jumping up about a dozen times and managed it just fine. The "atta girls" from Rebecca were icing on the cake. And, bonus,  no dunks into the lake. I made sure I spent some time laying down and paddling and also just standing on the board as the wind pushed me around. It all felt like great prep.

Cocoa Beach,  here I come!  

Fitness Part 2: The Green Light

Yup, that's me, doing one of my favorite gym tricks: box jumping! Mastery of the box jump was one indicator that I am now fit to surf. Many, many lunges, planks, kettle bells, primates, burpees, pushups and lots of other stuff later, my trainer, Jeff, has recently pronounced me as "ready." His exact words were "You're ready. If you can't get up on that surf board it won't be because you're not strong enough." 

Hooray!

We didn't take any body or fat measurements and didn't chart weights, sets or reps, so I don't have any hard numbers to show my progress. I've done a variety of exercises, mostly using my own body weight but some with free weights or straps, that were increasingly difficult as the weeks went on. I've gone from watching Jeff demonstrate an exercise for me to do and thinking "there's no way I can do that" to knowing that I can.

I started being able to do only two push ups on my knees to now three regular push ups followed by eight on my knees. Burpees (jumping from standing to a plank)  seemed impossible and now, not a problem.  I've lost ten pounds in the past twelve weeks of training.

Of course as predicted, the work-out schedule was blown up the minute school let out and the kids were home with me. I was lucky if I got to the pool once a week, let alone twice. My walk/jog has been almost nonexistent. But twice a week scheduled with a trainer goes a long way and that's one of the huge benefits of enlisting the help of a trainer, you show up. I got out for tennis and bike rides with my family and that helped too.

There have been noticeable psychological benefits too, of course. I've been a happier camper this summer. The Title Nine shopping bag sums it up, "Sometimes sweat is the best form of therapy". Each work-out has rewarded me with the feel-good brain biochemicals dopamine, serotonin and epineprine.  I must enjoy that neurochemical cocktail because I've reached a point where I actually look forward to working out. Oh, and one more thing, I feel really good! A little stiff some days, but mostly really good.

I'm going surfing on Thursday and putting all this hard work to good fun use. Whether I can stay up for five seconds or five minutes, my quest to surf has already been a remarkable ride before I even put one foot in the water.

Now for the really hard part: what will I wear?

I admit it - I so wanted some hip surf clothes.

But, despite my best efforts, here is what I ordered - just about the most boring surf clothes you could find. The more I look at these shorts, the more I see Florida retirees on a golf course. And yes, the two pieces don't even go together that well.  But trust me, in the youthful world of surf clothes, it was the best I could do.




The average age of a female surfer must be around 15 because the fun board shorts and cool patterned rash guards are mostly in sizes 4, 6 and 8. Most of the shorts are very, very short, hip hugging, tight and teenagery.  For those of us needing double digit sizes and some coverage, it's slim pickings.




I've already struck out with size "L," (sweet and very supportive Mother's Day gifts from my family that I could barely squeeze into). I was relieved to even find these shorts and this top in XL.

It's probably for the best that this is all I could find. It's age appropriate, that's for sure.

66 miles between me and the sharks

I saw a National Geographic special issue magazine on sharks in the grocery store yesterday. It was published to coincide with their "Shark Week" on t.v. I won't be tuning in to that; watching it would most definitely not contribute to the mellow surfer attitude I'm trying to cultivate. But I couldn't resist paging through the magazine and, holy crap, sharks are terrifying.

In a recent chat with my friend Jarka, I said that to fight off a shark you punch them on the head (I think I was just winging that answer). She astutely  pointed out "What head!? They're all  mouth and rows of big, sharp teeth." The photos in the magazine certainly did confirm her observation.

I didn't have time, or the stomach, to peruse the entire magazine. But I couldn't resist the section on "Deadly Waters." I learned that there are a number of places where one could run into a big, big shark while surfing or swimming: Hawaii, South Africa, Brazil and New Zealand were all worth a special mention. But the deadliest spot is the Red Triangle which goes from San Francisco to Monterey and out to sea for about 30 miles. This is the likeliest spot on earth for a human to be attacked by a great white shark. A hundred or more great whites converge there in late summer every year for the seals, their favorite food, who migrate to the beaches and the surrounding waters.

Man, am I glad I'm not going to surf camp in the Red Triangle! I have a list of places I'd like to surf. I now have a list of places I don't want to surf.

And what about Florida? More specifically the Atlantic coast where I will be surfing? Volusia county, a 47-mile stretch on the central coast, is dubbed the Shark Attack Capital of the World (at least by National Geographic, and they capitalized those first letters, not me). It's the site of  21 percent of the world's shark attacks on humans. Sounds bad, right? Well, considering all the people who swim there (Daytona Beach is in the county) that percentage isn't all that surprising. And all the fishermen don't help - they throw a lot of bait into those waters. But the good news is that the shark attacks are generally minor bites coming from spinners and blacktips, sharks that are rarely longer than seven feet. It's hard to believe that you can put the words "seven foot shark" and "minor bite" in the same sentence but I'm sure glad they did.

I'll be surfing in Brevard county,  66 loooong miles from Volusia county.  So, no worries, right? Right??  Let's go with that.  

They make it look so easy!

Here's a link to a short and sweet video of women, aged 36-66, on a surf trip in Mexico. No giant waves, no aggressive shredding or daredevil antics, just fun surfing with friends. I smile everytime I see it. 

8 Women, 8 Days. Take 2. A Graciegirl surf video clip featuring Jeannette, Robin, Linda, Mary, Brenda, Zeuf, Nancy & Heather.

Reuniting with an old love

For about a month and half now I’ve been swimming  at the Y.  It feels like I’ve reconnected with a beloved childhood friend that I haven’t seen in ages. It’s been quite the happy reunion.

As a kid I took swimming lessons at an outdoor city pool for a few summers. My mom never learned to swim and she was determined to see that her nine children would.   I wasn’t bothered by the early mornings, the long drive to the pool or the chilly water.  I thought learning to swim was exciting and fun and I progressed quickly to become a competent swimmer and diver.  I didn’t go to pools much after lessons. I played in lakes and in our neighbor’s quarry pond; being able to swim was my ticket to endless water-based fun. I leapt off docks and rafts, I water skied and floated around on giant inner tubes. I’d swim underwater and see how long I could hold my breath. I’d dive endlessly to pick stuff up off the bottom of the lake.

Here I am, at age fourteen in 1973, after competing in my one and only swim meet (in a bikini my mom made for me, no less!).

 

Sadly, there comes a time when most of us stop hurling ourselves off docks and racing our friends to a raft.  By the time I reached college, swimming, aside from the occasional late night skinny dip, had slipped away.  When I vacation on beaches, swimming is more to cool off or to bob around with my son and daughter than actual swimming.

But now, as part of my training to surf, I’m back in the water and really enjoying myself.  It couldn’t have been simpler to just get in and go.  I love the feeling of propelling myself through the water. The rhythm of the strokes is soothing and meditative. The weightlessness and freedom of movement feels wonderful . I always get out feeling better than I did going in.

I do a variety of strokes in no particular order and take short breaks to catch my breath. I started swimming for thirty minutes and am now bumping it up by five minutes every week or so.  At my trainer Jeff’s suggestion, I climb out of the pool every time I’m in the deep end to work my upper body.   No pounding joints, no getting hot and sweaty and, unless there are classes going on (only once so far), wonderfully quiet.   It is the most pleasant and mellow way to work out that I’ve ever experienced.  

How sweet that my new infatuation with surfing has brought me back to an old love. It won’t surprise me if I continue lap swimming for the rest of my life.  It makes me wonder how many other things I’ve forgotten that I love to do. I’ve read that a person’s "core genius" is revealed by the time they are eleven. Could our true passions be revealed by then too? A trip down memory lane to recall and reconnect with the things that delighted us as a child could be a trip well worth taking! 

Body parts I need to fix

Do you remember the one day last winter where we had some actual winter weather? On that particular day I was running on the sidewalk to my daughter’s school, late as usual, to chaperone an ice skating trip. I hit a patch that was slick and iced and down I went onto my left arm. “This is gonna be a problem,” I thought.   And now, four months later, it is.

Since then my arm has bothered me but I’ve ignored it thinking it would eventually go away on its own.  A recent strength training exercise that targeted the spot caused more pain and  I couldn’t do the exercise.  Jeff did some checking and concluded that the muscle is fine but scar tissue has probably developed around the tendon. He recommends I get some deep tissue massage or ultrasound to break it up.  Strength and proper functioning of my upper arm is going to be crucial to paddling and getting up on a surfboard, I really need to work this out.  

The second problem is my right toe. With no dramatic event to know how or why, my toe and the top of my foot just started to get sore and achy. I thought it might be arthritis but then one day, in a flash of awareness, I realized that I was constantly putting living room furniture back in place by cocking my right foot up under the chair or ottoman and pulling it. Little kids rearrange furniture a lot so I was probably doing this two to three times a day every day for months. 

When I stopped moving furniture with my toes there was vast improvement but the pain has never completely gone away. And like my arm, it's been aggravated by strength training.  It hurts when I do anything that involves bending my toes (lunges, planks, push-ups).  As per Jeff’s instructions, I bought some athletic tape and taped my toe in such a way that it pulls it away from the others and straightens it out.  If it works it will be the best $3.79 I’ve ever spent at Walgreens .

Little ailments or issues that we let drag on are impediments to one thing or another –  greater comfort, contentment,  fitness – and affect our daily quality of life. Why deny ourselves feeling as close to REALLY GOOD as we can get?  It’s so much better to address a problem, however small, properly at the outset. I wish I would have!

Fitness Part 1: Stinkbug stance meets Vince Lombardi

I’ve met with a trainer, Jeff, four times now. They’ve been very humbling experiences. He's great and, I'm, well, not great.   Our first meeting was short and mainly for him to assess my strength and flexibility. The verdict:  things could be worse. Yay!


Then came the actual work-outs – they’ve kicked my butt, but imagine my surprise to find I could actually do them. So that’s the good news, I don’t suck. But boy, do I have a lot of work ahead of me.  Going into this I knew it would be a challenge, but I think I may’ve forgotten just how hard a serious work-out can be. Or, more likely, I never knew.  The work-outs have been grit and grunt, limb-quivering  affairs requiring every ounce of strength and determination I’ve got. Collapsing in a puddle halfway through a set of exercises in front of Jeff is not an option for me.  On the plus side, I have to focus and concentrate so hard that the time flies.



The bad news is “stuff” happens. I know this is not a news flash, but somehow I thought that drive alone would give me a straight shot to my goal.   But already injury, illness and weather have messed up my plans and shown me that the road to the surfboard is going to have some detours from the neat little map I had in my head.


Over the past few weeks I’ve had to contend with a strained back (gardening), a strain on my side (working out), a week-long cold (courtesy of my six year old), then one more backache from planting swiss chard (which will totally be worth it). I was all ready to dive in the pool and swim laps over Memorial weekend when rumbling thunder and the chance of lightening shut down the pool for half an hour. Twice.  No work out that day. When plans have fallen through I’ve ended up feeling defeated and anxious.


I don’t want to miss a work-out. I feel like I can’t. My goal is date specific – by early August I’ll be at surf camp and need to be ready. This is a huge challenge for me and, unfortunately, “stuff” is going to continue to happen that will derail my daily plans. I’m going to need a tough mindset that’ll help me push through all the physical, mental and emotional obstacles that’ll be coming my way this summer.


I’m going to adopt the psychological equivalent of a stinkbug stance. Used by beginners or experienced surfers struggling in a big wave, a stinkbug stance is the best stance to take to simply hang in there and keep moving forward. That’s what I need to do. When life interferes with my well-laid training plans and I’m feeling ticked off and defeated, I need to step into a strong, determined mindset. Times like that may even require digging back to my Green Bay childhood for a Vince Lombardi mantra or, better yet, a rousing rendition of the Packers fight song. Cause one thing is for sure, I too am a fightin' fool and I plan to crash that wave with all my might.  

Steroids or sweat

With so much talk about performance enhancing drugs in sports, it’s hard not to want to get my hands on some. They seem pretty magical. Fraught with problems, yes, but when you see muscle bound jocks performing incredible physical feats, you must admit there’s some magic in those drugs. I’m jogging, swimming and lifting weights, but I’m going to need more.  I'd love muscle drugs. C’mon, don’t judge, I might have to fight off a shark! I’ve got to be strong.


But the truth is, if I could figure out how to get my hands on a performance enhancing drug, I’m pretty sure it’d make me throw up and snap at my kids; two things I try to avoid.   Plus I like my neck the size it is. And as a former Catholic, the guilt from thinking that I was cheating would degrade my sense of accomplishment. You know, assuming I accomplish this.


So what’s left for a wannabe surfer who needs to shape up in a hurry? Professional help.  I’m going to start working out with a trainer this week. I’ll be putting myself in Jeff’s capable hands and trusting that some muscle will come the old-fashioned way. No magic, just hard work and lots of sweat. 

Seemed like a good idea to swap a pomegranate, seltzer, bitters and lemon spritzer for my nightly glass of wine. It makes a tasty and surprisingly good substitute.  

I've made some changes in my diet as well. As pictured above, I've swapped a pomegranate, seltzer, bitters and lemon spritzer for my frequent - o.k., almost daily -  5pm glass of wine.  It makes a tasty and surprisingly good substitute.  That's gotta help, right?  Shed a few pounds and there's less girth  to push up onto the surfboard.

A Little Crazy

A week ago I had a realization; I really, really want to surf. It’s kind of a crazy idea for someone living in Madison, Wisconsin.  Wisconsin – a whole lot of lakes, very little surf. The lakes with some surf, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior,  are very, very cold. 

There are a couple other reasons it’s sort of crazy. I’m a 53 year old, stay-at-home mom of young kids who hasn’t seriously worked out in over five years and, since then, has put on a few pounds.    

But how can I let that stop me? Surfing looks like exhilarating, off-the-charts fun. People who actually do it confirm this. I’m a big fan of fun and it dawned on me recently, as I signed my kids up for their upcoming summer of fun, that I needed more. I had let my “work hard/play hard” ethic get way out of balance.  

So no surf, overweight and out of shape. Minor details, right?  Did I let them stop me from signing up for surf lessons in August? Hell no! I found a little local school in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and reserved my spot. I booked a hotel room. I posted my intentions on Facebook. I made a diet and exercise plan. 

And then, a few days later, the universe chimed in.

With a little time between dropping-off and picking-up my daughter, I went to a bookstore for books on surfing. An employee, Don, approached and asked if I needed any help. I said I was looking for the sports section and he helpfully ushered me in the right direction as I added that I was looking for books on surfing. He gave me a quick look-over and said “For a gift?”  Nice, Don.  With a very sheepish smile I answered “No, it’s for me. I want to learn to surf.” Don brightened up considerably and said “I’m a surfer! I lived in San Diego and surfed for twenty years. I lived with a U.S. surf champion.” I stopped in my tracks – huh??? No way!

Don was delighted to point me to books, documentaries and movies about surfing and recommended others I could find elsewhere.  We shook our heads and laughed about the coincidence of meeting – I mean, really, there I am, freshly bitten by the surf bug, out looking for books on surfing and a surfer walks up to help me? In Wisconsin??  I was pretty sure the universe had just said “Do it. Follow your crazy.”

But yin needs its yang and they met much later that night. After meeting the surfer dude, after days of confidently setting my surf quest in motion, and after announcing it to the world, then, of course, I starting freaking out. Couldn't sleep for the freaking. This was just bravado, I thought. It was nonsense spouted by a person with pitiful core strength who can barely do five push-ups on her knees!  What was I thinking? It was a long night.

Remarkably, by morning the panic was gone and the drive to surf was back, due in no small part to my boost from the universe. That and, well, it is just the pursuit of fun here. 

Sure, surfing is a crazy dream for me. But aren't those often the best kind?