News : The Power of Exercise

Barbara Peterson’s Comeback at XTERRA World Championships 2011

Here is a repost of a blog post by Richard Castello.

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http://longtrailahead.blogspot.com/2011/11/maui-moments-2.html

Continuing on with activities at the post race awards dinner, I found myself to be quite entertained by some of the emotions and celebrations, by many of the racers who paid visit to the podium atop the stage. As they started presenting winners, beginning from the oldest first and unto the youngest, I couldn’t help but marvel at the athletic achievements regarding many of the older competitors, that they had put forth during the race. I was just in awe of the overall times some of them had put in, on the very same course that I had competed on. Incredibly amazing. When they moved to announce the winners in the 55-59 age division, I was completely blown away at the news that a good personal friend, had claimed the division title this year. Barbara Peterson of Berkeley, California, has been in this same spot before, as a matter of fact, she has been the recipient of being a world champion five times before. Certainly no stranger to winning. This 2011 win though was different, different in so may ways I thought.
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Personal Best by Barbara Edelston Peterson

Being a mom was all I ever wanted. It would converge all that mattered most to me: loving and being loved, needing and being needed, teaching and learning, striving and leading. When I finally had my own children, I was smitten, overflowing with love and pride, eager to nourish them forever. In Yiddish, this is kveling. I’m the queen of it, and I would never want it to be different. My life was complete.

But life can change in seconds. Lightning strikes, you win the lottery, you fall in love. It happened one afternoon in my kitchen – nothing X-rated (unless you count the initial) – just a lively conversation with my sister that led to an unexpected tingling sensation, a mounting curiosity, and an overwhelming desire as she described a new triathlon called XTERRA. Knowing my passion for mountain biking, and our mutual love of athletic challenge, she felt it would be perfect for me. This sister, my identical twin, is an endurance athlete known for her Ironman triathlon conquests and long-distance running. She assured me that this off-road triathlon would be doable; it attracts only those who swim open water, ride extreme terrain, and run trails and soft sandy beaches.
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XTERRATORY – My 20-Year Mountain Bike Ride from Whiskeytown to Wailea

The crow would have to fly close to 3,000 miles to cover the distance between Whiskeytown, California and Wailea, Hawaii. For me, this vast and wonderful territory of land and sea measures 20 years of a most exciting and rewarding life.

In 1983, I was 27 and lived in a tiny cottage nestled in the redwoods on the flanks of Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley, California. It was new territory, and a new chapter in my life.
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It’s Never Too Late

Seven years ago, upon turning 40, life took a turn into uncharted territory. My first book was published! My babies had grown into young girls who were involved with sports, school and friends. My husband and I were closer than ever, enjoying more independence which basically meant more time together on our mountain bikes (we met mountain bike racing in the early 80′s and continue to love riding together). As a 40 year old mother, I was in the best shape of my life: swimming daily, playing a lot of tennis, skiing in the winter and mountain bike racing in the summer. Much to my surprise, life as a 40-year old began to feel like the best years of my life. Had someone suggested that before too long I would become a world class triathlete, I would have chuckled and said, “yeah, right.”
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Bikram for Body, Bikram for Life

There may not be a stiffer person than I at Funky Door Yoga in Berkeley, California. I used to do yoga back east when I was 16 years old. Back then, the class met each morning in the center of a green pasture. I vividly remember meditating upon a yellow dandelion before Salute to the Sun, and the immense pleasure I received that summer from my limber body. Now, many years later, I have returned to yoga. This time I can be found two to three times a week in a steaming hot, brightly lit and fully mirrored Bikram yoga studio.
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Around the World Xterra Style

Last June, I boarded an early morning international flight from San Francisco to Prague. Five weeks later, in mid-August I boarded another early morning international flight from San Francisco to Vancouver, Canada. And three weeks after this, on September 11th of all days, I boarded the same early morning international flight that I took in June, to travel from San Francisco to Germany. Each of those mornings, after tip-toeing out the front door of my sleepy home to catch the Airporter Bus, my heart pounded wildly against my chest – beating only slightly within the bounds of a normal heart rate. Where is this 48-year old mother of two going? To the next Xterra!
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Barbara Peterson takes her 8th XTERRA Europe Championship Title

O-SEE Challenge 2011

iParenting – Mom of the Month

Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a mother who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a woman and a mother. Above all, the Mom of the Month is dedicated to her children. Rich or poor, famous or not, she shines as an example of what mothering is all about.

Meet May’s Mom of the Month, Barbara Edelston Peterson, 49, a woman who lets very little stand in the way of her workouts. Even when her two daughters were very little, she’d explain to them it was her exercise time and out the door she went.

“When the girls were babies, I told them, ‘I’m going out for a bike ride for two hours. And I’ll be back. It’s Daddy time,’” she says.

“That’s what they knew as babies,” Peterson, a semi-professional mountain bike and triathlon world champion, says of her daughters, Hilary, now 16, and Foreste, 11. The family lives in a rustic cottage nestled in the hills of Berkeley, Calif.

“Barbara Peterson’s daughters have only known an extremely fit mother,” Peterson says of herself, in the third person. But she’s quick to add: “I am a mother, first and foremost.” It might be safe to say she’s one of few extreme mothers.

Extreme Motherhood

Many people get a natural high from exercise. But it’s not their spiritual font. Exercise is, however, the source of both for Peterson. “It’s my church, my sanctuary,” says Peterson, 5 feet, 3 inches tall and 108 pounds.

Mother, extreme athlete, author, marketing consultant and jewelry designer, Peterson says exercise is her fuel for spiritual and physical wellness, and it has been part of her life since her late teens. Fitness has led to her athletic and literary careers and has helped shape how she parents her also very active girls, alongside husband Dick Peterson.

“Regular exercise and getting fit is everyday fuel for excelling in everyday life,” says Peterson, a four-time XTERRA USA National Champion, whose sponsors include CliffBar, Oakley, TYR Swimsuits and Specialized Bicycles. She adds that exercise is the “motor” behind being a good mom. At about 15 years of age, she discovered this “motor”; it was to serve her for life.

Moving into the Light

As a high school student in the early 1970s in Armonk, N.Y., Peterson struggled with depression. Always an active child (“I had an athletic orientation,” such as swimming and skiing, she says) she had yet to view exercise as an outlet for her stress, not to mention a cure for her dark moods.
She took up running, eventually becoming the only girl on her school’s cross-country team. “Nobody ran back in 1971 and 1972,” she says. “And I ran.” She did so in tennis shoes, in the days before cushioned, specialized running shoes. She also practiced yoga, another unusual undertaking in that era for a young woman.

Once in college, at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colo., Peterson tapped into her Jewish heritage and studied both German Jewry and U.S.-Israeli politics. (Later, she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology, but never practiced it.) Fitness counterbalanced her academic and professional pursuits: She joined the tennis, ski and squash teams while keeping up lap swim and running.

Her approach to “mood-enhancing” was different than most, she says. “Where there was darkness and frustration and confusion and disappointment, as a young woman, when I exercised I found light, calm and pools of positive energy,” she says. This was the energy Peterson would need for the next sport she was to discover.

Racing off the Road

After college, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked for the office of American-Israeli foreign affairs. While in the Bay Area, she met like-minded, high-intensity athletes who were pioneering a new sport: mountain biking.

In the early ’80s, Peterson became part of a group of rigorous biking enthusiasts who wanted to proliferate knowledge of and interest in their relatively new sport for both its health and environmental benefits. Again, she was one of few women in the field. “I was absolutely one of the only women who did mountain-bike racing,” she says. Perhaps this made it easier to meet her future husband, Dick Peterson, also an avid mountain biker and skier.

Her love of and devotion to mountain biking parlayed itself into participating in competitions called XTERRAs, rugged, off-road triathlons that require a 1.5K open-water swim, running for 12 kilometers across soft sand, rivers and trails and a 35K mountain bike ride on extremely rugged terrain.

“I do this sport because I love it, and because of what it gives me on many different levels,” she says, including boosting her writing career. Author of The Bed Rest Survival Guide (Avon, 1998), and an ongoing series of inspirational books – under the “Power of Exercise” moniker – aimed at girls and mothers as well as seniors and busy professionals, Peterson says her athletic success has given her name recognition and depth of experience.

She is one of the most well-sponsored female XTERRA participants, is undefeated season after season and travels all over the world to compete, including the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Hawaii and Canada. And in June, she travels to Budapest, Hungary, to participate in XTERRA.
Sticking to a Schedule

Her daily schedule, of course, is rigid and chock-full. Her day starts at 6 a.m. with a two-mile swim, followed by hours of writing and working on jewelry designs until early afternoon. When most people are having their late-afternoon slump and coffee, Peterson is either practicing 90 minutes of bikram, or “hot” yoga, running or swimming for up to two hours.

So where does Peterson sneak in time to be a devoted mom? “I am, like, a really regular, normal mom,” she insists. Peterson says, should her girls get ill, have an appointment or their own sports event, she drops everything to see to Hilary and Foreste’s needs.

Hilary is a competitive equestrian; Foreste is a former elite gymnast, and both girls are competitive alpine ski racers. Their father is a former ski racer. “They get their spirit of athletics from their mother, but their dad passed down his passion,” Peterson says of her girls and husband.

“She manages to get done in a day what most people would get done in a week (or maybe a month!),” says Pam Smilow, 48. She and Peterson attended middle and high schools together. “She is a loving mother to her two daughters and is active in their schools, baking cookies, serving on the diversity committee, chaperoning on field trips,” Smilow, a painter and mother of two, says.

Peterson says family time at home isn’t a challenge; for example, she prioritizes carving out time in the evenings to pore over her daughters’ homework. But family time must sometimes take a backseat, due to her travels to XTERRAs. Yet every once in a while the foursome heads together to far-flung locales for Peterson’s competitions.

So the majority of the food preparation – mostly vegetables, grilled fish and lots of carbs like pasta and rice – falls to Dick, for whom cooking “is like a little meditation,” Peterson says, chewing into the phone during the interview and, when caught in the act, admits to enjoying her daily home-baked chocolate-chip cookie. (She also admits to downing two heaping tablespoons of peanut butter with lunch daily.)

She is aware her focus on a fit body and hours of exercise seven days a week could send the wrong message to her daughters; Peterson’s level of activity could fuel girls’ sometimes precarious body image. Peterson does her best to shore up her girls’ positive body image and self-confidence. She says she works hard to send the message that food is important not only for a strong body, but especially for a strong mind. She believes food should be entirely enjoyable, and special indulgences – candy and ice cream, for instance – should be allowed. “I don’t believe in rigidity” where food is concerned, she says.

Active Family Time

Peterson may not like rigidity regarding food. But her schedule leaves very few moments for downtime. Still, she finds time to read – particularly enjoying authors Anita Diamant, Barbara Kingsolver, Anna Quindlen and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hahn – and make collages out of family photos. The latter she works on during the family’s weekly four-hour commute to and from Squaw Valley, Calif., for weekend ski trips and competitions.

Long-time friend Sara Stamey remembers this about Peterson, as well as the active vacations Stamey and her husband, Winston Saunders, used to take with the Petersons before either couple had children. “It was always something physical and outdoors,” says Stamey, 47, formerly of Berkeley and now of Hillsboro, Ore. “With Barbara, you don’t go on vacation and sit around the cabin.”
Stamey’s husband, Winston Saunders, agrees. And he adds that Peterson, his friend since 1982, recently took her daughters to Europe for a month. There, the girls spent one week at ski-racing camp and three weeks touring Europe while supporting their mom on the XTERRA Euro Tour. “It would have been easy to take the trip solo,” says Saunders, a program manager and father of two, 12 and 16. “But by combining that, she was able really to get her personal fulfillment and simultaneously enrich the lives of her kids.”

And that’s ultimately the most important part of life for this extreme mom.

XTERRA Eco Team

Co-founder of the XTERRA Eco Team.

Triathlete Magazine – July 2007