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Deanna makes a quick descent (it's the
prairies folks; this is almost a mountain) at the local Bur Oak
trail during a Wednesday Night Race. Bur Oak is one of
Deanna's favourite trails. Coincidentally she also likes
Baroque music.
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Purpose
To
some extent this site is probably just a glorified blog, but we like
to think that the purpose of TheTrainingCoop.com is at least a
little more than our vain attempt to claim some small corner of the
web as our own. Allow us to explain:
We seem to gravitate towards
'high performance' athletic environments, though at least in this
stage of our lives we don't consider ourselves particularly high
performance (if there ever was a chance to make it onto the podium
at World's that chance has surely passed by now, unless we discover
a long dormant talent as curlers). None the less we enjoy the
structure, the commitment, and the top end gear that come with the
high performance environment, and we tend to have friends and
acquaintances who take their sports seriously and we enjoy tagging
along, and contributing to, that world.
One problem with the high
performance world is that it kind of necessitates narcissism (there
might be more appropriate terminology to use here, but we like that
turn of phrase). If you're going to commit hours a day to
improving your athletic performance 1/10th of a percent in order to
move up one placing in the next competition you need to be somewhat
self-interested. And, if that's your goal then trying to
achieve it is hopefully satisfying enough that you don't need much
else. But we're not really setting those goals for ourselves
so we run the risk of feeling somewhat unsatisfied in that
environment. At the end of the day most of the folks we're
training beside are probably more interested in themselves and their
own performance than they are in us and ours. Don't get us
wrong - we've made many wonderful friends who have shared themselves
selflessly with us over the years, but still, it's rare to find an
environment where people are as concerned about you as they are
about themselves (we doubt this comes as a shock to you).
So, we set out to try to
create an environment where a small cooperative of members really do
care as much about each other as they do about themselves (as much
as that's possible for any of us). We share
many of the same interests, and we want to live through the highs
and lows of each other's training, competing, and adventures
together as though they are our own.
Maybe that's the primary
purpose of TheTrainingCoop.com: To celebrate that we truly are a
training cooperative. If others occasionally stop by the site
to see what we're up to that's great, but even if no one visits it's
cathartic for us to capture our feelings and affirm our commitment
to one another by posting things here. If down the road
there's another family member or good friend who shares our philosophy and
purpose (however poorly we've communicated it) and wants to join our
little coop, even better.
More practically, the mere
fact that someone could check out our Message Board postings
and read about how our training is going is bound to keep us honest,
and some days you need whatever incentive you can get to get up and
go. So if you are reading this let us know and maybe
we'll be inspired to put in an extra effort on tomorrow's run, ride,
or paddle. |
