Training for 80
Having a kid changes your perspective. I’ve always been a performance oriented person, and to a certain point I’m guessing I always will be. However, these last 8 months have me thinking about what happens in 80 years.
Having a child is challenging in many ways, but one of the most surprising was how much time I spend sitting on the floor. Even as a fairly fit person who does some yoga, being on the floor crawling around isn’t exactly comfortable.
This is at age 29…what happens at 80…
Rather than blame it on “getting older” and believing it’s inevitable to feel horrible for the rest of my life, I know the pain is mostly from a lack of flexibility and proper core strength needed to sit cross cross applesauce.
Looking ahead: Zayden will continue to get older and bigger. I’ll probably be crawling around with him on the ground for a few more years, carrying him in my arms and on my shoulders. At a certain point he will join our adventures and we will be going camping and hiking and I’ll probably end up carrying his stuff and him…
And eventually we might be moving large boxes of his stuff into a college dorm or an apartment…
And perhaps later in life he has children of his own and I’m back crawling on the floor at 80…
The point is that for the foreseeable future, in a variety of ways and scenarios, the physical ability to exert effort for long periods of time and lift semi-heavy things will be important. So, as much as I care about executing a great race and achieving my personal goals, the training has subtly shifted in favor of longevity.
And as it does, it actually makes life and training a little easier: being stronger and more flexible now has the body feeling better which makes it easier to work hard. Restricting the effort (and ego) on longer endurance days to truly be aerobic efforts allows me to get off the bike after 5 hours and go right into dad-mode without skipping a beat. Perhaps a longevity approach is actually a performance approach after all…
Looking forward to the next 50 years of adventures with my little guy.