Unexpected

I'm a special ed teacher in my non-skating life.  In the past couple years, I've seen some new terminology come into the special education world, particularly when teaching children with autism (which is not my area of specialization, but several of my colleagues are in this area).  Children with autism often have difficulty learning social skills and need instruction on what behaviors are appropriate in different settings.  The old days of "you're a bad boy, stop that" are thankfully gone, and even the words "wrong" and "right" are rarely heard these days.  "Appropriate" and "inappropriate" were in vogue for quite some time, and I liked those words, because they're pretty concrete and they accurately convey whether a behavior is acceptable or not.  The newest terms, though, seem to be "expected" and "unexpected."  When you're sitting in a math lesson, looking at your book and raising your hand are "expected" behaviors.  Yelling and jumping out of your seat are "unexpected."

Maybe I'm just a cranky old lady (well, actually, there's little doubt about that!), but I just can't get behind the whole "expected/unexpected" thing.  We seem to be trying to find a non-judgmental way to convey what behavior should be displayed in certain situations, but really we're just using "unexpected" as a euphemism for "bad" or "inappropriate."  But it's a bad substitution, because the truth is, "unexpected" is not necessarily "bad."  Surprise parties are unexpected, as are such behaviors as random acts of kindness.  While "inappropriate" is, by definition, something we'd like to avoid, "unexpected" can be a good thing.

Like at the Summer Inline Series last night (you were wondering when I'd get back to skating, weren't you?).

Last night was supposed to be a make-up night for a rained out race date, but because it was July 3 the turnout was light, and race director Columbian Flash decided to hold a training session instead of racing (which he does on non-race nights).  Since I had no particular workout planned--other than "something fast"--I decided to go with the first part of his workout, 4x400 meters.  He put me in a group with four guys, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep up with them. Still, I followed them for their windup lap, and then hit the first flying 400-meter lap as hard as I could.

Of course, the guys immediately dropped me like a snot-covered palm slider, but once they had opened up a gap of 50 feet or so, they didn't increase the distance.  I skated harder than I have in a long time, trying to keep that gap from widening.  My skates felt "squirrely" and my technique deteriorated quite a bit, but I stayed strong the whole lap, and when I looked at my stopwatch at the end of the 400, I saw...

...38.66.

Thirty-eight and sixty-six-hundredths.  I haven't skated an inline lap that fast in three years.

Talk about unexpected.

The next two 400's were in my more usual "decent" range, at 40.2 seconds each.  Then, since I was beginning to question the 38 ("maybe I had a draft.  I know they dropped me right away, but maybe I had a draft for more of the lap than I thought..."), I decided to take an extra rest lap and then see if I could get the final 400 down under 40.

And I did.  OK, it was 39.9, but still, that's under 40.  And since it was my fourth all-out 400 in a row (with 2-3 laps rest between), I felt that it somewhat validated the 38.

So maybe I'm not that slow after all.  I mean, I know I'm slower now, in races, than I have been in the past, but the 38 perhaps means that the speed is still there, and I just need to get in better shape so I can sustain it for more laps.  Which is a whole lot happier thought than "I'm too old to ever go that fast again."

Happier, and entirely unexpected.