To Die as an Athlete

 Yes, I am old by most standards.  The call is to stay down.  Life can really beat you up at this age.  Hide out, take your meds, and take it easy.  Live out your life quietly. But I don't take any meds.  Am I going to have to get sick and go to the doctor and get on meds to be normal for my age?  How else can I live a camouflaged old person's life?   Isn't this the American dream: to work all your life to build a comfort nest in which to have nothing important to be or do and rest yourself to death? 

I am an old athlete.  It is not important but it is what I do and who I am.  God led me to this and I haven't heard Him holler, "Quit, stay down, too old."  I still feel like an athlete.  given my choice I want to die like an athlete as an athlete.  

I guess I will never grow up.  I still love the labored breathing of a hard effort, the sweat dripping off my forehead, the euphoric feeling moments after you have done your best. God willing, I can continue to do this until I die, - as an athlete.

Get Up and Be

 Done a lot of doubting lately.  Worst of all is that I start doubting myself, whether I have it anymore to pick myself up and face again, the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."  I would imagine it was that same heartbreak that Lee suffered when he surrendered, or Santa Anna had to surrender to Sam Houston. Short version:  surrender is a heartbreaker. 

What about those who didn't surrender in the face of overwhelming odds?  The men at the Alamo didn't surrender and died deaths true to their school.  They "died with their boots on" so to speak even if their boots may be stolen after they were dead.  And they were all dead, literally a dead end. 

The Texan at Goliad were a lot smarter.  They saw how fruitless and futile it would be to try on so they surrendered.  They were killed anyway. Surrender was a dead end too. I have often wondered if those poor Texas as they lined up to die, wished they would have fought on even to death 

 So do I do an Alamo or Goliad?  In those last moments the result will be the same.  But until then, life won't be the same and  those last moments which inevitably come, it won't be the same.  Knowing who I am, I realize I won't be the same either.  

Today, I hear the call that I surrender to age and circumstance, to give up triathlon and serious training.   Today, this moment,  I will answer with a cannon shot from my walls.  Today, this moment, I want to make life climb the wall and come and try to take me.  

Proud words.  Now to get up from this table and fight the good fight. 

Finding Oneself in the Garden

 For years I had a garden.  Every year was a process of pulling up all the old plants, taking out the weeds, tearing up the soil, and row up to plant new seeds for the new crop.  I have found that life is a lot like that. Sometimes the old and bug-eaten variety of ourselves is not bearing fruit and the only rescue is to pull up the old and plow for change in the new.  

I tested positive for COVID-19 again today.  This is 10 days, now.  I feel good but it's not enough.     

What about my quest? What about the half-ironman?  What about serious training?  I don't like going through this, can you tell?  I haven't had a cold in 25 years and this hasn't even had the symptoms of a mediocre cold.  I am so blessed to have it this easy but I can still search diligently and find a reason to complain, I guess.  Yeah, I am so human.  

My self wants to complain. My faith says "All things work together for those that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose."  Romans 8:28.  God seems to intimate to me that like the torn-up old garden being replanted for spring, something will grow from what you are going through, and it will be you.

If You Want to Make God Laugh----

 There is a saying:  If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Now about 4 days into a  light case of COVID and with training derailed, the phrase gives pause to ponder.  Another big push, another quest, doesn't hold the same value it had even a few days ago.  The cause isn't certain, but the miles of the journey have brought me to this location in life attendant with all the lessons this recent situation can teach.

Time will tell if I want to get back on this horse again and do another ride. Back in my drinking days, I had a practice of not making any serious decisions on a Monday.  So, no new announcement.  I am circling the airport waiting for instructions from the Life Traffic Controller.

"One of the hardest decisions you ever make in life is choosing to walk away or try harder."

Go Die on the Mountain

 My 80 years have not been lived without learning something.  I haven't been asleep in my recliner all these years, you know.    Now, to add to advanced age, snail-like run pace.   Unstable and often painful knee, no road experience in over a year on the bike, and on and on, ad nauseam.  

Now, to discourage me further, and send me off to permanent retirement in reclinerville, to become and a fearful follower of the media, here comes COVID.  My wife and son are down with and having been exposed, I wait my turn for a little more misery. 

While it is early in this quest that I haven't even explained yet, this certainly is a hope dasher, taking away a lot of the rah-rah that great beginnings often have.  Whatever is trying to stop me is surely making it easier to quit.  But I have found that easy roads seldom lead anywhere really worth going to.  It's the climbs that make the course.  So, when and if I get COVID and, God willing, I recover from it, I'm still going for the climb. One can die on the mountain, or melt away like ice cream on a hot day in a recliner.

Share My Journey

 I hope this lasts.  The feeling keeps coming back:  God is not finished with me yet.  This is just going to be an exercise in faith but I am hard on the trail of "going to be."  I don't see how I am going to do this but with God all things are possible.  The plan is just to give God my best and leave results to Him. 

I haven't even been on a road bike in a year and a half, and I have signed up for a half-ironman event.  I have swam in 8 months.  But there is a peace about it.  There seems no good alternative but to try, to train, to believe.

There will be more in the vein of a formal announcement where I lay out my plans and my hopes and dreams.  Such an announcement will sort of burn my bridges behind me so I don't think losing heart and slinking off will be easy.   I am just a man, subject to all the frailties of our species. Share my journey.  God bless.