"Today is the only day we've got..."

You teenagers -- what I want you to understand is that the desire to be better, to compete better... survives. If it's there in the first place, it never completely goes away. When you get out of high school... or college, it might not be so important to you anymore. It might be inconvenient. Other desires might take its place. But it survives as a little voice that asks, "what could I do if I got in shape, if I trained harder, if I was fit?"

In the latest Running Times magazine, Jonathan Beverly has written a great article about his "conversion" from a doubter to a believer in age-group athletics.

Embracing Time

He writes:

"I used to think masters competitors were a bit pathetic. Not older runners keeping in shape, enjoying the outdoors — they were cool, I hoped to be like that someday — but those serious competitors wearing flashy racing flats and singlets designed for speedsters half their age, grimacing and sprinting as they finished in the middle of the pack."

He goes on to talk about his own path back to competition, and especially about competing at the 2007 National Masters Outdoor Track and Field Championships. In trying to understand what's going, he writes the following moving passage:


"We (I can say “we” now) aren’t denying our age. We are reminded, every time we race, nearly every time we run, that we’re slower, and that it isn’t a matter of being out of shape: We’re not going to get back to those fast times ever again. We know for certain that five years from now, 10 years from now,we will be even slower.We are reminded,every day, that we’ve started down the slope that ends in death."

"No, competing isn’t denial. Hanging up our flats and believing we are the same we were a decade ago, or that we could run as fast as we used to in a fictional reality — if we had time to train more, if we weren’t injured, if the conditions were better — that would be denial. Masters are too old to believe those fantasies any more. We know clearly that all the should’ves, could’ves and would’ves are make believe. The "perfect" day when we are at the top of our form and all the stars align never has come in the past, and we don’t have time to wait for it anymore. Today is the only day we’ve got, and we’ll seize it with more passion than a teenager."

I think maybe he does a disservice to teenagers. I think that it is the SAME passion that drives all of us, but that perhaps teenagers are so giddy with the excitement of seeing their times drop, that they don't realize quite as clearly that what is true for their parents is true for them as well. Today is the only day any of us has got. The future is always uncertain. It is today that you must do your best.