Letters to a Friend
I built the fire, made the coffee, walked the dogs and sat down at my computer for my first check of our Reader Forum. A man who's been a member for about three years had begun a thread. He repented and quickly deleted this post, so only a few saw what he wrote on this December morning in 2015. But I did. It read in part:
"Curious whether others have got the triathlon desire back after you realize that there is much more to life than doing tris. Triathlon used to be so important to me. Now I just don't care. Kids, family, job, reading good literature… all things that I now care much more about than swim, bike, run. Maybe it's gone forever."
I spent the next half-hour searching his posting history. Two and a half years prior, in April, 2013, he wrote that triathlon is the most awesome sport in the world.
But as we see, three years hence he was ready to throw in the towel. "Now I just don't care… Maybe it's gone forever."
The fact that our forum member deleted what he wrote does not erase what he felt when he wrote it. In his posting history I read the eagerness of April and the burnout of September, a documented case of that whipsaw common to all triathletes. But if it's really over for him he's a good proxy for the life cycle of a triathlete. I don't blame him. His world got bigger faster than his sport did.
I have been a member of the community of endurance sportsmen since the age of 13 and I'm about ready to celebrate my 59th birthday. The sport has been my constant companion but, like the fellow quoted above, my concept of sport needed to grow at the same pace as the rest of my world. I did reconcile its demands. I did manage to hang a loop over the sport that first lassoed me.
This doesn't mean I'm good at endurance sport, just that I can stay satisfied while doing it, just as a man carves for himself a place of comfort in his profession, his marriage, his fatherhood, his religion, his politics.
This man underwent a growth spurt in his ability to appreciate and embrace "kids, family, job, reading good literature." He got older. His sky got taller. His colors saturated. His world enlarged, but did his sport? Did his life move forward, on a conveyor belt, while his sport stood in place? Some habits and beliefs ought to be left behind. Only Big Ideas deserve a lifelong attachment. Is triathlon a Big Idea?
No. Not in the limited way we typically confine it. But neither is religion a Big Idea, nor marriage, love of country, parenthood, education and higher thought, if we force them to stay a limited size and shape.
The forum member above, who I'm calling a friend because of the sport we share, he's Gordon Lightfoot and the feeling's gone and he just can't get it back. So why doesn't he just walk away? No fanfare? Move on? Lots of people do. The fact that he's posting means there must be something of value he doesn't want to lose, even as he struggles to find a reason to continue.
I don't have an answer for him. What I do have is a 46-year marriage to endurance sport that gets better with age. As the Ideas and Sacraments of my life evolved, my sport became one of the Sacraments. I can't speak to this fellow's reality, but I can describe my own, which is what I'm going to do in a number of blog posts over the next several days. They won't give guidance or fix something broken. Still, perhaps our Forum member above might find something of value.
[This is the 1st of 5 blog entries on the subject: Letters to a Friend; No Skill for Living; Who is an Athlete? Subversive Tri; The Boundary of Sport]
