Exercise: get out there and do it

I ran track and cross country in high school. I wasn't an outstanding athlete, but I was pretty good. I won a cross country race my senior year (I think my time was 17'48"), I ran a 4'52" mile once in a regional meet, and I even ran a 59' quarter mile, barely hanging on for the win as the anchor in the 4×400 relay. Quite dramatic.

All that was over 20 years ago, yet I still find it hard to let that competitive mentality go. When I go out for a run, I subconsciously still think I'm training to win some theoretical race. I remember 10-15 years ago when I would see middle-aged adults struggling through a jog thinking "why do they even bother?" Yes, I was a young, arrogant, judgmental fool.

I am now that middle-aged adult out there struggling. I'm the guy whose mind too often forgets I'm no longer 18 and in the top shape of my life, and runs too far, too fast. I'm the guy who stopped to walk part way through the run becuase I just don't have the endurance I used to.

But of course I don't judge anymore. Anyone who is out there slogging through some exercise regimen--no matter how short, or slow, or both--is nonetheless still out there getting some exercise. Contrast them with those who don't even bother to try. Or like me for so long, had such high expectations of what I should be accomplishing, that it was better not to do any than to try and fall short.

My exercise regimen isn't very impressive. I run maybe 2-3 miles 3 times a week. Alternate days I do some sit-ups and push-ups, maybe 30 or so each. It doesn't compare to what I was doing in high school, but then again, I'm not in high school anymore. The little bit I do, I've concluded, is better than doing nothing at all. As Teddy Roosevelt said so well:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.