With great age comes great responsibility

Back in my youth I believed I could out drink, out think, out fight and out fuck anyone. I am sure some of y’all felt the same way, and if any of the ladies out there think they can get me on the fourth one please feel free to contact me with a current picture JNow, as I age gracefully, I have come to realize that that belief is not 100% true and in the case of 2 of those things I tend to wake up with a very sore head. 

Time for an anecdote, or, as my kids say, Daddy’s Story Time.

Back a few moons ago, I decided it would be fun to run the Rotorua Marathon (for non-kiwis Rotorua or RotoVegas is a place with boiling mud pools, geysers and great outdoor activities – kind of like a stinky Queenstown without the mountains – or Orcs). I knew a couple of ‘older and wiser’ people that were also running so decided to have a friendly beer based wager with them. They, of course, reminded me that even though I was a young and spry 19 year old their years of wisdom gathering and the fact that they had run marathons before meant that I would most likely lose the bet (cannot remember if you ever paid up by the way Uncle Brian). I remember parts of it like it was, well, not 26 years ago J I didn’t train properly because …well see first sentence of this post. In fact I hardly really trained at all. Pre-race was Dad and I having some Weetbix in Tauranga before heading to Rotovegas for the race.  It was a cool and rainy day and I was doing pretty well until about 20 miles in when I noticed that even though my legs were moving, people were moving much faster than me – technically it is called hitting the wall, or bonking. Fortunately I was incentivized to complete the race by my Uncle Brian running past me whilst mentioning our wager, in a most encouraging way. At mile 24 I was fully done in, however the wager was mentioned again and I completed the race then decided the best way to recover was to quickly merge with the road and take some fluid in via a needle. I won the bets, finished in 3hr 40 mins and had a great story to tell about how age and wisdom doesn’t always beat youth and inexperience.

Ron and Brian probably have a better story on how they motivated me to do a pretty decent time for my first (and only) marathon, however I prefer my moral of the story than theirs.

These days I am hardly likely to drive 26.2 miles, let alone run it. Actually, just occurred to me that Milers, Marathons, Ironman events and the US are the only places that still use the Imperial system. Not sure why running 26.2 miles sounds better than running 42.16481 kilometers, but it does. If, back in the day, someone had talked about Roger Bannister running a sub 4 minute 1.60934 kilometer race the reaction most likely would have been “Can’t he run the full 2k?”. Funny thing was when John Walker (another amazing kiwi) was the first person to run 100 sub 4 minute miles kids in NZ probably didn’t really know how far a mile was, apart from the fact it was 4 and a bit times around a 400 meter track J

Time to get back on track.

They say with age comes wisdom, but that doesn’t mean you have to implement that wisdom, or if you even are capable of utilizing it J As I wander through my very very late 30’s (read mid 40’s) I sometimes wonder why, with all the knowledge and wisdom that I have accrued over the years, I don’t act a little smarter and run a more cautious race. Sure, sometimes I learn from my mistakes (usually after I have made them at least twice) but let’s face it, it’s much more fun to learn from mistakes than to not make any at all. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take – pretty sure Mr Gretzky was talking about hockey and not tequila – but the underlying meaning remains the same.

So I want you all to vow, here and now, that you will continue to mess up, make mistakes, ski the black runs on blue run ability and give life a chance to teach you a lesson. Just because we are maturing doesn’t mean we always have to be mature. Think back to the kid that you used to be, think back on how self confident you were and how you could take on the world. Then combine that kids attitude with the recognition that bones take longer to mend and hangovers take longer to recover from and find a perfect balance – then move the fulcrum a little to the ‘crap this is going to hurt’ side. It is a fun place to live J

As always the views expressed here are purely mine however any person who still owes me beer should contact me directly. The author is in no way liable if you ski into a tree, take 100 shots and miss them all or actually enjoy reading this blog.

So work hard, play hard and earn your inspiration

Happy Poets Day