The world of endurance sport has changed in many ways over the last thirty years. We’ve watched heroes rise and fall, come and go. Lance Armstrong ruled the world and then collapsed like the subject of a Cold Play song.
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
“Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
Very few heroes survive without some tinge of scandal or intrigue haunting the myth created around their performances. Even legends such Michael Jordan have their immensely human flaws with allegedly huge appetites for gambling, women and massive egos. Such is the life of an NBA star.
The pressures of being that good at something, especially a sport, can be immense. That’s why athletic heroes such as Michael Phelps wind up smoking a little dope. To escape. To find themselves. To ease the pain of existence perhaps?
Now it has come to light that more than half the players in the NFL use pot to treat the pain produced by playing the game of football at its highest level. Pot also helps players deal with concussions. That’s a subject few like to talk about, but it stands to reason that for every reported concussion, there are probably three that go either undetected by the team and are known only to the players. The culture of pro football has long rewarded playing hurt. Indeed it may depend upon it. The stakes are simply too high and the money too great to balk at the chance to play in an NFL game once you’ve earned it.
So players naturally turn to a release from that constant pressure to perform and take those risks. Quite a few apparently smoke pot in their offtime to keep on going.
Some might see that as sign of weakness or find it irresponsible given that pot is still largely seen as an illegal drug in America society. But that does not mean it is unavailable. Marijuana is easy to get and reportedly more powerful than ever. The drug has soared past its reputation as a hippie drug from the 60s and 70s. The pot on the market know is reportedly far stronger and more effective than the weak weed back then.
Yet the image of pot is changing fast. Cancer patients now use weed for medicinal purposes and so do many other. The drug is maturing in its public perception.
So who are we to judge the fact that many top athletes now smoke pot. It’s just a sign that everyone’s trying to get along, keep up, give themselves another chance to compete. In some respects, it’s rather inspiring to know the humanity behind the struggle to compete at the top.
Years ago in college, our cross country team smoked pot on weekends and enjoyed the hell out of it. Yet as a distance runner I did not want to compromise my performance due to the effects of smoke in my lungs. We had a teammate or two that completely ruined their talent by smoking too much pot. One runner was a step away from placing All-American freshman, but his prodigious pot smoking effectively ended his running career. He never made the varsity again after his freshman year. People can claim all they want that marijuana is somehow not an addictive drug. All I know is what I’ve seen and witness in other people. Some can handle it while certainly others cannot.
There are many factors that determine how human beings respond to different types of drugs. It’s the classic “nature vs. nurture” dilemma. Some people do respond well to certain prescription medications while others suffer horrid side effects. During the long years of stress while serving as caregiver to a wife with cancer, my own short test with an anti-depressant called Zoloft turned into a near panic attack. Drugs such as Lorazepam and others had no such side effects.
To read a compelling tale of power and risk with drugs you should read the book Duel In the Sun , a chronicle of the separately inspiring paths of Dick Beardsley and Alberto Salazar. Those two runners fought to the finish line of a brutally hot Boston Marathon that essentially sent their running careers up in a puff of smoke. Their lives took incredibly different turns following that marathon. Beardsley became a farmer. Thanks to a horrid accident with a piece of unforgiving machinery, he became addicted to painkillers after a stay in the hospital to treat his injuries.
By contrast, Salazar tried to continue his running career but was stymied by a sense of illness that ran through his entire being. He was ultimately diagnosed with clinical depression. Ultimately the drug Prozac helped Salazar deal with his condition.
Thus the struggles of Salazar and Beardsley had opposing paths in that Beardsley had to rid himself of drugs while Salazar benefitted from a prescription of anti-depressants. It goes to show there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to drugs. Legal or illegal, they can be both a blessing and a curse.
Which brings us full circle to the use of drugs to enhance performance. That brand of illegal activity seems to cross all ideologies. Some people will do almost anything to win, and un pro sports such as baseball, we’ve witnessed drugged up sluggers like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battle for the home run championship. Fans thrilled to the sight of baseballs flying out of the park. America’s game was hopped up on testosterone-fueled excitement and loving it. The fantasy was only destroyed when it was learned that both players were cheating by use of steroids to increase their speed and power at bat.
Cycling has also had its large share of dopers, the most famous of all being Lance Armstrong. But there were many others doping at the same time Lance ruled the cycling world. and track and field as well. In the sport of triathlon, there have
The sport of track and field has long been scandalized by doping. Yet strangely, in the sport of triathlon, there have been very few athletes caught doping. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Triathlon apparently has too little out-of-competition screening to reliably check whether performance-enhancing drugs are being used to increase stamina and power.
It is too easy to dismiss drugs from marijuana to steroids and say, “All things in moderation.” Athletes like to push the limits, and that quite often applies whether they’re getting stoned or pushing iron to get stronger.
The trouble with pushing the red line is that things can and do blow up in your face sometimes. And then those dreams of glory go up in smoke.
The minutes following a race are some of the most vulnerable yet empowering moments in your life. There is empiric data to consider. How fast did you go? If you are a triathlete, that is a manifold question compounded by the strange reality of transition times. What took you 1:30 to change or God Forbid, three whole minutes in transition?
Obviously, I felt bad for Pete. Some injuries are inexplicable. There were other people I’d seen decommissioned by their physique as well. One fellow with extremely bowed legs was an avid long distance runner. It pained me to run behind him, just to watch. He could have straddled a fire hydrant at full speed and not touched on either side. Yet he kept on going for years and years. But it had its price. I’d see him on the trail going a bit slower every year. Then he was running and walking. And finally, just walking. That’s all he does now. He gave it his all, but the long-term running thing was not to be. Still, he made it well into his fifties, and he looks plenty happy walking for fitness now. There is absolutely no shame in that.
One must conduct an honest assessment on all fronts. Adding in weight work is critical over the course of an athlete’s life, and dynamic stretching as well. That might be yoga or Pilates. But it must involve challenging your muscles and joints.
Perhaps you’ve been through a phase in life in which you’re not so proud, or weren’t so happy. It’s quite common for example at 19 or 20 years old, to go all Goth in the head and question everything you believe. It’s moments like those in life when the whole world seems to be conspiring against you.
Baseball star Mike Schmidt had a father that drove him relentlessly. Over time, the criticism galled the superstar until he finally asked something on the order of this question: “Hey dad, if I were to win the Golden Glove, the batting average title, most home runs by a player at my position and the league MVP, would you be happy?”
Most of us with a religious faith go through ups and downs during our developmental years. Many teens and college students drift away from the bible stories of youth. Some lose their faith entirely during college years, dumping church attendance in the process.
So I swear I did see God several times during those long runs in the hills around Decorah, Iowa. Then one warm September morning our coach stopped with a van at 10 miles to offer us something to drink.
It was not until I met and fell in love with a woman my senior year that a faith in God was somewhat rekindled. Don’t get me wrong: all along there were mentions of God in all my running journals. Yet I did not really notice this until many years later while perusing those journals for training information. Yet there it was on almost every page, some mention of God. The curiosity was always there even when circumstances and priorities changed.
The more I studied that example of Jesus resisting the zealots and control freaks of religion, the more it became evident that the same dynamics exist in this day and age. Look around you: the same brand of control freaks and religious zealots are everywhere. Pat Robertson. Franklin Graham. Mike Huckabee. Phyllis Schlafly. Throw old robes on these dudes and dudettes and they’d fit right in with the Chief Priests back in Jesus’ day. They are all self-righteous zealots with a warped sense of social justice based on biblical literalism. It’s a sickness of the mind. Jesus says so.
Populist brands of Christian conservative faith are not much better. Ever since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace (yes, there were two of them that conceived the Origin of Species at the same time) introduced the theory of evolution, conservative Christians have ignorantly mocked this truth with claims that man did not come from monkeys. Which by itself illustrates that these people do not even understand the basics of the theory of evolution. We didn’t come from monkeys. We share a common apelike ancestor.
We deny our own existence when we refuse to engage with those we love, and learn to hate as a result. The difficult lesson of all is to forgive, for it is so easy to be selfish. We’re all quite practiced at placing our own priorities over helping others, and to hate and seek vengeance rather than love. We grow used to accusing and persecuting others in order to defend that deep vein of selfishness that resides within us all.
But in school, there were a few problems with paying attention, especially when the subject did not interest me. Yet there was something more going on in my young brain. There were times when paying attention was not just challenging, but near impossible. I’d sit there in class with my head in a fog, losing track of everything that was going on around me.
My brothers and I joke that the condition we actually suffer from is Artistic Attention Disorder. Our creative minds cannot stop dreaming up stuff that is fun or stimulating to think about. Every day I write or draw because ideas pop into my head out of nowhere.
As the years went by, I learned quite a bit about controlling my thoughts and maintaining focus. There were still the occasional dropouts such as lost sets of keys and the occasional botched work assignment or appointment. Depression entered the picture at times and that was only accentuated by life events such as the onset of my late wife’s struggle with cancer. But my former high school coach called me the day he found out about my new caregiving responsibilities and said, “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.”
Now that I’m back competing again and training to some degree, I still keep a filter in place when it comes to preoccupation with athletics. It’s a positive tradeoff. Running and cycling and swimming help me calm the ADHD side of my personality. But neither do I let training and racing distract from the focus of what needs to be accomplished each day. The sports of triathlon are good for wicking off stress and affording time to process problems that are both complex and simple. But I resist the temptation to let those sports become all-consuming again. I’ve been there. Done that.
Listen up, people. Marsupials are not “normal” like the rest of us mammals here on earth. In fact, they’re not mentioned in the Bible, and to that makes them ungodly. They run around making that nasty grin all the time. It looks like they are channeling the devil himself.
Speaking of Un-American, the opossums we have here in the Good Old U-S of A officially don’t even belong here. They evolved on some ancient continent named Pangeea, for God’s sake, and used to live only South America. But then they come up through Mexico when they heard about all the good garbage cans here in North America. So they are illegal immigrants and have spread all over the country like vermin.
So you can see why an opossum might actuall be moved to end it all for real, and throw itself off a bridge to splat on the trail below. That also answers the question why so many possums wind up as road kill. There is a high rate of suicide among social creatures who feel cast out of society. A creature so hated and unappreciated might feel it has little reason to live.
It is threats of this nature that likely drove our possum friend to throw himself off the railroad bridge last night. These are harsh times for possums or anyone else that does not hail from White Bread America. Word has it Trump has his eye on the raccoons as well.”We sure don’t need coons in this country either!” he yelled at the same rally. “Who knows where they came from? Let’s send them back right away! And make them pay for it! Look at their ugly little masks, and how they wash their food with those tiny little paws. And that tail. It makes them look like a jailbird!”
For all its Big Box glory and global commerce, America still tries to support its local treasures. One of those local treasures sits in the little town of Kaneville, 45 miles west of Chicago. As a farming town for more than 150 years, the community sits at the intersection of several country roads. There is a brightly painted blacksmith shop and several tall church steeples in town. One local bank has a small branch in Kaneville. To the east, a massive set of fields that alternates between sod and beans and corn as the market dictates. So Kaneville is both a town of perpetual values and constant change.
The real heart of the community is a general store perched at the corner of Main Street and Harter Road. Colloquially known as the “Purple Store” for its lavender paint job, the actual name of the business is Hill’s Country Store. Here’s what one reviewer says about the place on Yelp!
The woman that runs the store is Pat Hill. She’s a lovely gal with a big smile and a wholesome figure, pure country stock and with a genuine personality to mix. As you can imagine, running a business in a small town like Kaneville is as much about relationships as it is accounting, and Pat is dearly loved by the community.
I have personal experience navigating the world of health care coverage before passage of the Affordable Care Act. I spent eight years navigating the world of health insurance offerings from HMOs to COBRA to high-risk insurance policies. I worked for small companies that lived in fear someone in their employ might come down with cancer. The spoken belief was that rates would skyrocket. At times I actually hid my late wife’s cancer from employers for those reasons.
But that brings us back to people like Pat Hill and her small business. These are the real touchpoints in all this. No matter how good your coverage may be, all insurance policies have flaws, and many have lifetime maximums. The specifics of Pat’s situation aren’t necessarily public, but suffice to say that vital contributions are helping her cope with the costs of her medical expenses, staying alive, and perhaps even gaining clearance from the cancer now vexing her body.
So I invite you cyclists and runners and swimmers out there to consider making a donation to help this woman whose life and business is at the heart of both a community and a lifestyle. The Purple Store is a true gem of American uniqueness. So is Pat. So if you’d like to make a donations, please send money to Old Second National Bank, PO Box 90, Kaneville, Illinois 60144. There is a support fund set up for Pat Hill, so please indicate on your envelope what the contribution is for, and the bank’s employees will see that it gets to its ultimate purpose.
Then I came to the high school that I attended freshman and sophomore years. It’s always fun for me to ride a loop around the service road behind the building past the football field and track. Every February and March the track team would gather out on that tarmac to run intervals around the school.
The press box these days is low-slung, horizontal and covered with school propaganda. But back when it stood thirty feet tall and had a plain white surface from bottom to top. A close friend that hated going to high school was recruited to do a senior prank by painting a massive nude up the side of the structure. I knew the artist well, and by all reports racing through the junior high rumor mill, the female he created on that wall was, by male standards some might find offensive, “Good enough to eat.”
I don’t care what gender you are or what sexual orientation you might abide. For many people in this world, that statement about sexual hunger is true. Our appetites run from end to end where sexuality is concerned and sex is like a food to some people. Hiding these things only leads to trouble. It is better to exercise than diet, as the saying goes.
Thus it was age-appropriately ironic that as I pulled out of the high school campus on my bike yesterday, a giddy group of high school girls whooped and hollered at me from their car. That’s happened more than once over all my years of cycling, and I make nothing more of it than the fact that Girls Just Like to Have Fun.
whoops and hollers back in the day. Only decades later does one hear through a funny little reunion grapevine that certain women actually liked your
Only I miscalculated the fact that there was a deep rut before the concrete curb. My front wheel jammed against that, and I was thrown completely over the handlebars landing my head and left shoulder. Thank God I wear a bike helmet. I lay there stunned for several seconds, with head throbbing, then popped up and laughed. I let loose a long and loud rendition of the F word, then climbed on the bike, straightened up the right brake hood, and rode home. Chagrined. Ooops, I did it again.
I did learn that I am no 
We Run and Ride 