Pace Yourself - Olympic Park City

 

We were out on our new, used carbon road bikes the other day cruising along on our fine machines and hammering hills.  We were getting back into a sport we had collectively logged almost one hundred thousand miles on but had forgot about it because of bad bikes and other options.  We were even thinking that a good road bike is about as efficient as a bad e-bike.  Then this guy passed us on a slick new bike like we were standing still and a short while later a woman passed us, and I think she was talking on the phone. 

We were embarrassed for a moment and then we remembered where we were.  Olympic Park City.  Everyone here is in great shape and shreds no matter if it is skiing, biking or Pickleball.  It is the reason most of us came here, extreme recreation and the ‘quality of life’ thing that keeps score by how many days you spend playing outside or on vacation in someplace challenging and exotic.

We didn’t feel so bad, after a while, knowing that there are gold medal winners out there training or elite competitive bikers on the road and in the woods.  They have $10,000 bikes and million-dollar quads with their designer kits and matching shoes.  Who can keep up with that?  No one.  Because we don’t have to. 

I was skate-skiing one day, thinking that I had it down until Bill DeMong zoomed by and left me in the dust, like I was standing still.  No matter what you do or how well you do it, there is always someone here who can do it ten times better.  It’s almost like playing Hockey with Wayne Gretzky.  I remember beating Cindi Schwandt to a finish line one year and she said ‘congratulations Matt but the pros had to do another lap’ and she took off up the hill while I gasped for breath.

So, the key is to just go out and do things at your own pace, on your own level.  Compete with your friends and yourself but never compete with age.  It is just not equivalent, equitable or fair.  I remember smugly latching on to a peloton of older riders in Ireland when I was young and touring with light packs.  They all gave me a look as I moved up the line and a hoot and a holler when I took a turn at the front before flaming out and getting ignominiously dropped.

A lady in Belgium told me one rainy day that we only get so many beats to our hearts in this life and if I waste them riding around Europe, I will pass early.  I said we don’t look at it that way.  But maybe we should, a little. I’ve had more than a few doctors tell me, when asked what went wrong with my body, ‘it's just worn out’.  Elite athletes have a markedly higher rate of A-fib, even Kareem.  So, I take it with a grain of salt, these ideas of eastern and western medicine where we want to be fit but we don’t want to get worn out or hurt.  I’ve adopted moderate exercise in a town of obsessive Olympians.  It’s OK.  We don’t have to compete or win.  We just want to get out.  We just want to play.  Moderation not mediocrity.

I had a Rasta-Jamaican caddy named Raphael at a fancy golf club in New York who, after watching me struggle to play with my friends, said ‘just play your own game man – don’t worry about the others’.  And so I did.  We had a grand time in the woods and the water and forgot to keep score.  I bought that wise man a Red Stripe beer when we were done.  So, remember my friends to get out and play your own game.  Moderation in everything, including moderation.