Joy

In Elizabeth Gilbert's book "eat, pray, love" one of her friends insists that every city has a word:

Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be-- that is the word of the city. (pg 103)

Of course, being a book about self-discovery, this discussion quickly leads to what Liz's word is.

Of couse, being rather self-reflective myself, this quickly led myself to ponder what my word is. Although, being a greedy reader I kept reading and merely stored the question for future consideration. Then on my run this afternoon I had the answer. JOY. It probably wasn't my word a couple of weeks ago and it might not be my word next week either, but for right now it's the best word for my life.

When I ask myself, "why am I doing this?" it's for the joy of it. Why am I rollerskiing? Because it brings me joy. Why am I doing one activity or another? Joy. There was a strong wind tonight and I can tell it's bringing winter to the Chugiak. And that brings me joy. Running this afternoon I was joyful simply to be out and capable of running. This morning I spent 2hrs with Dallas Price's 6th grade class (well, technically an hour with her Pre-Algebra class and an hour with her homeroom class). After math class one of the boys came up radiating excitement as he told me, "that was so cool!" I assured him that stuff got even cooler in higher mathematics. He asked if he could also expand (x+y)^7 (I'd encouraged them to try (x+y)^6 on their own and he had already done it) and I told him to "do it" but if you'd listened to the tone of the exchange rather than the words you would have thought we were talking about something way more trendy than math such as "I'd like to hit this sick jump, I'm pretty sure I could do it but it might be too big for me, should I try it?" "do it." I had shared some of my joy in mathematics with this boy and that made today even more joyful.

Obviously, I expect you to try to pick your own word at this point :)

The Olympics are over and school's starting!

First, be sure and check out Mike Hazle's recap of his Olympic experience for a very good perspective on competition for any athlete at any level.

Second, school started again here in the Anchorage on August 20th and my community service projects are back in full swing! I'm continuing to work at Sand Lake in the afternoons, this year with Mr. Maurer's 6th grade class. I've also followed the teacher with whom I worked last year, Dallas Price, to her new 6th grade class at Rogers Park Elementary. While I will have specific home room classes at both these schools I'm hoping to get to work with all of the 6th graders over the year. I already got to meet all of the Rogers Park 6th graders since they invited me to be a guest speaker for their first day convention. My class at Sand Lake is a hugely diverse group of students and I'm pretty excited to get to know them better.

Training

These last two weeks of training have been my favorite so far. Make that three if I include this week of recovery. The first week was in town mostly on rollerskis, the second week was on the glacier skiing for seven days and the third week is back home not thinking at all about training and enjoying the other aspects of life. Our hard weeks have been low volume this cycle but high intensity. I've never felt so confident in my training before. We train hard and we train specifically. I know my coaches think about our training and have an overarching scheme for the training and racing season to get us in the best shape possible. I also trust their eyes on my technique and know that they know how to decipher what they see me doing differently than what my perfect technique should look like. It's a very worry-free way to train. All I have to do is to train hard when I'm supposed to and work on my technique while I'm skiing. And then I get this week of not-really-training to enjoy life totally guilt free because I know the next five weeks are going to be another set of tough training.

Thomas Trainin Center on Eagle Glacier

Kate Fitzgerald and Becca Rorabaugh enjoying an evening outside.

The view from Eagle Glacier down over Girdwood and toward Turnagain Arm.

Becca Rorabaugh, Laura Valaas, Katie Ronsse

Sunset on Eagle Glacier

Jeff Ellis retrieving a frisbee from the semi-frozen pond.

Becca Rorabaugh

Olympics 8/8/08

Congratulations to my fellow In The Arena teammate, Mike Hazle, as he begins his Olympic competitions in the javelin!

Eagle River

One of the things I love about training in Alaska is that there's innumerable beautiful places for me to train and explore. One of my projects takes me out to the town of Chugiak and I often stop for my afternoon run at a random access point for the Chugach Park. Pictured here is Eagle River.




Next week we will spend our fourth and last week this summer at the Thomas Training Center on Eagle Glacier. The week following that I'm hoping to take a short trip to Kodiak to get to spend a couple days exploring yet another of Alaskas beautiful places.