Things have been rough lately. The lead story, of course, is the emotional upheaval caused by the incomprehensible election. I will never understand how messages of hate and fear so totally obscured the facts. The first “round” gave clear history and evidence of what a second round would likely create. Civility and decorum have been cremated, and what has emerged from the ashes are bluster, pomposity, and an ego-maniacal presence that is trailed by sycophants. The total inability of any seeming way to make an impact on that, and to take any preventative steps to somehow forestall the downward spiral is overwhelming.

Take that component and put it in the new shaker with the ongoing frustration and realization of the effects of age and you have a script that Stephen King likely would write even better than I can. The only real difference is that his would largely be fiction and my version is decidedly non fiction.

I have been active and athletic all my life. I swim, I played football, baseball, golf, tennis, racquetball, paddleball. I’ve surfed, body surfed and am a certified Scuba diver (thank you Andy, I am eternally grateful for that). I have enjoyed running for as long as I can remember. Now, let me qualify all of this with the fact that other than some time during my football days, and very early on in baseball, and for a very short time in the late 60’s and early 70’s in golf, while I was always competitive, my “wins” are nothing to write home about. That said, it was always more about the pursuit of improvement and enjoyment than checking off Win-Loss records. I think the fact that I really gravitated toward golf and running and to an extent surfing and swimming is that it was about what I was able to do better than the time before, or at least to try to do it better than the time before. To take seconds off my per-mile pace, to lower my handicap, to swim an extra set of laps, to take that one bigger wave and make it. It was an internal drive, not a drive for trophies, medals, certainly not for money. So the current struggle and disappointments are also internal and that’s where the struggle lies.

I promised myself when the pool closed that I would pick up start walking seriously with the intent to start jogging again after an appropriate warm up period. I was anticipating getting up to walking 2-3 miles and then adding in short periods of jogging, ultimately building up to being able to jog a full mile and ultimately 3-5 miles full jog once a week. To say that plan has met with rousing failure would be totally underselling the debacle that is currently is. In 2016 I trained for and finished a full half marathon, 13.1 miles, and then continued through the pandemic to do at least 3-4 days per week of 3-5 mile runs at, for me, a very respectable 13-14 min per mile pace (I know, nothing that Jim Thorpe would be threatened by, but again it was never about beating someone else, it was, and is, about looking in the mirror and being proud and satisfied). Now, I can’t even do it two days in a row, I have to be “satisfied” with every other day. Today I did 2.26 miles walking at a 23.49 min per mile pace, almost double what it was not too long ago. Add on to it that unlike my running days where it was sweaty but satisfying, today it was torture, it was uncomfortable. Even at the start, just getting suited up is a bloody chore. My body hurts, my feet seem to be swollen more than usual, my muscles hurt, my hands hurt and worse, the personal embarrassment of listening to the music I used to gauge my runs by makes it worse not better.

All the things I did to lift my spirits during the pandemic are so limited now that what used to help lift me up is now just a memory hanging like an albatross around my neck. I feel old, useless, incompetent and wasting away.

Maybe this IS where you go when you get to the end of your dream….