Training Widget

Monday, November 28, 2011

Mentoring

As planned, my mentee and I had our second meeting (for lack of a better word) yesterday.  The plan had been to go swimming, but she called me in the morning to tell me she'd gotten her hair done and couldn't get it wet... but she still wanted to get together (insert sigh of relief here, because it's just kind of hard to tell if you're connecting with a 13 year old or not). 

Since swimming was off the table, we decided to hit some of the exercise machines at the Y.  We rode the bike, spent some time on the elliptical, and did some sort of recumbent stair stepper thing.  These are all things I would never do, but I told her she was in charge and that I'd do what she did.  

We also did a little exploring, as neither of us had been to that Y branch before.  We discovered the gym, an indoor track, and checked out the pool.  Upon seeing the pool, she asked, "Can we put our feet in?".  I said sure, and we dipped our feet in the hot tub.  

As we sat there chatting, she started dropping hints that she'd rather come back next Saturday and swim instead of the planned Reindeer Run 5k.  Argh!  Swimming is really not my favorite, and I'd really been looking forward to the 5k, as it was going to be our first chance to meet some of the other mentor/mentee pairs.  However, in my head, I could hear Chris saying, "It's not about you Anne."  Yes, I have a tendency to be a wee bit self-centered.  So, I questioned her a little bit:  You don't want to run?  Won't some of your friends be there?

After a couple of minutes, she was pretty torn.  She wasn't wanting to swim to get out of doing the run, she just REALLY likes to swim and really got the itch to hop in the pool once we were in the pool area.  Admittedly pushing my own agenda a bit, I explained that we've got a long winter ahead and that there would be lots of occasions to swim.  Long story short, the plan now is that we're going to get together on Friday and go for a QUICK swim, and will still do the run on Saturday.  Meeting twice a week is typically not a workable situation for me, but we'll go with it for this week.  

So... Friday swimming, Saturday 5k, and next Wednesday will be the holiday party.  

No comments:

Post a Comment