Road-Ugliness and Prevention Methods

I am not a person who travels remotely well, and as a student-athlete who has to travel 3+ hours up to seven or eight times in a season, this is fairly unfortunate.  I am road ugly (a term a friend once coined that describes the ability to make two hours in the car look like ten).  This was not always the case.  Once upon a time, I was simply a mildly creased young lady after a long drive in the car or a day at the airport.  Then I went to school in Montana where in order to get anywhere, the minimum drive is three hours and the only airports in the state only fly to a select few other airports so to fly to meets even as near as California required one to wake up at 3 a.m. and spend up to twelve hours on flights and layovers in connecting airports.  After one particularly turbulent flight (most flights into Montana are turbulent as the planes you most typically fly in on are prop planes meant for under fifty passengers that resemble the creations of the Wright brothers) when I woke up in the middle of a drop and was immediately convinced that the plane was going down and I was about to meet Jesus, something snapped.  It was like I was a gremlin and someone had given me a corn dog at 12:01 a.m.  I morphed from the simply unpleasant traveler I was before into a goblin with aching joints, swollen legs, and a tendency to tear up irrationally after more than five hours in a car.  Seriously, I once started crying on a bus because we drove past a gas station and I really had to pee.  There was a bathroom on that bus literally ten feet away from me.  Once on the trip to Texas for regionals, I only remembered to pack one of my compression calf sleeves.  We had a ten hour travel day with a layover in Denver, and by the time we reached our hotel, the leg that I chose to sacrifice to a sleeveless travel day had swelled comically to 25% larger than the other.  As a result of this recently discovered road-ugliness, I have come up with a long list of remedies that, when combined, manage to make the changes in personality and appearance slightly less aggressive and alarming. 

First of all, if you’re an anxious sweater like myself, you’re going to want makeup remover wipes and lots of them, and potentially some dry shampoo.  These will help transform you from a greasy monster to just a monster.   Also, if you wear contacts, I would recommend wearing your glasses until you get to your final destination so you can take frequent naps and not worry about having your eyes feel like someone switched your contact solution for gorilla glue.

Another key for me is to plan out your outfit for travel and make it a little fancy.  Not over the top fancy because you also have to be comfortable and have some way to sneak all of your compression underneath it, but by consciously choosing to not just wear sweatpants and your favorite tie-dyed cat t-shirt, you get a little mental boost.  It’s also nice when you’re getting stares from strangers and you have to wonder if it’s because you look like a walking dumpster fire instead of knowing with absolute certainty that it’s because you look like a walking dumpster fire. 

Food is also v important.  For me, the biggest challenge is always making an effort to pack healthy snacks in addition to the ones that you know and love.  In high school, my friend Alli always used to tell me that no road trip is complete without meat sticks and sugary snacks, and I guess that mentality stuck.  It’s all fun and games until you’re six hours into a bus ride having eaten nothing but those delightful elf cookies that Keebler makes and chocolate milk that is thick with two c’s starting to get a sugar migraine and that gross sticky feeling that refuses to go away.  It’s safest to pack these snacks in advance rather than telling yourself that you’ll buy them on the road because when you’re staring down a bag of Hostess powdered donuts, it’s much harder to say no and go for the pretzels and hummus instead than it would be if you just packed the dang hummus in the first place.  But do be sure to pack trash food also.  My freshman year, when I was truly a road-ugly rookie, there was one memorable trip to California in which I got a slight head cold before we left.  It wasn’t enough to take me off the travel roster, but it was enough to leave me congested and irritable the whole weekend.  I distinctly remember one of my ears getting blocked off on the flight out, and not returning to normal for almost a week, despite many attempts to clear it by my teammates, who poured hydrogen peroxide into it every few minutes all day.  One of my teammates, knowing how cranky travel made me and having a full understanding of my love of treats had the foresight to pack a bag of candy just for me, and after every tantrum-free hour, she would give me a piece.  It was almost like she was classically conditioning me to be well-behaved and I loved it.

Stop by your local grocery store and pick up some Pedialyte as well.  I seriously get borderline religious about that stuff.  You really want to hammer hydration anyway, but the electrolytes it provides are kind of like a slap in the face for your kidneys to wake up and get to work.

Finally, compression is your best friend.  This is a basic that pretty much everyone preaches, but I can’t leave it out because without compression my entire body blows up like a balloon in a truly grotesque manner.  I would not be capable of functioning like a normal human being were it not for my calf sleeves and the Normatec.  My relationship with Normatec is incredibly unhealthy.  I am obsessed with it.  I think about it all the time, and I get upset when I don't get to see it every day.  I get jealous with other people get to spend time with it and I don't.  

So, as we welcome another cross country season, stay safe out there.  Don't make any accidental grabs for the hand of the person sitting next to you on the plane because you had a dream it was crashing or drop a breakfast burrito on your lap in the terminal (not that I've ever done either of those things).  Always make sure you pack both calf sleeves, and for the love of all things holy, never ever ever consume caffeine immediately before a flight.  Peace and god bless.    

Transfer How-To

Although I don't think athletes typically join a team with the intention of transferring, sometimes life comes at you fast and it's just something that has to happen.  It seems like all of the running websites out there have countless articles advising high school athletes on how to choose a school to attend, but there are very view to tell you about the transfer process.  Really, the only reason I decided to transfer was so I could get a first-hand account of how it works to post on this blog.  The lengths I go to for you guys.
The first and most obvious step is to really decide whether or not you want to transfer.  Once you talk to your coaches about it, you don't necessarily have to transfer, you can always just test the waters and decide if it's something you want to go through with or not, but it's best to at least be reasonably sure before talking to anyone because relations with team members and coaches definitely can get a little awkward once it comes out that you are looking at other schools, and if it's not something you actually want to do, there's not really any point to making things needlessly uncomfortable.
After you are sure you want to look into your options, you will need to get a release to contact from your coach and athletic program.  The NCAA has created a guide so you can look into the rules, regulations and other hoopla that come with transferring here, which I would definitely suggest you do before talking with a coach.  Most schools do not allow in-conference transfers, and there is a whole different set of rules for that kind of transfer.  Once you have your release to contact, you can have your coach send it to whatever schools you are interested in, or depending on how you are given your release, send it to them yourself.  For my transfer, my coach just sent me a blanket release addressed to any coach outside of the Big Sky and I was able to email it to any coach I wanted to.  In the case that your coach refuses to release you, your school is required to explain to you in writing how you can appeal for a release, and the appeal is presented to a group of people who are not involved with athletics to make the final decision.
Once you have a release, you are essentially right back where you were senior year.  You are allowed to email and call anyone that the release grants you permission to, and you receive five more official visits.  The biggest difference I found on these visits is that the second time around, you know which factors will actually matter the most to you, and you aren't as distracted by things like how big the football stadium is. For me, this time was all about how many frozen yogurt shops were either right on campus or within walking distance.
If you decide a different school is right for you, there are a few more steps to be taken.  Obviously, you'll need to apply for admissions and register for classes.  This step seems pretty clear, but I didn't remember to complete my registration for fall semester classes until about two weeks ago, so it's not obvious to everyone, I suppose.  You'll also sign a contract with your new school, although there is no official NLI the second time around.  Most of the final transfer process is given to you by your compliance director.  MSU had a very specific checklist that mine just printed off for me.  You'll need to have your records (both academic and medical) sent to your new school so your academic advisors and new athletic trainers can actually assist you properly, as well as check out with your previous training room staff so any injuries you sustained while at that school will actually be taken care of by that school.  Finally, you'll need to procure a second release from your coaches and athletic director, the one-time transfer exception release, which allows you to compete for your new school immediately, rather than sitting out a full year from competition. 
If you have no interest in transferring, sry.  Here's a little nugget of information so you learn something from this post anyway:  Cats' kidneys are so efficient that they can rehydrate by drinking saltwater.  #KnowledgeIsPower 

Be Above It

The theme of this post is something of a divergence from my usual posts about running, but it is a lesson that has been driven home to me by the experiences I have had and the people I have met as a result of running, so I figured it was at least a little relevant on this blog.
"People are going to hate you."  These words were some of the first I heard upon arriving back in Utah after my failed two-year experiment with Montana State, and they made an appearance a few short weeks later from an individual who began our short weekend trip as a stranger, and strangely one of the first lessons I learned just minutes after my finish at nationals.  Regardless of whether you are fast or slow, weak or strong, foolish or intellectual.  Whether they know every word of your story, or none of it at all.  People will hate you because of the things they've heard about you, true or not.  They will hate you for not fulfilling expectations they placed on you without your knowledge, or for pursuing the dreams that fill your waking hours with reckless abandon.  They will hate you for loving too much or not enough or for choosing the wrong person to care for.  They will hate you for your successes because they don't see the efforts that went into them, and they will hate you for your failures because they don't see the devastation that comes with them.
But...this is not on you.  The beautiful thing in all of this hate is that nothing dictates that you must shoulder the burden of accepting responsibility for it.  Of course, one should always strive to be able to recognize when they are in the wrong and make amends, but so long as you are living a life that you can be proud of, a good life, then let go of others' views on you.  Be unashamedly who you are.  Don't cower at the thought that your boldness might cause someone to dislike you.  Don't turn down a chance at happiness because it isn't down the path another might have chosen you.  After one of no doubt many outbursts from me via Snapchat about heaven only knows what, team drama or the patriarchy or someone's sassy attitude or what have you, my friend Aidan offered some simple advice:  Be above it.  You can choose to spend your life suffocating under the knowledge that people exist in this world who do not care for you, or you can try to realize that their opinions of you do not degrade the truth of what you are.