We’ve all had them. They read like the Best Of ESPN sports reel in our memories. They fill us with pride and awe and emotion and strength. And confidence. I’m talking about the good days. Not just the good days but the days when you are really on. Somehow you woke up with boundless energy, the sun is shining and everything in your body works as it should. You don’t just run, you are liquid lightening separating the clouds. You don’t just lift the iron, you almost throw it. It’s a perfect 10 stuck landing with no hop. It’s touching the edge of the pool with enough time to turn around and see your competitors still coming. It’s hitting that last double arrow on Dance Dance Revolution with both arms stuck out in the air, sweat streaming down your face and knowing you hit every count on the hardest level. (What? DDR is intense! Don’t believe me? Go check out the teens high-flying over those wicked arrows at your local arcade. Try not to be creepy about it though. No trench coats is all I”m saying.) Sometimes, on those days, a little voice may creep in warning you to rein it in. Hold back a bit. You don’t want to get hurt. But you go for it anyhow. Because deep down you know you own it.
More often are the other days. Not the truly horrible ones – although you know I love to talk about those – but the mediocre ones. The ones where you realize that every day for the past month something on you has hurt (usually something strange and nagging, like your xyphoid process, that makes you – okay me – automatically and hypchondriacally think cancer). The ones where the treadmill is a chore, the iron seems heavier than the last time and strangely you are crazy sore despite cheating your way through half your workout. Occasionally, right before I’d step onto the balance beam or while I toed the line for the vault my heart would drop out and my legs would go weak. It wasn’t nerves. It was just… well, I knew I wasn’t going to stick anything that workout. I’d be lucky just not to get injured. The blah days. (Note to the wise: if you feel like this every day, it might be your first clue that you are overtrained and need a break.)
Whether we are an Olympic athlete tripping over a hurdle or the mom with the jogger stroller huffing around the lake while arcing goldfish crackers over the rain fly to a whiny toddler, everyone has the blah days. But it’s the memory of the really great days that keeps us going. I honestly believe that how well you can keep those beautiful flying memories alive is your exercise barometer. Everyone fails. The inimitable Dr. J recently posted about using your failures as a tool. The lesson is in the falling. People who don’t struggle, don’t learn.
I was recently reminded of this when I got an e-mail from a Dr. John Farr. Remember the controversy surrounding swimmer Dara Torres? Dr. Farr writes:
I’ll admit to a great sadness at the bitchy backlash ( male and female ) to the great reentry of Dara at the top level in her sport . Yes, there have been a number of proven drug cheats in a host of sports, but the basic and irrefutable truth is that the vast majority of athletes in all disciplines do not use performance-enhancing drugs . As a doctor, and one-time athlete, I have had occasion to review Dara’s training regimen, both physical and dietary, and have found nothing which would lead me to suspect any form of doping . Dara has the unhappy situation of being asked to prove a negative, where the reality is that those who make the accusation should and must produce evidence to corroborate their allegation . This they cannot do since there is no evidence to adduce .By way of personal illustration, I am a sixty-nine year old who still works (reasonably) hard at staying in good shape . My blood pressure is 120/70, my pulse at rest is 45 bpm , I weigh 161 pounds, my chest is 42 inches unexpanded and my waist is 28 inches . This is as a result of good nutrition and two exercise sessions daily, thirty minutes in the morning and forty-five in the evening . If I can do this, anybody can, so do I think Dara Torres is cheating her way to the Olympics ? No way, Jose !I would just like to wish Dara all the best for her Olympic competition and I hope that she gets more than one gold medal
And Dara? Just won a silver medal today. Girl is on and is one step closer to hushing her critics. I’m glad.
Photo Credit: National Geographic
This post made me smile.
Because when I used to weigh myself every day, that number on the scale was the ONLY thing that dictated whether I was going to have an “on it” day or a “blah” day.
These days anything can make a good day happen – a strong workout, a kind word, a job well done.
Just realising that has made today a good one already!
TA x
I wonder what makes you come up with the most interesting topics of the day. You have yet to make me ask if this is all you have. Each time I see a post I pause and ask, why don’t I think like this? Today’s topic hits home for me. There are usually more days of “YES” than there are days of “NO”. Each of those yes days are more of “ok, I know I can do this so lets focus on HOW I feel when I do this”. It really helps me bear down on those meet/competition days where all I want to hear is my breathing and my thoughts. On those no days I can’t hear my breathing nor my thoughts. It takes every ounce of will power just to make it through my workout. Then it hits me, I never took a breath where I can set myself. Also that its Friday and I am allowed to take it easy. I hear its ok to do that from time to time. In the end I am following and old addage: Play like you practice and practice like you play. That way when it comes time for my event, I know what to expect.
Gym Buddy Mike
and FRICK.
Im so alone in this one and I know it.
and I am, indeed, hesitant to say it again as I LOVE DARA and pray Im wrong.
but Marion Jones is SO the easy example (and I was living in NC at the time of her “IM INNOCENT. ID NEVER EVER DO PERFORMANCE ENHANCING ANYTHING” and then bingbangboom she was on Oprah saying “sorrrry. I lied”)
it’s the recoverability that makes me a skeptic.
not how dara looks aesthetically.
the longer than Dr Farr’s training sessions required to make it to China.
I so pray Im wrong….
God I love those “on” days. My problem is that instead of celebrating them as wonderful anomolies, I tend to think: This is How Strong I Really Am, Why Isn’t Every Day Like This?
So then all the other days I feel like I’m “off.”
(Don’t know about you, but my hormone cycle tends to send me a couple of glorious hyper-fit days each month. I just wish whatever hormone combination that represents could become a daily pill. I’d SO take it!)
Go Dara! Go Dara!
wait – is Dr. J my grandpa?!
The on days definitely keep me going on the days I’d just as soon hang out in the cafe while the kids are in the child care center. 🙂
And at the qualifying rounds it seems like China was “on” and the US were “off”. And man, you don’t want to be off on your qualifying day of the Olympic trials! It’s got to be so hard at that level!
I have “on” days when I’m teaching and I’ll have all this imagery spewing out of my mouth “squat like you’re hovering over a really dirty toilet seat” or “crack a nut between your shoulder blades” and then I have days when metaphors and similes are totally foreign and I have to reach for, what was that called? Oh right, a lunge.
On the other hand, sometimes I can be having a really bad day when I’m in a total funk, and I have to go teach and I really don’t feel like it because I’m in a really “off” day, but then I get there and my mood flips like a switch.
Go Dara! I hear ya on the good days – they days you seem to have all the good karma in the world on your side!
erg. i kept waiting to see her swim, but she never came. i got to watch gymnastcis though, which was all i really wanted to see.
and i LOVE those days where you can just go forever. They seem to be few and far between, for me atleast.
http://www.groundedfitness.com
Agree with you on the yes and no days.
Every time I lace up my shoes for an 18 miler I bank my confidence that I did it a week ago- so today, I should be fine. Even though I am VERY skeptical about my own ability, how much sleep I got, etc..
Routing for Dara too!
Some days are, well, some days!! Others are great! I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “Some people have one of those days, and some have one of those lives” 🙁
Just don’t slip into the second type.
Thanks Charlotte for the mention!!
PS Dr. J don’t do no GRANDPA!
Go Dara! And…go Oksana (the 33 year old german gymnast who rocked the vault last night)!
And I love those days, they keep me going. I always tell myself “you don’t have to love every workout, you just have to do it (to get to the good ones)” which gets me through. Somedays, they aren’t even the days I get into the gym all jazzed – last Monday I felt kinda BLEH when I fired up the treadmill and then ran my first 4 mile run and felt great!
Dara has done some great things. She also has done some different things. If you take a closer look at her training routine it becomes apparent that she is training very differently than the other swimmers around her. Perhaps she is taking something. You can be damn sure that other people are taking the same stuff. If that puts her on an even playing field, then… what does that leave us with?
I just wrote a post of Dara and it is amazing how she inspires people! Drug-free or not, 41 years old?! Come on people – its awesome!
http://jamieatlas.wordpress.com
the problem with the blah days is when they don’t give you an on day. i figured with all my crappy bike workouts leading to the tri, i figured i’d probably be due for a good bike on race day.
wrong-o.
but when i do have those good days, they are wonderful.
Dara is da bomb!
I love the picture you chose for today’s post. I love the humour you put into the DDR Reference. I love the fact that you just made my morning brighter with your wit and satire. I love the inspiration that Torres can inspire. I’m not american, but I love watching the games because its people who work hard hoping to have a “good day” at just the right moment.
I can’t wait for the track and field to start!
That’s great that she did that!
Theres always some kind of way to turn a blah day into a good one. And thats the most wonderful feeling, to have one of those really great days!