For most of us who played a sport or two in high school or college, the slope toward middle age is greased with trans fats. Sure, on TV they show lots of healthy people living a healthy lifestyle made possible by Whole Foods, antioxidant-rich green tea (whatever that means), and a Bowflex machine in their living rooms. In fact, we all have friends whose strict regimens disgust us. Like my friends Reed and Kelly, who ran the Boston Marathon together a year ago. I saw them one day last March along the Charles River. They glided past me in the middle of their seventh or eighth mile of the afternoon, while I huffed and puffed toward the conclusion of my two-point-seven “jog,” desperate to reach the Mass Avenue Bridge so I could officially begin the cool-down portion of my exercise.
By and large, most of us watch too much TV and postpone the trip to the gym until it’s near to closing-time and casually forget our resolutions on or about the MLK long weekend. Which is why I’m beyond excited that I ran the third mile of today’s treadmill workout in a brisk (for me) 6:43, the fastest time I’ve produced since a cross-country race in Hermon, Maine, October 1992. Can I give myself a gold star for that?
As I sat on my comfy living room couch, one bag of frozen peas on each throbbing shin, I couldn’t help but look back through my personal history.
I grew up a decidedly un-athletic tot. Ask anyone who saw me play basketball for Mr. Woodward in fourth grade, or try out for baseball in fifth grade (the year I met Keryn, when I was, without exaggeration, the tiniest boy in our class). In junior high, the gym teacher, Mike Carter, who also served as the high school wrestling coach, took his first shot at making me a wrestler. He failed. At the time, it would be fair to surmise that the aggregate push-ups performed in my lifetime barely exceeded the century mark.
A year later, his renewed pitch worked. Four years later, I was one of the captains of the high school team, and a very competent athlete. Still couldn’t shoot a round ball through that metal orange loop, but I could bench press 150% of my weight for reps. More importantly, I had become more confident and self-assured, crawling out of my cozy shell and finding a more well-rounded identity for myself. There’s no question in my mind that life so far would have followed very different paths if Mr. Carter had not been the gym teacher in Bucksport. I owe a great debt to him.
In October of my freshman year, I reached the acme of physical fitness, when the Harvard wrestling team jogged a leisurely two miles before tackling Harvard Stadium. 37 sections, sprinting up the 18” seats and jogging down the 9” stairs. After I completed the workout, my leg muscles quivering, I jogged another ten stadiums in moral support of the rest of the team. As I basked in the runner’s high, I realized that afternoon that I would never again be in such condition. The next day, I quit the team to focus on academics and began my slide down that oiled slope.
I resigned myself to thinking that all the high-water marks in my athletic career lay in the distant past. The 81 I shot at sixteen. That 6:06 split when I was fifteen. The 275 pounds I pushed off my chest at eighteen. Twice I have run the Corporate Challenge and set an aggressive target of nine minutes per mile, succeeding once.
With yesterday’s 6:43, that cocky nineteen-year-old boy smiles from behind this chubbier and matured face as if to say: “You know what? It’s all within reach.” I think he might be right. Six-oh-six, consider yourself on notice.
Glad to hear you're closing in on the vigor of youth. I fear those days are long gone for me.
But don't be modest with the details of your accomplishments: You can tell the people you were a Maine HS state wrestling champion senior year, not just captain of your team. And why not point out that you are possibly the only Harvard wrestler to ever actually complete the entire brutal pre-season conditioning program BEFORE deciding to quit.
01-15-2007: Contacted first agent with my novel.
01-06-2007: Revamped home page launched!
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jason@jasonshaffner.com