Competitor Blog - Team Tango, February 12, 2006
Posted on 02/16/06 5:12 AM| by Will
February 16, 2006
By Anna DeBattiste
“What do you mean by ‘weak’?” my doctor asked me. “You mean you feel fatigued?”
I shook my head. “No, I mean I can’t keep up with anyone. I can’t run as fast as I used to, or bike as fast, or lift as much weight. And it seems pretty sudden.”
Dr. Oberheide looked at me for a moment as if considering whether I might be having a spell of hypochondria. I know the look.
“I guess it would be a good idea to do a full blood screen,” he said finally. “I’ll send a nurse in to take a sample. If you haven’t heard back on results by this Saturday, give me a buzz.”
On Saturday, I called from a chairlift in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“Everything looks fine,” he said. I felt vaguely disappointed. “Sometimes there’s no telling what causes these sudden drops in performance. You did turn 40 this year, didn’t you?”
I tried to tell myself I was being ridiculous. Did I actually hope to hear that I had cancer, or that after years of Advil and Chardonnay, my liver was finally failing me? Or was it just that I hoped to hear that I had something treatable, as opposed to a bad case of aging?
I decided to call my teammates and see what they thought about this business of getting old. Luther had turned 40 earlier this year too. Blain was 41, and Russ was 46. Maybe they had some insight for me. I called Luther first.
“Do you ever think about how long you’re going to feel like racing?” I asked him.
Luther always looks on the bright side. “I sure don’t see any reason to quit in the near future,” he said. “I tend to train more efficiently and race smarter as I get older. You know, when I retire from the military in 18 months, I plan to do this full-time, for as long as I still have fun at it.”
Just what I needed, an optimist. I wasn’t going to get any sympathy here. “But you don’t feel any physical effects as you get older?” I persisted.
“Travel gets me more than aging does. Not having access to a gym, eating out all the time, gaining weight; that’s what really disrupts my training.”
I nodded. I could relate to that. Having taken on some consulting work in mid-2005, I was now on the road most weeks. That’s it, I thought. I’m not getting older, I’m just traveling too much. I felt a brief sense of relief at the idea that there was an easy answer. But then I realized the problem: it’s only because of my travel job that I can afford to race this year. There must be other answers out there. I called Blain.
“When do I say enough?” he mused. “Good question. I see a lot of elite racers our age retiring now, the Murrays, John Howard, Robert Nagle. I tend to think about my own retirement during a long race, but those thoughts go away at about the same rate the blisters do. I guess I won’t quit until racing no longer feels like a compulsion to me, or when race directors stop managing to design courses that I think are awe-inspiring journeys. I think the main thing for me is that when I quit, it needs to be on my own terms.”
Quit? Who’s talking about quitting? I felt panicky for a moment. Is that how my questions sounded to my teammates–like I was looking for reasons to leave the sport, to stay on the couch and eat bon-bons? Good lord. I figured I’d better call Russ for a good dose of humor. As the oldest member of our team, he would surely put things into perspective for me.
“Being a Master is much harder because of all the gear you have to pack,” Russ told me. “You know, like Poli-grip, Metamucil, a walker, Depends undergarments…”
“Seriously!” I protested.
“OK, seriously, I was way more competitive at 23 than I am at 46. Probably about twice as much. I have nothing to prove anymore except to myself, and that’s probably the biggest difference. I need to finish a race, but I don’t care when other teams pass me. In fact, it gives me someone to talk to.” He chuckled.
“But how do you deal with feeling weaker?” I asked. “How do you keep your enthusiasm for the sport when you start to feel like it’s all downhill from here?”
“Feeling like your body has ‘left the building’ doesn’t make it all downhill, really. It just means you have to focus more on the mental challenges of the sport, and the emotional rewards you get from it.”
I thought about that for a moment. Is that what Luther meant when he talked about training and racing smarter as he got older? Is that what Blain meant by keeping things on his own terms? Maybe they had something there.
I’d like to tell you that my conversations left me feeling better about my age. Probably about the best I can say is that I understand the importance of shifting one’s focus to stay motivated by the things you can control, rather than obsessing about the things you can’t change. What’s that old saying? Something about having the strength to change what you can and the grace to accept what you can’t. If my dog Tango could talk, she would probably tell me that it means you should keep on jumping for your treats, even when it makes you fall down.
