Spring Training. It’s happening now in Arizona and Florida; baseball teams gather, re-group and prepare for their coming season.
Most teams will have either a mental or an actual bulletin board, where they post their goals for the season. The manager announces, sometimes with more optimism than actual hope, an ambitious plan: to “compete”, or “make the playoffs”, or “play in the World Series”, or “we realistically think we can win they whole thing – that’s the focus of our season.”
Of course, only one team ends up winning the whole thing. But many teams enter the fray with that as an explicit goal. Does that devalue the goals of all those who wanted to win, but didn’t in the end? And, have we ever seen a team which entered the year WITHOUT a goal, but won nonetheless?
One of my favorite quotes is from the English poet Robert Browning: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Another is from that Irish poet, Bono: “Here’s to the future! The only limits are the limits of our imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud! At high volume! …” Both sustain me as I start to train every day for my 2009 season, in the year I’m 60.
Browning’s quote comes from his poem “Andrea del Sarto”. I am a failed English major – I always thought I wanted to study English in school, but was given zero encouragement by teachers. Only years later did I realize that the study of English in academia is not reading something and commenting on it, but reading something, reading what others have had to say about it, and then commenting on what THEY said. No wonder I didn’t do well at it!
Now, in the 21st century, I can find in less than a minute not only the poem itself, but also some reasonable explanations and commentary to set the context of the quote. Andrea del Sarto is a Renaissance painter in the French court. He is given an advance payment for paintings to be delivered, but instead of producing, he uses the money to buy a house in Italy and brings his wife, Lucrezia to live with him there, never returning to France. The poem is presented as a long speech to Lucrezia. He laments his pedestrian results as a painter. noting that he has better technique than Rafael or Michelangelo, but lacks their soul or spark of genius. Also, he feels his choice of subject matter detracts from his aspirations to greatness.
Then there is the little matter of Lucrezia – an avaricious wife is something neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo had to contend with. An all consuming passion for their art seems (to del Sarto) to set them apart, and help make their greatness possible.
Bono (lead singer of the band U2) made his statement in Dublin, on New Year’s eve, 1989, to introduce their song “I Still haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. There is little backstory here, but Bono clearly has outsized ambitions. He wants every song to be majestic, soaring, and heartfelt. He wants to front the #1 rock band in the world. He wants to end poverty in Africa (or maybe the whole world).
Then there are all those athletes and teams who seem to rise above their peers. They have set their standards high, and approached their craft as an art. They are driven by an inner sense of emotion, an an arena where results are very public, and only one can be seen as “the best”. A goal, a dream, to achieve that level seems insufficient to the task, but clearly necessary as a starting point.
It’s all well and good, as an endurance athlete, to claim I’m really just doing this for my health, for fitness, for the joy of movement and the friendship of participation. But the facts are, I have achieved a level of success that most participants don’t get to. Qualifying for the Ironman World Championships 3 times in four years is not the experience of 99+ % of those who do triathlons. There are probably 250,000 people who will enter one or more triathlons this year in the United States, and at least double that number world wide. Only 800 in the US, 1500 world wide, qualify to go to Kona. And of course, success at Kona, measured as being in the top five in one’s age group, comes to only about 100 at the race.
So, I feel obligated, to myself, if nowhere else, to set my sights as high as I can see – I have to find out what lies just beyond my current grasp, if I’m going to feel a little slice of heaven.
And triathlon, which ends with the run, is a brutally honest sport. Compared to biking, running happens in slow motion. When one is passing, or being passed, it always seems so inevitable, as if there is a pre-ordainment to it all. To do the preparation necessary, and have the mental toughness needed to succeed, requires an outsized goal. Nothing else will keep you going long enough and hard enough.
So as I start my season, as I transition from skiing to swimming, biking, and running, I need to dream big, and dream out loud at high volume. When anyone asks what I’m doing this year, I start by pointing towards Ironman Coeur d’Alene in June, Ironman World Championship in October, and Ironman Arizona six weeks later as my big races for the year.
And I have very specific goals to dream for, to prepare for, to keep me running when I want to walk. In Coeur d’Alene, I intend to break the age group record for men 60-64, currently 11 hours 44 minutes and 22 seconds. At Kona, I want to get on the podium, which might take a time of 11 hours and 15 minutes, but who really knows, as it depends on the weather, and what other people do that day. So it really means racing at the highest possible level, holding nothing back, risking blowing up and limping home. And, the toughest task of all, I think, is to break the age group record six weeks later in Arizona, currently 11:09:21.
Now, last year, I went 11:29 in Idaho, and 10:55 in Arizona, or about 15 minutes under the records at each place. Knowing that I have the CAPABILITY to achieve that goal makes it all the more alluring. Remember all those teams with “Win the World Series” on the bulletin board in the locker room. Only one will actually achieve their goal; results are never pre-ordained, and past performance is no assurance of future success. One more quote I’ve always carried with me is from Mr. Webb, my seventh grade science teacher (who was paraphrasing the Bible, Luke 12:48, I’m sure): “When one has much, much is expected.”