Shouting through an open window

As I'm one to do, I was listening to a podcast on a recent run. Due to some glitches with my itunes account and a slow reorganizing of my room I didn't have my normal WWDTM podcast to rely on so I switched to Radiolab for my quick run around Wash Park. Typically Radiolab, This American Life, and Risk are saved for longer runs when I really need the motivation to pound the pavement in my  now familiar neighborhood. It was one of their update podcasts so I assumed it would be shorter, perhaps with not much new material. I was wrong.

The recent podcast "Update: New Normal"from October 19, 2015 looked back at their podcast "Normalcy" from, I believe, 5 or 6 years ago. In the intro story Jad Abumrad brings up an antedote written in the New York Times by Martin Bunzel a philosphy professor. As an 18 year old, Mr. Bunzel over hears something on a plane in 1966 regarding race. He remarks that given the particular time period, 1966, the man who made the comment was in an interesting spot. Had he said it a few years earlier it would have been common place, had he said it a few years later it would have been intolerable. However the time he said it America was on the cusp of change, a grey area. Mr. Bunzel said it was as if the man was "shouting through an open window between worlds".

There are a lot of points in our lives where we feel we are between worlds. When you transition from high school to college, when you transition from college to the "real world", when you get married/divorced, etc. These are pretty big worlds to transition between and are a lot more obvious to chart and see. What's more nuanced are those smaller shifts in the world and in your life. These shifts may take a long time to recognize, if at all. You may be shouting between two worlds and not even realize it.

Spare me the groans for a moment, but the best comparison I can think of is dating. No not Tinder, Tinder is it's own potentially interesting blog post related to running at a later date. What it feels like is that grey area where you have a friend and a great friendship and everythings fine, but there's maybe a possibility for a new type of relationship with that person. You can sense that things will change with this person but you don't know how. Will our story be the next big Hollywood RomCom or will we be a cringe worthy memory? I'm not talking about the actual shift, when that change happens. That's usually a pretty obvious time marker. What I'm talking about are those moments before that shift that actions and reactions (the shouts) that signify what everyone hates: the grey area. An innocent text here, a chance meeting of just the two of you there. A few years prior it may have meant nothing and in a few years after it might mean lot more but for now that "hi (and emoji?)" is a shout through an open window between two worlds.

Harvest Moon 2015 Champs!

I'm feeling that way about ultimate frisbee and running right now. I'm super excited about my upcoming race (and slightly terrified). I also got super excited about ultimate this past season with women's masters and RUA. Now, coming off the high of a big Harvest Moon Championship (Christmas Town!) and the thought of "what am I going to do December 6th?"

My current friendship with ultimate and running has been figuring out how to do both (logistically and physically). I love how things are right now but I can sense a shift coming. We've been making due with some tweaks here and there but it's been working for the most part. A few years ago I thought I made that leap when I quit competitive women's frisbee and started setting my sights on ultra running. And up until this year I would have thought my shout was the Molly Brown end of season party and my "roast" to Lauren Boyle. I snuck in a little line in my poem to her about running and that was it...ultimate and I were more just friends and ultra running and I were going to fall in love.

I've grown a lot as a runner since then. Conquering my first 50 miler was a big piece of that, but so was learning a new way to train and prepare my body for this type of work. I came off this summer healthy and relatively unscathed. I signed up for a 50 miler in December and began setting my sights for 2016 and a possible push for a 100 miler.

I've also grown a lot as an ultimate frisbee player. There was Master's Nationals with Jezebel. A semi-finals appearance was awesome but more exciting were the awesome ladies and the laid back fun of playing ultimate for just that reason; fun with friends. There was MHU league with Shiny Happy People and Part Time Models. There was RUA and regionals. At the end of regionals this year, sitting in a circle with my team, all I could think about was how much fun I had playing and how much more I felt like I grew into myself as a player this year. The timid, always worried about making a mistake women's player got out of my head and the ultimate player started to take control. I felt a passion for a sport that wasn't out of fear of failure for the first time in a long time.  

The interesting part about the New York Times story is that shift, that shout between two worlds, was only really identifiable when that shout reaches the new world and you're in it. I don't know if that new world will be all ultimate or all running or a new hybrid of both or even neither. The ground is shifting beneath my feet.

Trust is not super lame*

Since running training is currently on the back burner due to Ultimate Frisbee season I wanted to write some more about my awesome team, Molly Brown.

Molly Brown has been a team for four years (this is our fourth season) and we came about as a joint effort between Rare Air and Box two Denver/Boulder women's teams. We've been blessed with an awesome coach: Catt Wilson and our new addition Jeff "Bev" Berget*. This season we experienced some turnover so our roster is pretty raw in terms of Elite tournament experience which meant we had our work cut out for us on day one to hold our Pro status with USA Ultimate.

We've just completed our regular season of play which involved participation in three tournaments: Terminus in Atlanta George, Colorado Cup in Colorado, and the Pro Flight Finale in Davis California. We are gearing up for regionals this weekend in Colorado with the season ending at Nationals in Frisco, Texas. Don't be fooled by the term "pro status" as it does not translate into million dollar contracts and episodes of MTV cribs (is that still a show?). We started off the season without a true gauge of where we were and what we needed to do to get to where we wanted to be at the end of the season. With three tournaments under our belt I think we've got some of that figured out and more.

Things had been rough. There was frustration. There were close games we lost, games we should have won, games we came together and won, but it all came down to something our team had to do as a whole to turn the page; trust. A few weeks ago our team met with Scott Gurst, a sports trainer who focuses on the mental as well as the physical aspects of sports. The biggest piece out of our discussion was trust, and trusting our teammates unconditionally without them having to do anything to earn our trust. With a lot of new faces it was hard for each of us to trust that our new teammates where in it the same way we were. I believe this underlying lack of trust resulted in tentative playing and split second, second guessing in early games. I really think the first time I felt that we as a team turned the page was at our last tournament, the Pro-Flight finale. Our pulls which haven't been one of our strong skills were on point, our deep game was being utilized, and we came back on Sunday after going 0-3 on Saturday to win our last two games and finish 5th. It's hard to pick a defining moment, but you know it when it's there and for Molly Brown it's there.

This is the time of year when I really love my team - not that I don't love them the rest of the year. But this is the time of the year when we (a) have no choice but to love each other because we're together so much and (b) everything comes together for some beautiful post season ultimate. We've also figured out how to win as a team and that is only possible because we trust each other. It's beyond, "I trust that Cuz is going to layout for any disc within a 10 foot radius of her body", I trust that Cuz is doing everything she can to make us successful on the field and off the field.

And she looks really good in her USA gear.

Physical prowess often trumps all other aspects of athletic endeavors when assessing a sport/game/race. "She's a faster runner, he has the most accurate throws (and throws 7 touchdowns to completely kill me in fantasy football), that team has won nationals 5 (6,7..i've lost count) times in a row". So when an underdog wins it's hard to grasp how they did it. Underdogs win because they trust and that trust allows them to play the best they can at that moment which means sometimes they beat the better team/person who is not playing the best they can at that moment.  I honestly feel my team is on the verge of that perfect combination between trust and physical ability. We may not be 100% there, but with each tournament, game, and point I believe we chip away at the barrier of performance loss.

Trust is also trust in yourself. Think back to when Usain Bolt won the 100 meters at the Olympics. One piece that almost everyone remembers is him turning back, milliseconds shy of crossing the finish line in Beijing, to celebrate. While this showmanship to some seemed careless and risky as well as a mockery towards those behind him, I invite you to think about it from a different perspective. Bolt's an amazing athlete, the fastest man alive, no one doubts his physical ability. Some may say that if he wasn't so fast he wouldn't get away with that show of bravissimo. But what's overshadowed is while Bolt and the world know that he is fast, know that he as the physical ability to beat anyone on any day on the track is that Bolt completely unconditionally trusts his ability. His last second slow down at the end of the 100 meters showed just how much trusts in his ability. Now I agree that it was sort of a dick move, but tell me you don't wish you had that same trust in your abilities to do something like that?

As Molly Brown heads into Regionals tomorrow and beyond I can honestly say I trust my team and teammates unconditionally. I know that BTown's roller pulls are going to roll out giving our Fiona Trap the position it needs to get a turn on the first pass. I know that Bev and Catt are going to call the best combination of pods to get the disc back when we're on Defense. I know that when I'm trying to catch my girl going deep that I'll hear 16 voices on the sideline telling me exactly where I need to go. Most of all I trust that everyone of us will put on our Molly Brown Jersey and USA Ultimate approved accessories and step out into the rectangle and do the best we can at that moment with no second guessing. Who's Town is it?

*Talk to Bev about super lame - he'll teach you the ropes