Trying literally to follow in my dad’s footsteps.
The physical wounds have mostly healed, which means I can wear shorts again sometime before September. The mental wounds … well, those will take some time.
Keen readers will know I’ve retired from mountain biking. One scar that my team felt would turn too many stomachs to share has left me hanging up my bike gear for a while.
I’m slowly accepting that anything requiring balance and grace — mountain biking, that failed experiment with surfing — is probably not for me.
But I remain undaunted.
At my ripe age, I want to continue to try things that keep me physically active (even if it means being laughed with). I want to do things that make me a learner again.
Being consciously incompetent is awkward, sometimes frustrating and damning to the ego … but it’s also where the good learning lives.
So a few weekends ago, I auditioned for the University of Toronto Master’s Sprint Club. (Yes, audition!)
My dad was a great sprinter, so I thought I’d give it a go, hoping it was in my genes (it’s not).
At the audition, I met the coach, Chris, a former Canadian athlete who, even in his fifties, has the lean look of a man who can run fast and run long.
The audition was forty-five minutes of drills. It was practice starts, kneeling and accelerating, over and over, in the heat and humidity.
At which point Chris said, “Great. Now it’s time for the training part.”
(I took this news with “grace” … see above regarding how well I do with grace.)
We went from practicing 30–40 metre dashes to training for 1,000-metre sprints.
I learned that there are two gears when sprinting.
There’s sprinting gear — the one you see in the Olympics: legs stretching out, toes flicking up, moving as fast as you can down the track.
But the first ten or twenty metres is an entirely different skill that is often missed …
Strike the ground hard
Chris taught me how to start sprinting, but the lesson easily translates into life as well.
He gave me a good metaphor for this (and I love a good metaphor).
When you drop a tennis ball, it bounces back a little. But if you throw it at the ground, it leaps back up.
The same goes for sprinting (and life?!).
You want to throw your leg into the ground, so the ground pushes back and fires you down the track.
Most of us don’t start things that way. I know I don’t.
I tiptoe into something by testing and hedging my commitment so that quitting stays cheap.
But a tentative start gives you nothing to push against.
When you strike the ground hard — start with power and a real commitment — the ground pushes back.
You get feedback, and you pick up speed. And you find out faster whether this thing deserves you, or whether it’s time to move on to the next adventure.
Maybe you’ve just started something. Maybe you’re still circling it. Either way, those first strides are where it’s decided.
So hit the ground hard.
