How amazing does she look here?!
Source: http://www.whowhatwear.com/blog/
Thursday, December 30, 2010
my love of gray
Why am I thinking that Olivia Palermo is the only one that can EVER get away with the mixed prints-look??
Casual cool Victoria
Gold watch. Peep-toe Louboutins. Abercrombie shorts. Scarf. Stripes.
Enough said.
Source: http://www.whowhatwear.com/blog/
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
...hey, I have those boots!
Kate Bosworth is such a natural beauty. I love her simplistic style; she is a definite shoo-in as the Calvin Klein muse for that particular clothing line. She can get away with the minimalistic no-makeup look--yes, I'm envious!
Source: http://www.whowhatwear.com/blog/
Mrs. Madden, you did it again
Nicole Richie is one of my favorite style icons of all time! Such a mature, classy outfit (I'm guessing she's clad in stiletto Louboutins with of course, a Chanel purse). I want a black floppy hat like hers.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
effortless
I love muted colors and especially love wardrobes that look austere, but are quite comfy and exude that lived-in feel.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Miss Kunis
Mila Kunis is beautiful! I love her hair.
I just heard she was nominated as "Best Supporting Actress" for Black Swan- what an honor!
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
my next haircut
What can I say- Jessica Alba has always been my style AND hair muse. I will be donning this as my next haircut (when I muster up the balls and guts to do this):
Source: http://www.whowhatwear.com/blog/
Monday, December 13, 2010
Fur
I contemplated on returning my black faux fur stole, but I figured it is an investment piece and a timeless member of any closet.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Covet
I can't emphasize enough how much I love Olivia Palermo. Everything about her screams polished chicness. I am adoring her hair cut & color.
Source: http://www.whowhatwear.com/blog
Sunday, December 5, 2010
RW Quote of the Day
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Short & concise running advice
Follow the Leader: Tera Moody
Advice from the world's best runners.
Published 09/12/2008
Tera Moody, 27, of Boulder, Colorado, placed fifth at the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials in 2:33:54-a 13-minute PR, the biggest in the race.
1. CUT IT SHORT
"When I do two runs on high-mileage days, I often make the second run a three-miler. It's mentally easy to get back out there knowing it's that short."
2. TAKE IT EASY
"On days when I'm really tired, I take a really easy day. I have no problem running 10-minute miles if that's what my body is telling me it needs."
3. WIND IT DOWN
"Learning how to relax in difficult yoga poses has helped me relax during challengingworkouts and races."
Source: www.runnersworld.com
Here's another article worth reading about Tera Moody: here
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
glitterati
Just dug these up since I was bored...
Yes, I was bored for a split-second and then remembered I had a laundry list of things to do.
Source: http://www.befrassy.com/
Sunday, November 21, 2010
I must confess...
...that I am indeed a TEENY-BOP. I am feelin' Bow Wow's new joint featuring Chris Brown called "Ain't Thinkin About You." You can listen and watch the video here. Bow-Weezy and Chris-Breezy are lookin' FIONEEEE. = )
...back to your regularly-scheduled programs...
Fall inspirations
Some style inspirations...
I love this girl's haircolor, leopard scarf, 3/4 length jacket, and of course her gray tights matched with cut-offs.
Olivia's taste in jewelry and accessories always make her outfit pop.
Olivia Palermo could make a garbage bag look like a million bucks!
And the best for last...the Olsen twins...these girls are beyond their years on the fashion trends! Pieces they rocked in the past couple of years are now in style now. I love their Elizabeth and James clothing/shoe line; too bad it's not budget-friendly!
Saturday, November 20, 2010
jealousy.
At some and many points in our lives, we are confronted with jealousy- either from someone else or from within ourselves. I stumbled across this article and thought I'd share. From some soul-searching that I've been doing myself lately, I've realized that I am not the most positive person, which perhaps inherently and directly affects my measured levels of success and well-being. Striving to be happy every day- just from life's simple pleasures and moments- is what I tell myself in the back of my mind. This will probably be a major feat for me, but one of my goals is to de-clutter my life by attempting to eliminate negativity that is within my control.
Know How to Deal with Jealousy
http://howtodealwithjealousy.com/
Many of us have often had twinges of jealousy. This can be a normal feeling that we sometimes display. It can become a problem when jealousy begins to consume you. It is important that we begin to understand the factors behind jealousy as well as begin to learn how to deal with jealousy issues. It may be a problem that we have or it might be a problem that we have with other people. It is important to begin to examine some of these issues in order for us to begin to overcome the problems associated with jealousy.
It is important to understand that normally jealousy stems from feeling inadequate or having low self-esteem. If we do not feel good about ourselves, it is certainly very difficult for us to feel good about other people. To overcome jealousy, we need to begin to find ways to feel better about ourselves. We may not feel good about our job, our relationships or our overall feeling of not quite being good enough. When a friend or family member has the things that we do not have, we begin to experience jealousy. This can make us angry and feel resentful for other people’s successes. We may begin to think and feel hateful thoughts toward those that accomplish things that we wish we could.
We need to begin to follow a concept known as fake it until you make it. By doing this, we may begin to be happy for other people’s accomplishments.
When we learn about a friend that has gotten a much better job, instead of displaying negative attitudes, we can congratulate them on their new job. If someone has purchased a new home that we certainly cannot afford, we can make a simple phone call saying how happy we are for them. Once you begin to do this, you may begin to actually feel happy for those that have success. In the meantime, you need to begin working on yourself. You may need to begin to take some action in your life to make necessary changes. This may include taking a look at some of the fears that are preventing you your own success. You may be afraid of looking for a new job or starting a new relationship, and this fear will prevent us from taking action. You can always start with some simple steps. We need to start to behave and act more positively. This can even be each morning telling ourselves we can have the best day ever. It might mean that we start to eat healthier and exercise daily. Instead of being bitter about other people’s accomplishments, we need to take pride in our own accomplishments. Doing some of the simple steps will begin to put the focus back on ourselves rather than looking at other people and everything that they may have.
Once we have begun to make some small changes in our life, we may start to see those feelings of jealousy starting to go way. As we begin to take action and look for that new job or coming up with goals to achieve financial security, we will begin to feel better about ourselves. Most bitter people in the world are not only unhappy, but are unable to achieve a sense of well-being. If we allow ourselves to be overcome by jealousy, we will begin to experience very solitary life. The key to being filled with peace and serenity is to not look at other people but to look at ourselves. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve ourselves and to overcome our shortcomings by learning how to be happy with our life. We then in turn can be happy with other people’s good fortune.
If we are on the other end of jealousy, which means people are perhaps jealous of us, there are some ways that we can learn how to deal with jealous people. You can always tell jealous people by the remarks they make to us if we share information about ourselves. These are the people that will make a sarcastic remark about our life or accomplishments. It is this person that will say derogatory remarks to you when you tell them something good has happened. For example, you just got a new job that pays more money. You tell a friend and their response is “hope you can handle it” or “nothing like that ever happens to me”. This person is jealous because you have something they do not have. Dealing with jealousy from another person is often a difficult thing. Because it is so negative, it is hard not to return the negative feedback and what we need to do is to remain positive and kind. We do not want to stoop to their level. Unfortunately, sometimes these jealous people can affect our relationship. We may begin to not want to talk to them or be around them due to their negative behavior. We can always try to point it out to them. This can either work and the person may begin to change some of their behavior or we may have to decide not to keep them in our life. This is especially true with the person that says nasty or mean things about us due to their jealousy.
We may also see jealousy issues in relationships. We may see this in someone that we are beginning to date, or someone that we have been involved with. This person becomes jealous over relationships that we may have with friends or other people. Again, these issues are due to insecurities of that person. If they do not begin to deal with terror jealousy issues, it can severely impair the success of the relationship. Jealous people will be unable to have trust in you and this can be a huge barrier to the relationship. Some ways to deal with this is of course to talk about it and try to work on this problem together. For those that want to save their relationship, they may want to seek jealousy help through a professional.
Once you identify your jealousy issues or those people that have these feelings, you can begin to make changes with how you deal with these issues. This type of negative feeling will leave us bitter and unhappy. Life is too short to be unhappy and we have the ability to make changes in our lives every day we wake up.
Know How to Deal with Jealousy
http://howtodealwithjealousy.com/
Many of us have often had twinges of jealousy. This can be a normal feeling that we sometimes display. It can become a problem when jealousy begins to consume you. It is important that we begin to understand the factors behind jealousy as well as begin to learn how to deal with jealousy issues. It may be a problem that we have or it might be a problem that we have with other people. It is important to begin to examine some of these issues in order for us to begin to overcome the problems associated with jealousy.
It is important to understand that normally jealousy stems from feeling inadequate or having low self-esteem. If we do not feel good about ourselves, it is certainly very difficult for us to feel good about other people. To overcome jealousy, we need to begin to find ways to feel better about ourselves. We may not feel good about our job, our relationships or our overall feeling of not quite being good enough. When a friend or family member has the things that we do not have, we begin to experience jealousy. This can make us angry and feel resentful for other people’s successes. We may begin to think and feel hateful thoughts toward those that accomplish things that we wish we could.
We need to begin to follow a concept known as fake it until you make it. By doing this, we may begin to be happy for other people’s accomplishments.
When we learn about a friend that has gotten a much better job, instead of displaying negative attitudes, we can congratulate them on their new job. If someone has purchased a new home that we certainly cannot afford, we can make a simple phone call saying how happy we are for them. Once you begin to do this, you may begin to actually feel happy for those that have success. In the meantime, you need to begin working on yourself. You may need to begin to take some action in your life to make necessary changes. This may include taking a look at some of the fears that are preventing you your own success. You may be afraid of looking for a new job or starting a new relationship, and this fear will prevent us from taking action. You can always start with some simple steps. We need to start to behave and act more positively. This can even be each morning telling ourselves we can have the best day ever. It might mean that we start to eat healthier and exercise daily. Instead of being bitter about other people’s accomplishments, we need to take pride in our own accomplishments. Doing some of the simple steps will begin to put the focus back on ourselves rather than looking at other people and everything that they may have.
Once we have begun to make some small changes in our life, we may start to see those feelings of jealousy starting to go way. As we begin to take action and look for that new job or coming up with goals to achieve financial security, we will begin to feel better about ourselves. Most bitter people in the world are not only unhappy, but are unable to achieve a sense of well-being. If we allow ourselves to be overcome by jealousy, we will begin to experience very solitary life. The key to being filled with peace and serenity is to not look at other people but to look at ourselves. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve ourselves and to overcome our shortcomings by learning how to be happy with our life. We then in turn can be happy with other people’s good fortune.
If we are on the other end of jealousy, which means people are perhaps jealous of us, there are some ways that we can learn how to deal with jealous people. You can always tell jealous people by the remarks they make to us if we share information about ourselves. These are the people that will make a sarcastic remark about our life or accomplishments. It is this person that will say derogatory remarks to you when you tell them something good has happened. For example, you just got a new job that pays more money. You tell a friend and their response is “hope you can handle it” or “nothing like that ever happens to me”. This person is jealous because you have something they do not have. Dealing with jealousy from another person is often a difficult thing. Because it is so negative, it is hard not to return the negative feedback and what we need to do is to remain positive and kind. We do not want to stoop to their level. Unfortunately, sometimes these jealous people can affect our relationship. We may begin to not want to talk to them or be around them due to their negative behavior. We can always try to point it out to them. This can either work and the person may begin to change some of their behavior or we may have to decide not to keep them in our life. This is especially true with the person that says nasty or mean things about us due to their jealousy.
We may also see jealousy issues in relationships. We may see this in someone that we are beginning to date, or someone that we have been involved with. This person becomes jealous over relationships that we may have with friends or other people. Again, these issues are due to insecurities of that person. If they do not begin to deal with terror jealousy issues, it can severely impair the success of the relationship. Jealous people will be unable to have trust in you and this can be a huge barrier to the relationship. Some ways to deal with this is of course to talk about it and try to work on this problem together. For those that want to save their relationship, they may want to seek jealousy help through a professional.
Once you identify your jealousy issues or those people that have these feelings, you can begin to make changes with how you deal with these issues. This type of negative feeling will leave us bitter and unhappy. Life is too short to be unhappy and we have the ability to make changes in our lives every day we wake up.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
the only shearling I can stand.
Let's face it, shearling is going to be a fleeting trend. This is about the only shearling I can stomach at the moment (that and the one my mom wears religiously every winter season).
Source: The Sartorialist
Source: The Sartorialist
c.c.
Ms. Christine C. always makes simplicity a statement. Here she is with G. Zanotti leopard booties.
Source: because im addicted
Source: because im addicted
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Google's Fashion Acumen
I ADORE this new site put out by Google! Check it out here.
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Google Fashion Shopping Site Makes Debut
By CATHY HORYN
You know how remote and strange the fashion world is when you come to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. For one thing, employees are zipping around the sprawling campus on scooters and bicycles, so that pretty much eliminates platform shoes and minis. And for another, there are way too many snack stations at Google. Fashionistas are funny about food.
But go a couple of blocks from the main building, and the mood and the desk décor are conspicuously more invested in style. One employee, Abigail Holtz, has on an ivory silk mini dress with a plunging neckline and a pair of high heels. A colleague, Marissa Goodman, is more casual—but no less savvy. She used to design women’s clothes for Old Navy and Esprit.
In a deliberate collision between nerds and fashion mavens, Google has created a new e-commerce site that significantly improves how fashion is presented and sold online. The site, Boutiques.com, which is expected to go up Wednesday morning, may also change how people shop for clothes.
Boutiques.com has so many capabilities and components that even Google engineers have a hard time qualifying it. It is a collection of hundreds of virtual boutiques merchandised — or, in the new parlance, “curated” — by designers, retailers, bloggers, celebrities and regular folks. You can shop in the style of, say, the actress Carey Mulligan or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — among the celebrities who signed up for the launch — or you can build your own boutique and amass followers who can comment on your taste.
It is a place, then, to show off your fashion acumen, much as millions of Polyvore users already do with their picture collages.
It is also a source of inspiration. In every boutique on the site, there are dozens of additional choices inspired by a designer’s or celebrity’s style — generated by algorithms — with product photos that are much larger and sharper than on other shopping sites. And if you don’t know how to wear the leopard pumps you just bought, there’s a panel of street-style photos on the right side of the site that visualizes the shoes in more expressive modes. Indeed, whatever your style preference — classic, romantic, casual — the inspiration panel automatically adjusts for them, like a support group that can read your mind with surprising precision.
And that may be Boutiques.com’s ultimate game-changer — how precisely it analyzes your preferences to give you what you requested. As many online shoppers know, search engines tend to give you stuff you don’t really want. A request for fern-colored shoes might yield fern shoes, plus fern-print blouses. But, as two experienced online shoppers found when they tested the site earlier this week at Google’s New York office, if you ask for cobalt blue shoes, you get them. And if you refine your preferences with a click or two, you get even more specific styles.
The process at Boutiques.com is accomplished through visual search technology, and what style experts like Ms. Goodman and Ms. Holtz conveyed to Google code writers about the nuances of fashion — from color and pattern to silhouette and what looks good together and what does not.
The technology was actually developed by Like.com, a Silicon Valley company co-founded by Munjal Shah, which Google acquired last summer for a reported $100 million. Before the purchase, Like.com had created a number of fashion e-commerce sites, including Covet.com, and the styling tool Couturious.com.
“I’ve always been impressed with Like.com,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a vice president and retail analyst at Forrester Research, who is familiar with the work on Boutiques.com. “I was just floored by the technology back then and it’s evolved since. They’ve just honed the algorithm.”
Fueled in part by new gadgets like the iPad and more dollars spent by retailers on technology, online sales have generally outpaced brick-and-mortar sales. “I feel e-commerce in the last 12 months has caught a second wind,” Ms. Mulpuru said. According to Forrester, Internet sales of apparel and accessories this year will account for 14 percent, or $25 billion, of the $173 billion that Americans will spend online.
Mr. Shah is the team leader for Boutiques.com, with a left-brain-right-brain group of technicians and tastemakers. As he said in interviews conducted over the past week, “Online fashion shopping has to be universal and curatorial at the same time. This is an answer.”
A number of big companies, most notably Amazon and eBay, have been trying to get a bigger slice of the online apparel pie. But while they have improved the stylishness of their fashion pages, they may be ultimately constrained by their somewhat static platforms. It’s hard to mix DVD players and $900 Christian Louboutin peep-toe pumps.
Meanwhile dedicated fashion sites like Shopstyle.com have gathered fans.
“Shopstyle’s done one of the best jobs in my opinion of creating the right high fashion experience,” Mr. Shah said. “But we think of it as layer one. It’s kind of broken things down, but they didn’t go for a detailed categorization and they didn’t personalize.”
At the time that Mr. Shah and his team at Like.com created Covet.com, a fashion personalization site, they didn’t really have the full picture of all that was possible on the Web. “We captured your preferences but we couldn’t analyze the items to see if they your met your preferences,” he said. “We did one half but you need both halves. We achieved the other half only by rebuilding the technology with a whole new way of analyzing patterns and silhouettes.”
In simple terms, what the style experts did was come up with about 500 words for color, shape and pattern — robin’s egg blue, for instance, and gingham — and then the engineers trained the algorithm to know what each was. They would have pictures of what gingham was and what gingham wasn’t. “We did that word by word by word,” Mr. Shah said. The trouble is a lot of sites don’t have, or use, vision technology. They end up stuffing in a bunch of key words and the search engine gets confused. So you get fern-print blouses when all you really want are fern pumps.
Despite the amount of products that a search on Boutiques.com kicks out, the download time is very fast, and choices appear on extra-long pages so you don’t have to keep clicking. Virtually every kind of information is analyzed — price, brand, color and so on. The site also includes a system called “Complete the Look,” for which Ms. Goodman wrote “a ton of rules,” Mr. Shah said, “and our computer vision and machine learning guys implemented them.”
Additionally, there is a good sense of discovery on Boutiques.com; items come to your attention, almost as they do in stores, that you didn’t necessary plan to buy. Seasonal trends, like fall’s military looks, can be boosted on the site. Again, to Ms. Malpuru, “that’s where Munjal gets it—fashion is about discovery.”
Users of the site will have the option to take a personal style quiz, which ranks a broad spectrum of loves and hates, but Mr. Shah is convinced that most people will prefer to find their “style twin” and shop in that individual’s boutique.
Among the designers who signed up are Tory Burch, Oscar de la Renta, and Isaac Mizrahi, who for one plans to offer signature pieces like a plaid cocktail dress and a military coat.
Bloggers include Bryan Boy and Rumi Neely of Fashiontoast. Other celebrities, which Google said it has paid to host boutiques, are Claire Danes, Ashlee Simpson and Nicole Richie. (By the way, Google authenticates the celebrity boutiques, so imposters be warned.) Retailers include Neiman Marcus, Barneys, Shopbop, Net-a-Porter, and Scoop NYC. Potentially, fashion magazines could have boutiques. So could a character from a television show.
“Somebody may come in and built 20 goth boutiques in the first day,” Mr. Shah said.
On Monday, Simone B. Oliver, a Web producer for The New York Times, and Jane Son, a publicist, gave the site a test drive for this article.
As the two women, both avid online shoppers, slowly got used to the site — which they later admitted could be overwhelming — Ms. Oliver said, glancing at the product categories, “I’m curious why you put shoes first.”
Ms. Goodman replied, “Shoes are always one of the most popular categories.”
Ms. Oliver laughed. “Good answer.”
As Ms. Son typed in “duck boots” on her laptop, yielding a bunch of choices, Ms. Oliver searched for cobalt platform pumps and a black leather shift dress, quickly finding things she liked. She skipped over the celebrity boutiques, preferring the blogger and trend boutiques: “I get more inspiration from girls on the street than celebrities.”But, she added, “I think the celebrity choices are useful for body shape. There are some people in the limelight that have a similar body shape to mine, and a certain silhouette would look good on me. And shades of skin tones.”
Mr. Shah nodded. “We could add skin tones to the preferences.”
Both women liked the inspiration panel, and also how refined the search was.“On other sites, you can’t edit your choices as much,” Ms. Son said. “And I need an edited selection.” Ms. Oliver rated the sense of discovery “A-plus,” adding “I just found out about a shoe brand that I had never heard of—Velvet Angels. They’re more in my price range than, say, Yves Saint Laurent. That was fun. I was looking for something else and it popped up.”
She said to members of the team, “I love that you guys have so many options but you also have the options that make sense.”
Yet, after the meeting, both women identified an obvious shortcoming of Boutiques.com: as curated as it is, a lot still comes up in a search. Suggesting that too much information may be a turnoff to inexperienced Web shoppers, Ms. Son said, “It’s going to take some getting used to, that’s for sure.”
Nodding, Ms. Oliver said, “I feel it’s an amazing site but there are a few aspects that are not very intuitive. Some people might go back to the regular Google search and look for their boots.”
Fortunately for them, the site has that option, too.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
I couldn't have said it any better-
I love Anna dello Russo. She doesn't have the prettiest face in the industry, but she does have a svelte body and she's got that knack for looking chic in whatever she wears. Wear the clothes; don't let them wear you!
Told You So
To all that clowned on me (my loving family!) for owning Jeffrey Campbell's Snick stacked wooden heel, these shoes are actually coveted in the elite fashion circles of world. Take a look here.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Visual Recipe Photographs
Marina Ekroos should submit this to Bon Appetit! Her creativity with this spread is unprecedented. Marina captures the entire preparation/cooking process simultaneously in one photo shot- ingenious!
Photos: because im addicted
Marina Ekroos
Photos: because im addicted
Marina Ekroos
Saturday, November 6, 2010
D_luxe
I wish I could afford this jewelry line; it is absolutely deluxe and divine!
I am so infatuated with the chunky stone rings on this girl's left finger.
Photos: because im addicted
Buy here.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
"My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood"
This article has an awfully-familiar tune and from reading the first line, I knew it would resonate with me.
My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood
By KELLY VALEN
E-mail: modernlove@nytimes.com
MY life’s greatest sorrow stems from my inability to feel close to other women. At 41, I’ve cautiously cultivated a few cherished female friendships. But generally I feel a kind of skittish distrust and discomfort when dealing with most women, particularly women in packs.
Recently I was forced to confront the genesis of my distrust when I found myself face to face with a certain someone from my past, a past I thought I had filed away long ago, or, more precisely, buried on the ocean floor in a padlocked steamer trunk wrapped in layers of industrial-strength chain.
It was Sunday. I had wandered into a Bay Area Gymboree with my 7-year-old daughters and then loitered in the aisles for what proved to be two minutes too long. A jarring parrotlike voice assaulted me from the racks of leggings.
“Kelly Dick? Is that you?”
I figured I could plausibly ignore the summons. My unfortunate maiden name hadn’t saddled me in 14 years. And having aged in all the typical ways, I told myself that technically it wasn’t even me.
But the woman persisted, waving her arms as if signaling a cab in a hailstorm. “Hey! Kelly Dick!”
It was my twins who ultimately exposed me. “Mama, she’s calling you,” they squealed, pointing. “That lady knows you. That lady right there. That’s you: Kelly Dick.”
Smiling confidently, the woman charged toward me. I braced myself.
“Kelly! I knew it was you. Wow, it’s been, like, 20 years. But I could so tell it was you. Remember me? College? Oh, my God. How are you?”
She had been my sorority sister, and not just any sorority sister, but one who had played a leading role in the unraveling of my young life. During rush week, she had interrogated me about my parents’ home and father’s profession, inexplicably wincing when I said “dentist.” She also was among the girls I found in my room one afternoon, rubbing my pearl necklace against her teeth to determine its (and presumably my) authenticity.
And it was this woman and her friends who taught me the hard way that once a girl is made to feel dirty, it becomes her lot, in perpetuity, like an invisible scarlet letter.
I walked through the sorority doors all those years ago as a “good girl,” an 18-year-old milkmaid from St. Paul. I wasn’t a conformist. But I thought a sorority might bestow upon me a supportive, manageable community among the 40,000 students I would be joining 1,700 miles from home. So I pledged.
I felt sophisticated and savvy going in, but quickly discovered I was out of my league among the Rolex-clad Texas debutantes and new-moneyed California beauties. Yet I reveled in the acceptance and status my sorority instantly conferred. The attendant freedoms and social opportunities overwhelmed my tender brain. I indulged, partied hard and, a scant two months into the semester, lost my virginity.
But not in the traditional way.
It happened after a fraternity barn dance. All I knew about my date was that he was festively inclined and physically stunning. My sisters considered him a catch. I felt lucky.
After the usual alcoholic overindulgence, I followed him upstairs, where I soon passed out on his sofa. There, I assumed the starring role in a garden-variety “ledge party,” my deflowering on display for anyone desiring a peek.
Ledge parties, for those of you who didn’t attend party-school universities, featured fraternity boys luring their unsuspecting companions to a lair of choice, where they engineered some semblance of sex for the viewing enjoyment of their voyeuristic brethren, who watched from the window’s ledge. Unlike typical fraternity houses, these were contemporary buildings with plate glass windows and wide ledges that formed perfect viewing platforms.
I suspect mine was one of the duller productions, but, alas, I remember none of it. I learned later that some sympathetic brothers had objected to the spectacle and pulled me from the wreckage, which, to me, was remarkable.
Ledge parties weren’t merely tolerated in the fraternities — they were rewarded with knowing winks and backslaps. But my date had crossed a line: Apparently the fraternal code of ethics only approved of the performances when the girls were conscious (albeit still unaware they were being watched).
In the days that followed, my date apologized to me and to his brothers, but the fraternity blackballed him anyway; by semester’s end, he had dropped out of school. There was never talk of criminality; for whatever reason, we simply didn’t think of it that way.
And I felt my own heavy burden of responsibility for getting drunk and losing control. I thought the whole sordid episode would be a lesson learned about both college and men. Little did I know that the more searing lesson would be about women.
Among my sorority sisters, the fallout began as whispered gossip. Then, after momentum of my condemnation built to a crescendo, they confronted me directly, en masse, like a torch-wielding mob. Branding the incident my fault, they said I deserved my fate and further complained that I had brought shame upon them all. They laughed at me, gossiped some more, then distanced themselves. I was dirty to them — and dirtier to myself.
My sisters, of course, were hardly model citizens, either. Indeed, some boasted a sexual prowess that still makes me blush. They had sex in our chapter room, in hot tubs, behind rocks. They participated in communal bulimic binges and coordinated the termination of unwanted pregnancies. Many, naturally, had been victimized by ledge parties as well but had somehow managed to keep it quiet.
For weeks I coasted in a daze until one day my sisters placed me on probation, ostensibly for failing to dress in “appropriate sorority spirit.” The sweat pants I preferred to de rigueur Laura Ashley prairie dresses weren’t cutting it, they said. Then I choreographed a joke dance routine to a Prince song for our Greek Sing variety show, but my sisters didn’t laugh. They found my choice of repertory inappropriate, the proverbial last straw, and called a meeting to assess my transgressions.
I remember watching television alone in my room while they met about me in the chapter room. Soon I heard the clicking of heels, then a strident knock upon my door. When it opened, there she was, my future Gymboree assailant, flanked by a cadre of perfumed compatriots. Sporting cold self-righteous expressions, they explained that the sisterhood had decided I was not sorority material. I would need to contact university housing and move out.
In the wake of my expulsion, I withdrew socially and pretended it didn’t matter. I hid under my Sony Walkman, hit the books and donned a defensive armor of sarcasm and cynicism. And I gave up on female camaraderie.
I graduated, went to law school and jumped fast into courtship and marriage. Still haunted by my college experience, I hoped that marriage and parenthood would legitimize my life, loosen the barnacles of shame and allow me to find closure. And until my Gymboree encounter, I believed I had.
I had heard little about this particular sister over the years, only that she had wed her college sweetheart and settled in a wealthy California enclave. That this shrieking Bulgari-adorned stranger now accorded me long-lost-friend status was at once surreal and unsurprising. I smiled through clenched teeth, but my flushed chest and forehead betrayed my inner turbulence.
“Gosh, I’ve thought of you often,” she said. “I always felt bad about the sorority thing. But I guess we can laugh now. I heard you went to law school, right?”
She began reciting the misfortunes she had faced, her marital separation and other ordeals, all of which she delivered with an upbeat spin. But I couldn’t listen. It was such a cliché: former goddess turned caricature: too lacquered, too accessorized, too fit.
In hearing of her failures, I yearned to feel redeemed, even superior, but no. She held the same eerie power over me. All I could think was that to her, I was still Kelly Dick, the drunken slut who had disgraced the sisterhood. Standing before her, I felt raw, exposed, dirty again. The sisterhood’s looming judgments, my stale indiscretions: all of it engulfed me, threatening to cleave the marrow of my being once more.
I cut her off and bid her farewell. It was all I could manage. Then I tightly clasped my daughters’ hands and fled the store.
BUT I could not shake the encounter. A morbid funk descended that day and held fast. No longer could I deny the havoc that that night had wrought on my self-image and relationships. At 18, I had bought into the talk of sisterly solidarity. I adhered to their customs and mores, relied on them for nurturing and intimacy, trusted them.
And they not only failed to support me in crisis, they collectively kicked me as I lay in the gutter, judged me from under a veil of hypocrisy, then cast me out, leper-style. Their betrayal cut so deep that it has left me anxious and cowering to this day.
For the last 20-odd years, I’ve slapped Band-Aids on my wounds while avoiding any kind of group female intimacy. I begged off on baby groups when my children were born and haven’t been able to bear book clubs, the charity circuit, women’s fitness classes or the country club scene. Even finding myself among a group of cheering and chatting mothers at my children’s sporting events can trigger that familiar anxiety.
But to my enduring wonder, I have never felt the same anxiety about men. To be sure, their violence and misogynistic rituals stole my innocence and triggered the demons of shame and repression that shackle me still.
Yet their actions, however crude and criminal, ultimately hurt me far less than the judgments, connivance and betrayal of women. The men in my drama acknowledged wrongdoing, apologized, showed remorse. Punishment, however minor, was meted out. They did not blame me, and they shouldn’t have. But the women shouldn’t have, either, and they did.
In the two decades since, I’ve been a full-time lawyer, a working mother and a stay-at-home mother. In each role, I’ve found my fears about women’s covert competition and aggression to be frequently validated: the gossip, the comparisons, the withering critiques of career and mothering choices. We women swim in shark-infested waters of our own design. Often we don’t have a clue where we stand with one another — socially, as mothers, as colleagues — because we’re at once allies and foes.
I want to remain optimistic. After all, here I am with three daughters. What am I to teach them? Cautionary tales about men’s harmful proclivities abound. But how do we help our girls navigate the duplicitous female maze? How do we ensure that they behave authentically, respect humanity over fleeting alliances, and squash the nasty tribal instincts that can inflict lifelong distress?
I don’t know. I’m afraid I never will.
Kelly Valen, a lawyer and writer, lives in Piedmont, Calif.
My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood
By KELLY VALEN
E-mail: modernlove@nytimes.com
MY life’s greatest sorrow stems from my inability to feel close to other women. At 41, I’ve cautiously cultivated a few cherished female friendships. But generally I feel a kind of skittish distrust and discomfort when dealing with most women, particularly women in packs.
Recently I was forced to confront the genesis of my distrust when I found myself face to face with a certain someone from my past, a past I thought I had filed away long ago, or, more precisely, buried on the ocean floor in a padlocked steamer trunk wrapped in layers of industrial-strength chain.
It was Sunday. I had wandered into a Bay Area Gymboree with my 7-year-old daughters and then loitered in the aisles for what proved to be two minutes too long. A jarring parrotlike voice assaulted me from the racks of leggings.
“Kelly Dick? Is that you?”
I figured I could plausibly ignore the summons. My unfortunate maiden name hadn’t saddled me in 14 years. And having aged in all the typical ways, I told myself that technically it wasn’t even me.
But the woman persisted, waving her arms as if signaling a cab in a hailstorm. “Hey! Kelly Dick!”
It was my twins who ultimately exposed me. “Mama, she’s calling you,” they squealed, pointing. “That lady knows you. That lady right there. That’s you: Kelly Dick.”
Smiling confidently, the woman charged toward me. I braced myself.
“Kelly! I knew it was you. Wow, it’s been, like, 20 years. But I could so tell it was you. Remember me? College? Oh, my God. How are you?”
She had been my sorority sister, and not just any sorority sister, but one who had played a leading role in the unraveling of my young life. During rush week, she had interrogated me about my parents’ home and father’s profession, inexplicably wincing when I said “dentist.” She also was among the girls I found in my room one afternoon, rubbing my pearl necklace against her teeth to determine its (and presumably my) authenticity.
And it was this woman and her friends who taught me the hard way that once a girl is made to feel dirty, it becomes her lot, in perpetuity, like an invisible scarlet letter.
I walked through the sorority doors all those years ago as a “good girl,” an 18-year-old milkmaid from St. Paul. I wasn’t a conformist. But I thought a sorority might bestow upon me a supportive, manageable community among the 40,000 students I would be joining 1,700 miles from home. So I pledged.
I felt sophisticated and savvy going in, but quickly discovered I was out of my league among the Rolex-clad Texas debutantes and new-moneyed California beauties. Yet I reveled in the acceptance and status my sorority instantly conferred. The attendant freedoms and social opportunities overwhelmed my tender brain. I indulged, partied hard and, a scant two months into the semester, lost my virginity.
But not in the traditional way.
It happened after a fraternity barn dance. All I knew about my date was that he was festively inclined and physically stunning. My sisters considered him a catch. I felt lucky.
After the usual alcoholic overindulgence, I followed him upstairs, where I soon passed out on his sofa. There, I assumed the starring role in a garden-variety “ledge party,” my deflowering on display for anyone desiring a peek.
Ledge parties, for those of you who didn’t attend party-school universities, featured fraternity boys luring their unsuspecting companions to a lair of choice, where they engineered some semblance of sex for the viewing enjoyment of their voyeuristic brethren, who watched from the window’s ledge. Unlike typical fraternity houses, these were contemporary buildings with plate glass windows and wide ledges that formed perfect viewing platforms.
I suspect mine was one of the duller productions, but, alas, I remember none of it. I learned later that some sympathetic brothers had objected to the spectacle and pulled me from the wreckage, which, to me, was remarkable.
Ledge parties weren’t merely tolerated in the fraternities — they were rewarded with knowing winks and backslaps. But my date had crossed a line: Apparently the fraternal code of ethics only approved of the performances when the girls were conscious (albeit still unaware they were being watched).
In the days that followed, my date apologized to me and to his brothers, but the fraternity blackballed him anyway; by semester’s end, he had dropped out of school. There was never talk of criminality; for whatever reason, we simply didn’t think of it that way.
And I felt my own heavy burden of responsibility for getting drunk and losing control. I thought the whole sordid episode would be a lesson learned about both college and men. Little did I know that the more searing lesson would be about women.
Among my sorority sisters, the fallout began as whispered gossip. Then, after momentum of my condemnation built to a crescendo, they confronted me directly, en masse, like a torch-wielding mob. Branding the incident my fault, they said I deserved my fate and further complained that I had brought shame upon them all. They laughed at me, gossiped some more, then distanced themselves. I was dirty to them — and dirtier to myself.
My sisters, of course, were hardly model citizens, either. Indeed, some boasted a sexual prowess that still makes me blush. They had sex in our chapter room, in hot tubs, behind rocks. They participated in communal bulimic binges and coordinated the termination of unwanted pregnancies. Many, naturally, had been victimized by ledge parties as well but had somehow managed to keep it quiet.
For weeks I coasted in a daze until one day my sisters placed me on probation, ostensibly for failing to dress in “appropriate sorority spirit.” The sweat pants I preferred to de rigueur Laura Ashley prairie dresses weren’t cutting it, they said. Then I choreographed a joke dance routine to a Prince song for our Greek Sing variety show, but my sisters didn’t laugh. They found my choice of repertory inappropriate, the proverbial last straw, and called a meeting to assess my transgressions.
I remember watching television alone in my room while they met about me in the chapter room. Soon I heard the clicking of heels, then a strident knock upon my door. When it opened, there she was, my future Gymboree assailant, flanked by a cadre of perfumed compatriots. Sporting cold self-righteous expressions, they explained that the sisterhood had decided I was not sorority material. I would need to contact university housing and move out.
In the wake of my expulsion, I withdrew socially and pretended it didn’t matter. I hid under my Sony Walkman, hit the books and donned a defensive armor of sarcasm and cynicism. And I gave up on female camaraderie.
I graduated, went to law school and jumped fast into courtship and marriage. Still haunted by my college experience, I hoped that marriage and parenthood would legitimize my life, loosen the barnacles of shame and allow me to find closure. And until my Gymboree encounter, I believed I had.
I had heard little about this particular sister over the years, only that she had wed her college sweetheart and settled in a wealthy California enclave. That this shrieking Bulgari-adorned stranger now accorded me long-lost-friend status was at once surreal and unsurprising. I smiled through clenched teeth, but my flushed chest and forehead betrayed my inner turbulence.
“Gosh, I’ve thought of you often,” she said. “I always felt bad about the sorority thing. But I guess we can laugh now. I heard you went to law school, right?”
She began reciting the misfortunes she had faced, her marital separation and other ordeals, all of which she delivered with an upbeat spin. But I couldn’t listen. It was such a cliché: former goddess turned caricature: too lacquered, too accessorized, too fit.
In hearing of her failures, I yearned to feel redeemed, even superior, but no. She held the same eerie power over me. All I could think was that to her, I was still Kelly Dick, the drunken slut who had disgraced the sisterhood. Standing before her, I felt raw, exposed, dirty again. The sisterhood’s looming judgments, my stale indiscretions: all of it engulfed me, threatening to cleave the marrow of my being once more.
I cut her off and bid her farewell. It was all I could manage. Then I tightly clasped my daughters’ hands and fled the store.
BUT I could not shake the encounter. A morbid funk descended that day and held fast. No longer could I deny the havoc that that night had wrought on my self-image and relationships. At 18, I had bought into the talk of sisterly solidarity. I adhered to their customs and mores, relied on them for nurturing and intimacy, trusted them.
And they not only failed to support me in crisis, they collectively kicked me as I lay in the gutter, judged me from under a veil of hypocrisy, then cast me out, leper-style. Their betrayal cut so deep that it has left me anxious and cowering to this day.
For the last 20-odd years, I’ve slapped Band-Aids on my wounds while avoiding any kind of group female intimacy. I begged off on baby groups when my children were born and haven’t been able to bear book clubs, the charity circuit, women’s fitness classes or the country club scene. Even finding myself among a group of cheering and chatting mothers at my children’s sporting events can trigger that familiar anxiety.
But to my enduring wonder, I have never felt the same anxiety about men. To be sure, their violence and misogynistic rituals stole my innocence and triggered the demons of shame and repression that shackle me still.
Yet their actions, however crude and criminal, ultimately hurt me far less than the judgments, connivance and betrayal of women. The men in my drama acknowledged wrongdoing, apologized, showed remorse. Punishment, however minor, was meted out. They did not blame me, and they shouldn’t have. But the women shouldn’t have, either, and they did.
In the two decades since, I’ve been a full-time lawyer, a working mother and a stay-at-home mother. In each role, I’ve found my fears about women’s covert competition and aggression to be frequently validated: the gossip, the comparisons, the withering critiques of career and mothering choices. We women swim in shark-infested waters of our own design. Often we don’t have a clue where we stand with one another — socially, as mothers, as colleagues — because we’re at once allies and foes.
I want to remain optimistic. After all, here I am with three daughters. What am I to teach them? Cautionary tales about men’s harmful proclivities abound. But how do we help our girls navigate the duplicitous female maze? How do we ensure that they behave authentically, respect humanity over fleeting alliances, and squash the nasty tribal instincts that can inflict lifelong distress?
I don’t know. I’m afraid I never will.
Kelly Valen, a lawyer and writer, lives in Piedmont, Calif.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Black Swan
I can't wait to see this movie with Natalie Portman starring opposite Mila Kunis. The movie is supposed to be released Dec. 3, 2010. I love those uber-competitive dance movies! See the FOX Searchlight Black Swan website here.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Magic Mile
http://jeffgalloway.com/resources/gallracepredict.html
I'm going to try Jeff Galloway's "MM" Pace Predictor once I get the free opportunity to hit the track and get some fast miles under my belt.
I'm going to try Jeff Galloway's "MM" Pace Predictor once I get the free opportunity to hit the track and get some fast miles under my belt.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
"How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do"
October 18, 2010
How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do
By GINA KOLATA
My son, Stefan, was running in a half marathon in Philadelphia last month when he heard someone coming up behind him, breathing hard.
To his surprise, it was an elite runner, Kim Smith, a blond waif from New Zealand. She has broken her country’s records in shorter distances and now she’s running half marathons. She ran the London marathon last spring and will run the New York marathon next month.
That day, Ms. Smith seemed to be struggling. Her breathing was labored and she had saliva all over her face. But somehow she kept up, finishing just behind Stefan and coming in fifth with a time of 1:08:39.
And that is one of the secrets of elite athletes, said Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the group that puts on the ING New York City Marathon. They can keep going at a level of effort that seems impossible to maintain.
“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running,” Ms. Wittenberg said.
You can see it in the saliva-coated faces of the top runners in the New York marathon, Ms. Wittenberg added.
“We have towels at marathon finish to wipe away the spit on the winners’ faces,” she said. “Our creative team sometimes has to airbrush it off race photos that we want to use for ad campaigns.”
Tom Fleming, who coaches Stefan and me, agrees. A two-time winner of the New York marathon and a distance runner who was ranked fourth in the world, he says there’s a reason he was so fast.
“I was given a body that could train every single day.” Tom said, “and a mind, a mentality, that believed that if I trained every day — and I could train every day — I’ll beat you.”
“The mentality was I will do whatever it takes to win,” he added. “I was totally willing to have the worst pain. I was totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race.”
But the question is, how do they do it? Can you train yourself to run, cycle, swim or do another sport at the edge of your body’s limits, or is that something that a few are born with, part of what makes them elites?
Sports doctors who have looked into the question say that, at the very least, most people could do a lot better if they knew what it took to do their best.
“Absolutely,” said Dr. Jeroen Swart, a sports medicine physician, exercise physiologist and champion cross-country mountain biker who works at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa.
“Some think elite athletes have an easy time of it,” Dr. Swart said in a telephone interview. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And as athletes improve — getting faster and beating their own records — “it never gets any easier,” Dr. Swart said. “You hurt just as much.”
But, he added, “Knowing how to accept that allows people to improve their performance.”
One trick is to try a course before racing it. In one study, Dr. Swart told trained cyclists to ride as hard as they could over a 40-kilometer course. The more familiar they got with the course, the faster they rode, even though — to their minds — it felt as if they were putting out maximal effort on every attempt.
Then Dr. Swart and his colleagues asked the cyclists to ride the course with all-out effort, but withheld information about how far they’d gone and how far they had to go. Subconsciously, the cyclists held back the most in this attempt, leaving some energy in reserve.
That is why elite runners will examine a course, running it before they race it. That is why Lance Armstrong trained for the grueling Tour de France stage on l’Alpe d’Huez by riding up the mountain over and over again.
“You are learning exactly how to pace yourself,” Dr. Swart said.
Another performance trick during competitions is association, the act of concentrating intensely on the very act of running or cycling, or whatever your sport is, said John S. Raglin, a sports psychologist at Indiana University.
In studies of college runners, he found that less accomplished athletes tended to dissociate, to think of something other than their running to distract themselves.
“Sometimes dissociation allows runners to speed up, because they are not attending to their pain and effort,” he said. “But what often happens is they hit a sort of physiological wall that forces them to slow down, so they end up racing inefficiently in a sort of oscillating pace.” But association, Dr. Raglin says, is difficult, which may be why most don’t do it.
Dr. Swart says he sees that in cycling, too.
“Our hypothesis is that elite athletes are able to motivate themselves continuously and are able to run the gantlet between pushing too hard — and failing to finish — and underperforming,” Dr. Swart said.
To find this motivation, the athletes must resist the feeling that they are too tired and have to slow down, he added. Instead, they have to concentrate on increasing the intensity of their effort. That, Dr. Swart said, takes “mental strength,” but “allows them to perform close to their maximal ability.”
Dr. Swart said he did this himself, but it took experience and practice to get it right. There were many races, he said, when “I pushed myself beyond my abilities and had to withdraw, as I was completely exhausted.”
Finally, with more experience, Dr. Swart became South Africa’s cross-country mountain biking champion in 2002.
Some people focus by going into a trancelike state, blocking out distractions. Others, like Dr. Swart, have a different method: He knows what he is capable of and which competitors he can beat, and keeps them in his sight, not allowing himself to fall back.
“I just hate to lose,” Dr. Swart said. “I would tell myself I was the best, and then have to prove it.”
Kim Smith has a similar strategy.
“I don’t want to let the other girls get too far ahead of me,” she said in a telephone interview. “I pretty much try and focus really hard on the person in front of me.”
And while she tied her success to having “some sort of talent toward running,” Ms. Smith added that there were “a lot of people out there who were probably just as talented. You have to be talented, and you have to have the ability to push yourself through pain.”
And, yes, she does get saliva all over her face.
“It’s not a pretty sport,” Ms. Smith said. “You are not looking good at the end.”
As for the race she ran with my son, she said: “I’m sorry if I spit all over Stefan.” (She didn’t, Stefan said.)
How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do
By GINA KOLATA
My son, Stefan, was running in a half marathon in Philadelphia last month when he heard someone coming up behind him, breathing hard.
To his surprise, it was an elite runner, Kim Smith, a blond waif from New Zealand. She has broken her country’s records in shorter distances and now she’s running half marathons. She ran the London marathon last spring and will run the New York marathon next month.
That day, Ms. Smith seemed to be struggling. Her breathing was labored and she had saliva all over her face. But somehow she kept up, finishing just behind Stefan and coming in fifth with a time of 1:08:39.
And that is one of the secrets of elite athletes, said Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the group that puts on the ING New York City Marathon. They can keep going at a level of effort that seems impossible to maintain.
“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running,” Ms. Wittenberg said.
You can see it in the saliva-coated faces of the top runners in the New York marathon, Ms. Wittenberg added.
“We have towels at marathon finish to wipe away the spit on the winners’ faces,” she said. “Our creative team sometimes has to airbrush it off race photos that we want to use for ad campaigns.”
Tom Fleming, who coaches Stefan and me, agrees. A two-time winner of the New York marathon and a distance runner who was ranked fourth in the world, he says there’s a reason he was so fast.
“I was given a body that could train every single day.” Tom said, “and a mind, a mentality, that believed that if I trained every day — and I could train every day — I’ll beat you.”
“The mentality was I will do whatever it takes to win,” he added. “I was totally willing to have the worst pain. I was totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race.”
But the question is, how do they do it? Can you train yourself to run, cycle, swim or do another sport at the edge of your body’s limits, or is that something that a few are born with, part of what makes them elites?
Sports doctors who have looked into the question say that, at the very least, most people could do a lot better if they knew what it took to do their best.
“Absolutely,” said Dr. Jeroen Swart, a sports medicine physician, exercise physiologist and champion cross-country mountain biker who works at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa.
“Some think elite athletes have an easy time of it,” Dr. Swart said in a telephone interview. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And as athletes improve — getting faster and beating their own records — “it never gets any easier,” Dr. Swart said. “You hurt just as much.”
But, he added, “Knowing how to accept that allows people to improve their performance.”
One trick is to try a course before racing it. In one study, Dr. Swart told trained cyclists to ride as hard as they could over a 40-kilometer course. The more familiar they got with the course, the faster they rode, even though — to their minds — it felt as if they were putting out maximal effort on every attempt.
Then Dr. Swart and his colleagues asked the cyclists to ride the course with all-out effort, but withheld information about how far they’d gone and how far they had to go. Subconsciously, the cyclists held back the most in this attempt, leaving some energy in reserve.
That is why elite runners will examine a course, running it before they race it. That is why Lance Armstrong trained for the grueling Tour de France stage on l’Alpe d’Huez by riding up the mountain over and over again.
“You are learning exactly how to pace yourself,” Dr. Swart said.
Another performance trick during competitions is association, the act of concentrating intensely on the very act of running or cycling, or whatever your sport is, said John S. Raglin, a sports psychologist at Indiana University.
In studies of college runners, he found that less accomplished athletes tended to dissociate, to think of something other than their running to distract themselves.
“Sometimes dissociation allows runners to speed up, because they are not attending to their pain and effort,” he said. “But what often happens is they hit a sort of physiological wall that forces them to slow down, so they end up racing inefficiently in a sort of oscillating pace.” But association, Dr. Raglin says, is difficult, which may be why most don’t do it.
Dr. Swart says he sees that in cycling, too.
“Our hypothesis is that elite athletes are able to motivate themselves continuously and are able to run the gantlet between pushing too hard — and failing to finish — and underperforming,” Dr. Swart said.
To find this motivation, the athletes must resist the feeling that they are too tired and have to slow down, he added. Instead, they have to concentrate on increasing the intensity of their effort. That, Dr. Swart said, takes “mental strength,” but “allows them to perform close to their maximal ability.”
Dr. Swart said he did this himself, but it took experience and practice to get it right. There were many races, he said, when “I pushed myself beyond my abilities and had to withdraw, as I was completely exhausted.”
Finally, with more experience, Dr. Swart became South Africa’s cross-country mountain biking champion in 2002.
Some people focus by going into a trancelike state, blocking out distractions. Others, like Dr. Swart, have a different method: He knows what he is capable of and which competitors he can beat, and keeps them in his sight, not allowing himself to fall back.
“I just hate to lose,” Dr. Swart said. “I would tell myself I was the best, and then have to prove it.”
Kim Smith has a similar strategy.
“I don’t want to let the other girls get too far ahead of me,” she said in a telephone interview. “I pretty much try and focus really hard on the person in front of me.”
And while she tied her success to having “some sort of talent toward running,” Ms. Smith added that there were “a lot of people out there who were probably just as talented. You have to be talented, and you have to have the ability to push yourself through pain.”
And, yes, she does get saliva all over her face.
“It’s not a pretty sport,” Ms. Smith said. “You are not looking good at the end.”
As for the race she ran with my son, she said: “I’m sorry if I spit all over Stefan.” (She didn’t, Stefan said.)
Monday, October 18, 2010
style and hair muse
I've always loved Nicole Scherzinger for her exceptional sass and talent on the dance floor, as well as on the mike. Since I dyed my hair (DIY Clairol "dark brown") and it's a lot darker than I anticipated, I needed to lean on the shoulder of my good friend, Nicole, for some moral support hehe. Here are some shots of her that I'd like to emulate and maybe duplicate... hey, as Lats would say, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." (I had to give him a shout-out because he'd call me on it and then I'd go off on my usual tirades hehe.)
There were other fabulous pictures of Ms. Scherzinger, but I simply do not have the time to entertain these pics on my blog right now. I should be doing homework, actually...
Cot dang, look at her exotic tan, buff legs, and usual healthy, vibrant signature-black locks!
I have the same hue of this leather jacket and scarf she's sporting. I love black aviator sunglasses and a nude wardrobe palette. It's chic but low-maintenance, and of course, it's not trying too hard.
I want to rock this pompadour sometime later this week when I go out!
Diggin' this ensemble- gold & off-silver/palladium are some of my favorite couplings.
Kishes,
P
There were other fabulous pictures of Ms. Scherzinger, but I simply do not have the time to entertain these pics on my blog right now. I should be doing homework, actually...
Cot dang, look at her exotic tan, buff legs, and usual healthy, vibrant signature-black locks!
I have the same hue of this leather jacket and scarf she's sporting. I love black aviator sunglasses and a nude wardrobe palette. It's chic but low-maintenance, and of course, it's not trying too hard.
I want to rock this pompadour sometime later this week when I go out!
Diggin' this ensemble- gold & off-silver/palladium are some of my favorite couplings.
Kishes,
P
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