|
Location: Valcartier, QC
I’m in Quebec for the North American Championships being held at Valcartier. The last time I was here, the last time that I raced in the spring, was in 2006, a few weeks after the Olympic Games. So much has changed since then, but most objectively is that now, I am 25 years old. I’m old.
We’re staying at the same college campus dorms in which we stayed in 2006. Most of the teams are together in the same building, just on different floors, served by rickety and finicky elevators. What brought up this awareness of my age most immediately was walking down the hallway and thinking that I recognized some of the athletes, despite not knowing their names. They seemed familiar. I asked BethAnn, Tracy, and Lanny if they knew who these athletes were, and they reminded me that they were the same athletes we all coached together several years ago in Fort Kent and Presque Isle with the Maine Winter Sports Center. The last time I remember them, they were shorter, giggling girls whom we were teaching how to shoot, we were introducing them to biathlon for the first time.
Now, these athletes are where we all once were, at the youth and junior level. Many are headed to college. It’s funny.
BethAnn, Tracy, Lanny, and I sat in rocking chairs at the end of the hallway reminding the kids to be back by midnight, as there’s a disco going on downstairs, organized by the competition organizing committee. We all remembered being younger, perhaps more naïve versions of ourselves, with the same ecstatic interest at the mention of a disco. Now, we just rock away in our rocking chairs remembering the good old days. Sort of. Two of us are married now. One of us has retired. Another is one of the top athletes in the world. Life progresses, it catches up with us, we have to hang on, we have to keep our eyes open, or it will pass us by.
I’m also reminiscing about sport. When I first arrived here, nay, even before I arrived, I knew for certain that my transformation into retirement had changed. I reached Detroit from Denver on Wednesday, but my flight to Quebec was cancelled a few minutes before boarding due to aircraft maintenance. In another life, as an athlete, I would have started worrying about missing training, wondering how I’d get there. This time, I walked up to the counter, asked the service representative the flights she had, and accepted the flight the next day, arriving in Quebec in the late afternoon, too late to shoot a single shot before the 20-km individual race.
Prior to today’s race, I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t anxious. I was excited to race to some degree, but it didn’t matter to me how well I did, just that I had fun, hit some targets, and did my best, relative to what I’m able to put together these days. See, my training since December has consisted of a few weeks entirely off, some running, a lot of tele-skiing, a few cross-country ski tours, and a lot of ruck marching and push-ups during my officer school weekends. I almost felt guilty approaching the start line, my heart sank a bit, knowing that just three years ago I had stood in that very place nearly in the best shape of my life. I had a game plan for the race. Now, since the fall, I have raced based solely instinct, not upon training or competitiveness. It feels almost sacrilegious to my former self.
But then I thought for another second and smiled: sport, and life, for that matter, is what you make of it. We ourselves are the ones who place importance upon the events, activities, and relationships in our lives. There are other things in my life now that I hold important. I give those things the energy and time that I once gave to sport.
Watching other athletes ascend the podium this evening, I wasn’t jealous that they had beaten me with minutes to spare. I knew that I had once stood there. I was happy that they too had been rewarded with success for their hard work as I had been when I was training and competing. (This brings up, tangentially, how cheating athletes can even participate in award ceremonies, knowing that they are being rewarded not for their hard work, but for the drugs running through their veins.)
Så vi så, and time ticks onwards.
 |
