Have you been watching the Olympics? Wow! All kinds of sports and competition make for great television watching. The Olympics come around every four years. That means a long training cycle. Most sports have a set season. The Olympics have that four-year break. Lose in the Olympics and it is four years to get back into the contest and right that wrong. That is a rough schedule to keep up with. Didn’t do well in the event? There is the constant training to keep up with and the mental and physical stamina continue. Whew! Then you have to keep at it or decide the Olympic dream is over.
There is also the delusion part that overtakes the athletes and the spectators alike. Your brain thinks you can do all the stuff that it takes to be in the games.
It seems that there are many back-stories for all the athletes. You know what I’m talking about. Some are run of the mill type stories. A young athlete works hard and after being cut from the track team, he runs every day for four years and makes the cut to go to the games. Practice, practice and more practice make for winning results. Throw in some more troubles and the story becomes more interesting. Family troubles, health problems or some catastrophic event to overcome and the story of Olympic victory becomes a Hero’s Journey. All that and you’re holding a Gold Medal. Then you get it in your mind that you could do some of these things too. These athletes overcome all these problems and get a Gold Medal. I don’t have all those problems; I could train to do it.
My mind went crazy one time watching a show about the triathlon contest. That is swimming, bike riding and then running a marathon. Yea right. I was on the couch in the air-conditioning and a two-hour show about the triathlon was on. Every few minutes they would focus on someone that had overcome every imaginable problem to train and overcome and do this race.
My mind was whispering things like “You could do that. You get up early in the morning. You don’t have to win you just have to finish.” I blame the couch. One of my friends blames tequila for making him think he can dance.
I did meet a guy that was training for getting in a full iron-man race. After he told me about riding his bike 175 miles a week and having a running schedule to do a marathon a week and swimming three days a week: reality reared it’s ugly head. By the end of the show, my brain was saying things like, “you have four years to do this.” I fell asleep during part of the show where a guy fell off the bike going thirty-five MPH and was taken away by ambulance.
Still it is fun to think you can do these things. After the triathlon show, a nature show came on. The show was about hippos. What an incredible animal. A hippo can run faster than a man. A hippo can also swim faster than a man. Imagine have to race a hippo!
My brain went into Olympic overdrive. What if I trained for four years? What if I could get into some sort of contest like the Iron Man? What if I had to compete against a hippo?
The hippo could out swim and out run me. My only chance for winning this contest would be making a good showing on the bike. Hippos have a hard time riding a bicycle.
I’ve already given up on an Olympic dream and I’ll just stick with a crazy delusion.
