In the last few weeks, I’ve found myself in at least half a dozen conversations with my age-peer athlete-friends, which have illustrated different sides of staying active as we age. I think I’ll start sharing them, maybe once every couple of weeks. Who knows what I might learn?
I thought of titling this, “You Never Know When it Might Be Your Last Race”, but the actual story is more hopeful.
Last Sunday, at my local sprint tri (the Triple Threat at Ft. Lewis), I was talking with someone I hadn’t met before, who, seeing my Team USA tri suit, started telling me about his upcoming trip to Budapest for the ITU World’s, and wondered if I would be there. Turns out this guy is Doug Hill, the Legendary Doug Hill in these parts. He’s 55, and certainly faster than I was at that age, in sprints and Olympic distance at least. Invariably he’s the fastest over 50 guy in any local race we do, often the fastest over 40. I guess since I was wearing the Team USA kit, I was deemed worthy of his interest, so we got into a lot of gossip about training, competition, and testing each other’s credentials. Having three straight IM AG wins/course records is a good set of bona fides, I’m finding out. Without putting too conceited a face on it, it was good to have a peer, or someone even slightly better than me, at a local race to talk with. As Casey Stengel once said, “Most guys my age are dead now,” or at least not racing, or radically slowing down. His allowed as how there’s no way he could consider an Ironman, or even a Half, as his knees just can’t take the pounding anymore. He claimed he gets by on 60 miles a week biking, 8 miles running (over the course of a year, I average over 100 miles biking and 21 miles running, including recovery weeks, rest weeks, and off-season and skiing weeks). He seemed happiest just to be doing races with his youngest daughter, Alyssa.
In the middle of our posturing war stories, someone else comes up on my right, big old grin on his face, saying “So, Al, you’re still doing these?” It was Charlie, whom I’d last seen at a tri about 4 years ago, just before he got diagnosed with prostate cancer. I’ve known him for about 30 years. We used to work together, I even delivered several of his kids way back then. He left Group Health, then early in my tri career we ran into each other at the funky local short distance races like Triple Threat and Black Hills. One year, when my tire blew in T1 at the Triple Threat Olympic Distance race, I despaired of doing the bike and run. He saw my plight, and recruited me to the relay he and his wife were doing – he was going to bike/run, and saw a chance to win the race with me finishing up for them. They left, and I stuck around for the awards, getting a door prize from their number as well – a Rudy Project helmet, T Shirt, hat and backpack.
During my second year at tris, he began encouraging me to think bigger – he saw a level of talent I didn’t know I had. He was going to IM Canada in August 2000, thinking he could qualify for Hawaii as he had gone back in the late 80s. I had not yet done an IM – I was going to Florida that November – but already I knew how hard it was to get a spot up in Penticton. So when he offered to stand in line after the race and buy me a slot for 2001, I jumped at the chance, with the proviso that I do the same for him for 2002.
That same year, after he got back from Canada and we met in September at the 20th annual Black Hills Triathlon (1200 meter swim, 30 mile bike, 4 mile trail run in the woods), he enthused about the Canada course, and marveled at my speed that day. We were in the same age group; I was 3rd/12, and he was something like 6 or 7. He seemed to be convinced I had Hawaii potential in me, something I’d never given a thought to. At the time, I was just trying to figure out ways to get closer to the local short distance winners, much less consider trying to be a top guy at a big Ironman. Looking back, his brief comments about Kona in my future lit a spark which has yet to be extinguished.
“So, Al, you’re still doing these?” When I last saw him at the Triple Threat 4 years earlier, he’d seemed a bit resigned back then about giving up on racing, devoting his energy to the diagnostic process and the seed implant radiation treatment he was getting. We’d kept in touch very fitfully via email a few times, mostly him wondering how my Hawaii quests were coming. Today, he seemed more robust, an bit grayer, and certainly a lot more chipper than the last time we’d talked. He exuded optimism.
“Well, I could say the same about you,” I replied. “You’re looking good; I’m glad to see you here!” And I really was – I almost given him up for dead, literally. He kept grinning, and asked me about my races this year (more talk about those damn wins and course records), how much I was working, and told me about his job doing flight physicals at the AF base. Then he launched into his cancer treatment and current state of recovery, and I told him about the experimental vaccine treatment being rolled out at Fred Hutch, which my brother-in-law, another prostate survivor, was investigating.
We ended musing about the need to keep racing, mostly as an excuse to keep active. I repeated the line from a Bob Dylan song from the early 60’s, “he not busy being born is busy dying.” (It’s All Right, Ma, I’m Only Bleeding)
As Charlie left to get his stuff in the car, he offered one last thought, “Keep racing, Al. you never know when it might be your last.”
I countered, “Aren’t you glad you came back?”
A very common theme among triathletes my age is injury or illness which seems to put an end to any hope of doing another triathlon: broken pelvis in a car crash, ruined knee cartilage precluding any more running, ruptured achilles tendon, repaired, and re-ruptured, cancer threatening to cut life short, much less an athletic career, etc etc. And yet I see them all getting back into the race, not at the same level they were, but out there nonetheless, feeling the joy of movement, the warmth of friendship, and glad just to be able to do something with their bodies. I’m lucky so far to NOT have any injuries or illness, but when it happens (it is when, not if), I hope I have the courage and strength to get up and keep moving, as much as I am able.
Inspiring.