The Wall Street Journal - 09.03.2020

A12| Monday, March 9, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Amanda Trunzo puts in the work

everywhere from CrossFit gyms, top

left, to a skating treadmill, top. She

competed at Fenway Park in 2019.

LIFE & ARTS

pictures. I know a little bit about

their personalities, and that can

help solve some ponderables.

—Mark Kennedy

If you’ve ever driven to Ohio via

I-70 West, you might have taken the

I-470 segment that diverges from

I-70 in Wheeling and re-connects

with it in St. Clairsville. At I-470’s

highest point, it passes through the

village of Bethlehem. That’s where I

was raised during the 1950s.

One of the few things that I did

with my father when I was young

was to accompany him into Wheel-

ing on Saturdays, when he ran er-

rands. This was before the inter-

states; and we drove home via

Route 40. During the course of one

of those return trips, I noticed my

father taking off his hat, carefully

arranging his hair across his fore-

head, and then replacing his hat.

That caught my attention because

he had extremely thin hair—way

too little to require any attention,

particularly while driving a car—

THERE’S A GROWING interest in

understanding our parents’ lives

but, as a recent Wall Street Jour-

nal article reported, children often

don’t think to ask questions or

know how to begin. Readers

shared their own experiences try-

ing to find answers without their

parents as a resource and some of

the questions they wished they

had asked. Here are some edited

excerpts.

Many people spend a lot of time

(and money) trying to understand

the psychological effects their

families have had on them without

asking the most basic questions of

their most “primal” relationship. It

generates a culture of family

FROM LEFT: MARK KENNEDY; JAMES STRANKO; ROGER LUNDQUIST
Mark Kennedy's parents in 1946.

DAVID BOWMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2); RYAN TAYLOR/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (BELOW)

mill and will do tuck jumps, where

she brings her knees to her chest,

between speed drills.

Ms. Trunzo works on the techni-

cal aspect of the sport by in-line

skating at local skate parks. She at-

tends yoga once a week in season

and two to three times in the off-

season. Sundays are her rest day.

The Diet

Ms. Trunzo isn’t much of a break-

fast person but says her partner,

Michelle Butkus, makes sure she at

least has a smoothie. She snacks

on protein balls that she makes

The Gear and Cost

Gear is similar to what a hockey

player wears, including shin, el-

bow and knee pads, a chest

guard, shoulder protection,

gloves and a helmet. She uses

flatter blades on her hockey

boots that allow her to glide

faster on the ice. Her G-Form Pro-

X padded compression pants

($150) have built-in padding to

protect her hips.

Ms. Trunzo gets apparel from

sponsors including POC helmets

and CAGear. She’s a fan of Nike

sneakers and wears Lululemon at

the gym. Her yoga studio charges

$130 a month for unlimited

classes. Her CrossFit membership

costs $179 a month.

A one-year membership at Ac-

celeration North is $2,820. She

always travels with a foam roller

and at home uses a Theragun per-

cussive massage tool ($250). “It

looks like a power tool, but it re-

ally helps break up the lactic acid

in my arms and legs,” she says.

She sees a chiropractor once or

twice a week.

from peanut butter, flax seed,

dairy-free chocolate chips, honey

and oats. Lunch might be chicken

and wild rice soup or grilled

chicken with rice and a vegetable.

“We’re pretty routine with din-

ner,” she says. “We whip up a Costco

salad and throw a piece of meat like

pork chops on the grill.” Ms. Trunzo

avoids eating gluten, which can be

challenging on the road.

“I always travel with gluten-

free bread and peanut butter,” she

says. On Fridays nights she

splurges by ordering a supreme

gluten-free pizza.

asked questions, I always highly val-

ued what I learned—on those Satur-

day drives without asking ques-

tions—about the relationship

between Dad and his parents. If you

ever drive I-70 West but don’t take

the I-470 bypass, you’ll pass the

cemetery on your right. Dad joined

his parents there in 1975.

—Jay Potter

In the last few days of my

mother’s at-home hospice experi-

ence I asked: “What is the most

important thing to know?” She re-

plied, “Inside each person, there is

a treasure.” Every time her answer

comes to mind I feel happy.

— Marcy Lundquist

When I was in college in the

early ’70s, I had a class assign-

ment to do a five-generation gene-

alogy of my family. Obviously

there were no computers avail-

able, so beyond family bibles,

county courthouses, newspapers,

correspondence with living rela-

tives, etc. much of the information

was oral. I asked my father, “Now

Poppop was your father, and

Mommom your mother?” The an-

swer was: Yes, but Mommom was

Poppop’s third wife! It turns out

my father’s real mother died of ra-

bies in 1932 when he was 9, but it

was not until I asked that I dis-

covered she was 100% Irish, my

father therefore half, and me one-

quarter Irish. I tracked down the

village in County Roscommon. I

recently sent the full updated ge-

nealogy to my brothers, cousins,

and my own grown children. They

were all thrilled.

— Joe Elliott

blame rather than a culture of

family empathy.

My parents, lifelong Pittsbur-

ghers, have struggled to under-

stand my desire to leave them and

lead a very different life than

what’s common in the world they

created for me. Their protective-

ness of me I associated with pro-

vincialism, rather than the very

real effects of my paternal grand-

mother’s death when my dad was

12, or my mom’s difficulty in giv-

ing birth to me.

The therapy I have undergone

has taught me absolutely nothing

when compared to the empathy I

have built by understanding my

parents’ lives better. It’s still in

process, and I guess it always will

be, but I’m happy I’ve come to this

realization before it’s too late.

—James Stranko

I am the fourth of five children

from a Catholic family, and was

the executor and POA during my

parents’ last years. We became

close friends, and I found new con-

nections with them as time

passed. They volunteered insight

to their early life, and I encourage

people to ask questions of their

parents. It leads to a fuller life for

you and for them. They have been

gone for a long time now, and I am

still discovering things about them

as I look through old records and

What Readers Wish

They Had Asked Parents

AMANDA TRUNZO had her fair

share of bumps during a four-year

ice hockey career at Dartmouth

College. But even the hardest hits

don’t compare with the crashes

that occur in ice cross downhill.

Ms. Trunzo, 30, is the reigning

women’s world champion of this

extreme sport, which combines el-

ements of downhill in-line skating

and snowboard cross. She says her

new sport provides her with the

adrenaline rush she used to get

from hockey.

Four skaters at a time drop into

a nearly half-mile frozen track

filled with hairpin turns and verti-

cal drops of up to 60 feet. As they

try to cross the finish line first,

reaching speeds of 50 miles an

hour, they must attempt to avoid

collisions with each other or spills

into the track walls.

The sport first caught on in Eu-

rope—energy drink company Red

Bull sponsored the first official race

in 2001 in Stockholm’s fish market.

After graduating college in 2011,

Ms. Trunzo took a break from

hockey and the gym. “I’d been

training my whole life,” she says.

“But I’m wired to be competitive.”

She filled the void with golf, soc-

cer and softball. When the sport

launched a women’s tour in 2015,

former ice cross downhill men’s

world champion and fellow Minne-

sota native Cameron Naasz con-

vinced her to join.

“I’ve been on skates since I was

3 years old, but I never did ex-

treme sports,” she says. “Getting

the feel for air time and learning

to manage my body in 10 feet of

air going 30 miles per hour was

totally new.”

Three-month seasons require Ms.

Trunzo to travel to races around

the globe every other week. After

winging it her first two seasons,

she developed a serious off-season

training routine at home in Minne-

apolis, where she works with chil-

dren on the autism spectrum at a

charter school in the suburbs.

She entered the weekend

ranked second in the Red Bull Ice

Cross World Championships,

which consists of 10 races in eight

countries on three continents. If

she comes out on top after the fi-

nal race on March 21 in Moscow,

she’ll become the first three-peat

world champion, male or female.

(Two races in the original 12-part

series were canceled over con-

cerns related to coronavirus. She

says that she still plans to travel

to remaining events.)

WHAT’S YOUR WORKOUT?| JEN MURPHY

AHugeLeapto

Replace the Rush

Of Ice Hockey

Her sport, downhill ice

cross, is often called

the world’s fastest

competition on skates.

The Workout

Ms. Trunzo started

doing CrossFit three

years ago and goes

six days a week. “The

workouts mimic the

unpredictability of

ice cross,” she says.

“You’re never doing

the same thing and

you’re challenging

every part of your

body for the entire

hour.”

Box jumps, sled

pushes and sprints

while dragging

weights help develop

the explosive power

she needs when she’s

bounding from the

starting line. Hopping on one leg

over low hurdles and performing

ladder drills test her agility. For

cardio, she uses a rowing machine

and an Assault AirBike, a station-

ary bike with handles for arm

pumping action.

Leg stamina is key in ice cross.

Ms. Trunzo builds it by doing

squats with up to 215 pounds of

weight. Burpees help her recover

more quickly from crashes. “Every

crash is different, but the best way

to fall is forward to your stomach,

and you pop back up like a

burpee,” she says. She calls hand-

stands the most challenging part

of CrossFit. She devotes 10 min-

utes of each class practicing walk-

ing on her hands.

On the rare day she can’t get to

class, she does her own CrossFit-

inspired workout in her home ga-

rage gym.

One to two days a week she uses

a skating treadmill with a synthetic

ice surface at Acceleration North, a

sports training center in Arden

Hills, Minn. Hourlong workouts in-

clude speed intervals focused on

stride technique and efficiency. Her

trainer might throw a stability ball

at her as she skates to simulate get-

ting hit by other players. To pre-

pare for jumps on the course, she

grabs the safety bar on the tread-

however the event

didn’t seem wor-

thy of mention.

Several Satur-

days later, I no-

ticed him do the

same thing on our

drive home. When

Isawhimdoita

third or fourth

time, I began to

give some serious

thought to the sit-

uation. It dawned

on me that the

hair arranging al-

ways occurred at

the exact same

point in our drive, which happened

to be when we were passing the

cemetery in which Dad’s parents

were buried. So Dad’s objective

hadn’t been to arrange his hair

but, rather, to remove his hat

while passing his parents’ graves.

Presumably the hair-arranging was

intended to camouflage an action

that was intensely personal.

Although I would know a great

deal more about my family if I had

Marcy Lundquist

James Stranko and his father.

O

ne might assume a rigorous

workout such as CrossFit would

lead to injuries. But a four-year analy-

sis of the incidence of injuries among

CrossFit participants published in the

October 2018 issue of Orthopaedic

Journal of Sports Medicine found

that CrossFit is relatively safe com-

pared with more traditional training

modalities.

Any repetitive rigorous training,

whether it’s running, yoga or CrossFit,

runs some risk for injury, especially if

you’re new to the activity, says Yuri

Feito, a co-author of the study and

associate professor of exercise sci-

ence and sport management at Ken-

nesaw State University in Georgia.

“People watch the CrossFit Games

and think that’s what they’re sup-

posed to do,” Dr. Feito says. “For the

general population, it’s not a competi-

tion. Making it one leads to injuries.”

David Osorio, owner of CrossFit

South Brooklyn in New York City,

urges newbies to sign up for a be-

ginners program where they can

learn the core movements in a sys-

tematic, safe way.

“Ask questions and inform your

coach if you have injuries or need

modifications,” he says. Mr. Osorio

reminds clients to listen to their

bodies and go at their own pace.

“Rather than try to be the fastest

or strongest, get in the habit of

having proper technique on a consis-

tent basis,” he says. “Your goal

should be to leave the gym feeling

better than when you came in.”

High-Intensity Workouts Can Start Slow