You never know who you're gonna meet

I don't think I can recall hearing of Grant Wistrom - he's a former Seattle Seahawk and 3-time Super Bowl participant(is that what you call people who have been to the Super Bowl 3 times?). Cheryl Iseberg and I ended up on barstools next to he and his wife, Melissa, in Maui on Tuesday. It was evident when they walked in the restaurant that there was something unique about them. Melissa in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandy blonde hair tucked behind her ears was the picture of a nice healthy mom. If she'd told us she was a professional triathlete, we wouldn't have doubted it. She had the limbs of a serious endurance athlete. She laughed, though, when we suggested she take up the sport.

Grant was a gentleman and FUN - smiled easily and told us about their life in Missouri (and sometimes Maui) with their son Wyatt and daughter Charlie (Charlie is also the name of the bartender's dog which has apparently caused confusion on more than one occasion when he and Wistroms end up on the same beach).

Grant is about as far from triathlete as you can get. His biceps are bigger than my head....he's 6'5"...probably 280. What kind of bike do you put a body like that on? I can imagine the sink factor when his body hits the water - and putting a off-the-rack wetsuit on that guy is going to be near impossible.

But sport is sport and I'm always hungry to learn what any athlete (especially a very accomplished former professional athlete) can teach me about my own sport. His humility wouldn't allow him to divulge his 3 trips to the Super Bowl, or how he could energize a locker room during halftime - but Melissa's obvious delight in her husband allowed her to do just that.

I am not going to apply some of the things I learned. In fact, as a decent God-fearing woman, I'm trying hard to forget some of them - like the naked hand stands in the Seahawks Locker Room to loosen up the team. But when I asked Grant what he would pass along to our 17-year old son who's trying excel at cycling, Grant never hesitated.

"I talk at schools all the time", he said, "tell your boy to be the hardest working cyclist on his team. Tell him to train longer and harder than anyone else. Tell him not to get discouraged."

Those are solid and simple lessons for all of us.