Push On 'Til the Day

Yesterday I finished The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. It was a very interesting look at what some might say were the glory days of baseball. The most insightful portion of the book is Kahn's trip around America visiting the Dodgers in their days of retirement. Retirement would not be an appropriate word for some though. This was back in the days when athletes were not paid outrageous sums of money, and thus did not always have a huge nest egg waiting on them when they left the game. One was a bartender (Billy Cox), one installed elevator doors on the World Trade Center towers (Carl Furillo), and one managed the New York Mets (Gil Hodges). The process of moving from a game that gave you so much satisfaction and fame to a world that remembers you as you once were is a tenuous one, and one that Kahn details beautifully.

Yesterday was one of the more difficult training days I have had so far. The weather was fantastic, the wind was low, and I had plenty of sleep the night before. I guess the practice of running 17 miles should never be an easy one, but this was tough. Quitting is always a viable option when your legs become heavy, and there is no one to talk to, but for some reason I push on.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that the work I do now will provide a future reward, but it is probably also a bit of personal pride. I know that if I stop running simply when I do not feel good or when it has ceased to be a novelty, I will stop at other things. When everyone throws out the cliche that sports are metaphor for life, I usually laugh it off, but this time it seems true. When you learn to block out everything around you, your own personal pain and demons, and simply push on with dogged persistence, good things will come. I firmly believe this, and this is why I train the way I do. I believe that devotion to training for something physical can make you more loyal and devoted to the things that are unseen. No training is meaningless if one will take the lessons that the physical body teaches and apply them to all the other facets of life.