TriTriumph

Good news & stories for the smart optimist

Archive for October, 2009

The best part of a triathlon? The friends you make along the way

October 29th, 2009

During a triathlon, those of us standing on the sidelines see endurance athletes focused on achieving a remarkable goal. They’re striving to win a race, win their age group, or win a coveted spot in the Ford Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.

Kevin O'Connor

But according to Kevin O’Connor, owner GearWest Bike & Triathlon stores in Minnesota and a world-class triathlete, the best part about the sport are the friendships forged in the heat of battle.

A shared experience unlike any other

“It’s the people,” he said when asked what’s the most gratifying thing about the sport. “As a whole, triathletes are the nicest group of people. Not saying there’s anything wrong with others, but to me, triathletes are self-motivated, and the sport breeds a large amount of humility.”
O’Connor’s no stranger to competition and says it’s important to him. His PR in the Hawaii Ironman is 9:13:48 and he has over 30 amateur victories. His store sponsors races and countless first-time and veteran triathletes ask him for advice and tips.

So what’s the one thing he wants any triathlete to take away from any race, whether it’s their first or fiftieth?

“Enjoy it,” he said. “Hang out, make it more than just the race itself.

“You don’t have to finish first to win. The race I’m most proud of is one where I finished second,” O’Connor said. “I went faster and made the guy in front of me work hard.”

Balancing work & family a challenge for any athlete

O’Connor said he’s having the most fun he’s had in years. (Editorial comment: Swimming, biking and then running any distance = fun?). He said he’s glad to be able to focus on his sport, and happy to have juggled work, family and triathlon and kept all three balanced as much as possible.

“I don’t do a great job of balancing them,” he said, “but I try to minimize the impact on my wife and kids. And I’m in a position with my business where I have a very smart, talented team working for me.” His family accompanied him to his last Hawaii Ironman in ’07, with his kids crossing the finish line with him.

The sport of triathlon is a unique combination of competition and camaraderie. Maybe that’s what keeps triathletes coming back to the sport, year after year. Events like the Pigman Long Course in Palo, Iowa, Lake Waconia in Minnesota, and various full-distance Ironman races fill up every year, even in a down economy. Triathlon is one of the few activities that offers a shared experience that you just can’t find anywhere else. Every race, people conquer fears and overcome obstacles. And they do it together.

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Posted in Health & wellness, Inspiration, Sports

Tags: GearWest ironman Pigman triathlon

Mayo Clinic – 7 benefits of positive thinking

October 26th, 2009

Look up and smile/Photo: www.maniacworld.com

Some days, you’d rather put your head through a wall rather than put the sunny side up. According to the Mayo Clinic, you’d then be hurting yourself in two ways — with a serious headache, and probably longer-term health problems (not to mention repairing a wall). According to the Clinic, there are lots of benefits to positive thinking, including …

Increased life span
Lower rates of depression
Lower levels of distress
Greater resistance to the common cold
Better psychological and physical well-being
Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

That’s great. Wonderful. Tell that to a checking account that hasn’t had the auto deposit for a few months now. Or to a parent coping with a sick kid, or somebody fighting a life-threatening illness.

Real pain causes real emotional and physical distress, sometimes both at the same time. Let’s just acknowledge it — all the positive thinking in the world won’t make your troll-like boss change.

But look at the list again. Everything on it is something that you can benefit from, if not at this moment, then in the future. While positive thinking won’t fix your problems with your spouse tonight, it will put you personally in a better place – mentally and physically. And thinking negatively and worrying won’t change things any more than thinking positively, so you may as well think the way that’s ultimately best for you.

Tips from the Mayo Clinic …

First of all, don’t get stuck in a negative mind loop. The Clinic (remember this is a health organization, so this is like your doctor talking) says to avoid the following: Filtering out all the positives and focusing on all the negatives; Personalizing, or blaming yourself; Catastrophizing, or automatically assuming the worst will happen; Polarizing – seeing only good or bad, black or white.

Whew. I got depressed just writing those.

The Clinic offers the following strategies for putting yourself into a positive frame of mind: Check yourself – periodically, throughout the day, stop and assess your mood and thoughts; Sense of humor – get one if you don’t have one, use it if you do have one; Healthy lifestyle – move, do something, do not eat all the ice cream because it will NOT make you feel better; Positive self talk - there’s always a bright side, so verbalize it and think it in your mind.

The bottom line is a positive attitude won’t kill you, but a negative attitude might.

Alchemy for the 3rd world – turning sewage into drinking water

October 20th, 2009

Imagine a town without clean running water. Not something disastrous such as New Orleans, which eventually benefited from the government trucking in water. Imagine the daily struggle involved with just finding clean water – day after day after day.

Never mind, stop, after all, how can we even fathom such a life? I lived in Des Moines when a flood knocked out the water treatment plant for two weeks. It was a pain, but bearable. I even have some fond memories from the experience. But for so many people in 3rd world countries, finding clean water amounts to a daily struggle, and there’s nothing fond about it. According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, more than 3.5 million people die every year from water-related diseases and almost 900 million don’t have access to a safe water supply.

Slingshot water purifier (photo from CNN)

And you thought the Segway was brilliant

Inventor Dean Kamen and his team at DEKA invented the “Slingshot,” a device that takes undrinkable water and makes it drinkable. This may surprise you, but these are the same guys who invented the Segway — and now they’ve created a remarkable environmental solution that borders on alchemy (the ancient “science” of turning various metals into gold).

The Slingshot’s not all that big. Just take a look at the picture (the guy’s hand gives you a nice indication of scale.) A “vapor compression distiller” sits between two empty tanks connected by hoses. One tank contains contaminated liquid – which could even be raw sewage – the other is for the newly clean water.

The Slingshot boils, distills and vaporizes the impure liquid, delivering pure water to the other tank. And it does it all on less electricity than it takes to run a hair dryer. Of course, electricity might be a problem in some areas of the 3rd world, but according to Newsweek, Kamen has a solution for that too. It’s a generator that runs on cow dung (can’t find a photo of this one — maybe that’s a good thing!).

Slaying the giant problem

The name “Slingshot” comes from the Biblical story of how David slew Goliath using a slingshot.

“We believe the world needs a slingshot to take care of its Goliath of a problem in water,” Kamen told CNN. “So we decided to build a small machine and give it to the little Davids.”

Cost is a huge issue right now — $200,000 for each Slingshot. Kamen hopes to bring the cost down to $1,000 – $2,000 a unit with engineering improvements and more demand.

This is a truly remarkable idea. Earth-shattering, if you ask me. Something that seems like it would make the world stand up and really take notice.

What’s surprising is that this idea’s been around since 2003. Yet we still just talk about it?

Find easy ways to do good at AARP’s CreateTheGood.org

October 19th, 2009

Back in the day (“the day” being sometime during the 90s, pre-Internet), I called about a half dozen charities offering up my services for whatever they needed done. I must have called the wrong places, because my little effort to be charitable went nowhere. I eventually did find ways to share my talents, but it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought.

Too bad I didn’t have access to a site like CreateTheGood.org, brought to us by AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). You type in an area you’d like to help out with (education, hunger, elderly, etc.) and/or your Zip code and you get a list of results. I just typed in my Zip code and nine pages of results appeared – everything from painting homes or cleaning gutters to nature programs to feeding the hungry and homeless.

Of course, CreateTheGood.org isn’t the only way to find ways to help. It’s easy to go online and find a charity close to your home. Or maybe you just need to look around your neighborhood or community. If taking charge is your thing, CreateTheGood.org gives you ideas for starting your own programs.

AARP is a huge organization that sells lots of stuff to its members (insurance, for one), and they do take positions on various political issues that you may or may not agree with. But no matter where you stand on AARP as an organization, how can we not give them credit for this effort? It’s good to know that doing good is just a couple clicks away. (Actually, just one click, if you use the widget above.)

See more here …

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Posted in Giving & charities

Tags: aarp charities createthegood volunteering

An unconditional “I Love You” from your pet = better health

October 17th, 2009

We’ve got this 12-year-old boy cat named I Love You. My daughter named him when he was a kitten and she was 3. Adorable, of course. Tonight, when I read a story from the Chicago Tribune about pets being good for our health, I knew it was true from personal experience with I Love You just this afternoon.

While sitting in the recliner watching TV, only mildly distracted from some worry weighing on my mind at that moment, I Love You jumped up on my chest and settled in. He does this thing where he melts into you. He’s got the softest fur of our three cats, and uses his paws to gently massage your neck. I swear, it’s probably the most relaxing thing I’ve ever felt. I could feel my heart rate slow, my worry drift away, and a sense of, well, love, resonate from I Love You.

It’s always a remarkable experience when he does it. Of course, our other two cats and our two Chihuahuas soothe stress too. But there’s just something special about I Love You’s five-minute stress buster.

It’s true that I don’t really know if I’m going to live an extra 10 minutes because of our pets. But I do know that today, for those moments of unconditional love and relaxation that I Love You shared with me, I was as calm as I’ve been in a long while.

From the article:

“Our cardiovascular health, in particular, seems to get a boost from interacting with furry friends. One NIH-funded study found that of 421 adults who had suffered heart attacks, those who owned dogs were significantly more likely to be alive a year later than those who didn’t own dogs.”