Dear Steve: Shut Up!

Monday, January 12, 2009
Meters rowed: 5,000
Time: 23:41
Pace: dunno
Total Meters Rowed: 246,787

You know, I should just keep my big mouth closed. A couple of days ago I was lamenting a twinge of a pulled groin muscle and how, suddenly, the realization that “getting hurt” could derail my plans for the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s and how the world itself was now about to tilt on its axis. Yeah, well, no, that hasn’t now happened. But get this: Last night in bed I pulled a muscle in my back … while sleeping, while sleeping. Know idea how. All I remember is I woke up at 3 a.m. needing to go and next thing I know I’m unable to straighten up and I’m having trouble breathing. Worse, upon returning to bed I couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt when I inhaled and so sleep was an on-again, off-again thing until the alarm went off at six. Did I want to blow off the workout, or what? But no. I had been planning a sprint routine, something good and hard and exhausting, but I went instead with just 5,000 meters — my default workout, obviously. I almost but not quite found a place on the Concept2 where I could sit and breathe without hurting and was glad to do it and get it done.

Still, visions of the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s crashing around me before I even got there circled me the entire time. I simply can’t imagine what it must be like to be an athlete (a REAL athlete, let’s say), going for the Olympics, or the NBA championships or … whatever … only to have it all derailed by an injury and snatched away forever.

Actually, when you think about it, over the years there must have been thousands of athletes for whom it should have happened but never did. Competition is terrible … awful … Darwinian. But that’s the very point, right? Survival of the … you know the rest. It’s THE thing what makes competition so can’t-look-away compelling.  Surely there are many people we should have heard about, but never did.

 Well, to correct that, even if just a bit, here’s one. The York Daily Record here in my Pennsylvania hometown is winding up a 22-week series on the Top 10 athletes of all time in every high school in York & Adams counties. (I’m a 1970 grad of York Catholic High; my name is NOT on this list.) This past week the No. 5 athlete at Northeastern was Brendon Falconer (big-league name, no?). He was “only” No. 5 because the Daily Record limited its criteria to high school accomplishments (and whether said glory got the athletes a college scholarship or a pro contract), but that seems fair enough. Falconer won himself a couple of Pennsylvania state championships in track and field. Then he went to Kent State on scholarship and concentrated on the decathlon. Then, for my money, he became the best pure athletic talent south central Pennsylvania ever produced. (I unabashedly admit I am an old-school type when it comes to the merits of the decathlon.) And then for “Fly Man Falconer” (or “Brendon Bird Man”; geez, his future was soaring and, yes, the sky seemed the limit!!), what happened then? Oh, alas, what happened then …

I just made up those nicknames that never were. What happened then is how Falconer was forced to return to earth and yet so admirably, graciously, realistically accepted his clipped wings and walked away.

So yes, for me and my “injuries” and their awful “consequences”? I should just keep my big mouth closed.