mountain that falleth.

This just in: down falls the mountain.

I have spent the past 4 months coaching the swim team at the high school I teach at. On Wednesday we had our city championships and, low and behold, we won the whole stinkin’ thing. Our girls won the girls title, while the boys were third in team scores, but it was enough to give us the overall title.

I was super proud of our kids. I mean, it wasn’t just that we won, but that every single one of them swam times that were better than they had done all year. If you’re an athlete, there are all these little barriers you’re always trying to break through. And sometimes the difference between “success” and “failure” is  more mental than anything else. Like, the difference between 30.0 and 29.9 is only one one-hundreth of a second, but for a grade 9 boy who has swam 30.3, 30.0, 30.2, it becomes his Everest. So when he dips under that 30second mark, it’s like a mountain just toppled. And that feels good.

It was another lesson for me to remember. In sport, everyone has goals, and everyone works toward them in varying degress. But in the end, we’re all trying to climb some kind of mountain, whether it’s breaking :30 for a 50free in the pool, going under 3hours for a marathon, or just finishing your first triathlon. And sometimes achieving those goals can be disheartening. Just ask the guy who ran 3:00:00. But then we all get back on our feet, and do it again.

It’s like what Bruce Wayne’s father said to him in Batman: “We fall down so we can learn to pick ourselves up again.”

So I’ve been kind of inspired to get back on my own athletic feet. Perhaps the combination of watching a swim meet, missing my bike, and always having to nurse some kind of running related injury is leading me back towards what I seem more naturally suited for: the 3-in-1, triathlon-so-fun. We’ll see…

run 100, get 02

Okay, so I’m not a big football fan. But last night was superbowl, and it’s kind of hard not to watch superbowl. And I just happened to tune in at the very end of the first half when “Defensive Player of the Year” James Harrison intercepted the ball on his own 1-yard-line and ran it for a touchdown, 100 very distant yards away. Apparently it was one of the turning points in the game.

I couldn’t help laughing (for a really long time), though, that Harrison’s last 20yards looked as if he had just finished running three consecutive ironmans, while carrying a piano that was filled with wet concrete. I kept thinking, “this guy wants to be tackled,  just so he can stop running.” But then one of his teammates would give him another block, and on he would go.

As he reached the endzone, he collapsed. That’s it, collapsed. As if he had just found land after being shipwrecked for two months. To be honest, it was kind of a relief. Normally football players do those annoying celebration dances and show me the money. This was something else, altogeher. No dance. He just couldn’t.

After several minutes, Harrison was taken to the sidelines where he recovered. This was the best part. Because they gave him an oxygen mask. That’s right. They called the paramedics to give a professional athlete an oxygen mask because he had played his sport. I know he’s a 240-pound-never-runs-only-blocks-kind-of guy, but seriously…

I guess I’ll just say that if Harrison and I ever got into a fight (perhaps he’ll read a really insulting blog), I’d hope it would be shoulder to shoulder, and not head to head.