The last 4 weeks have been a whirlwind and I'm just starting to get my feet back on the ground. I've been to Lake Placid (NY), Calgary (Alberta), back to Lake Placid, and now to California. I've racked up 9,088 sky miles, my wife, Ashley, has graduated from Air Force Commissioned Officers Training, we've sold our house, and moved (Ashley drove cross country) from the great state of Kentucky to California where we're living in temporary housing out of suitcases until we can find a rental home and get all our household goods out of storage. On top of all that I've been managing a minor training injury I got doing physical testing in Calgary.
We see athletes get injured all the time on TV. The football game stops and someone gets carried off by a couple of the linemen (it's always linemen right?). That player just disappears for the rest of the game. We don't see them because they're in the back getting X-rays or an MRI or whatever. Later in the game the camera might show them on the sidelines with crutches. We get some brief info on the injury and they disappear again. They might be gone for a game or two and then one day they're magically back, just like new. We see this disappearing and reappearing act all the time and unless that particular player is on our fantasy team we don't think anything of it. The show must go on, as they say. But what's it like to be that athlete? What's it like to 'dissappear' suddenly and have the game go on without you?
It sucks!
For most of the guys I've competed with, myself included, it's extremely depressing at first. You've worked your butt off for weeks, months, maybe years to get where you are and then in an instant you're out and whoever was waiting there to take your place (and there is always somebody) gets their chance. Imagine if you took a sick day from your job and when you came back they had already given your job to someone else. It happens that quick. As soon as I strained my groin in Calgary I thought, "That's it. My season is over. I've missed my shot at the Olympics."
Then almost inevitably the next thought is, "Why me? I did everything right. I worked hard. Why did this have to happen to me?" One of the worst parts about getting injured is that, often, it wasn't something that you did 'wrong' that caused the injury. It's one thing for an athlete to be replaced because they made too many mistakes or because their performance wasn't good enough. We can understand that, we know the expectation is perfection. But injuries happen unexpectedly and to everyone. It's part of sport. What we're left with then as athletes is the struggle to reconcile how we did everything, EVERYTHING, within our power the right way but somehow it still turned out bad and we're still out of the game.
It's easy to revel in that thought and to give up on yourself; to feel like a victim. You see that at lower levels of sport, in high school and even in college. Athletes suffer injuries and just never come back. At the national team level though something is different. We have too much desire to be defeated very long. Deep down inside we all believe that we can and we will achieve greatness. There truly is no quit inside a Team USA athlete. I've seen that in every American athlete I've met so far. We have the will to win down to our bones.
What happens next is the best part. Without fail, we athletes take that pain of defeat, that feeling of suffering and failure and we turn it in on itself. We use that emotion and memory not to create our demise but to fuel the fire inside and ignite the spark which will drive us back to where we were. An athlete returning from injury is the hardest working athlete on the team because failure is fresh in his mind. He believes that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain and he has a chip on his shoulder. He wants to prove those wrong who said we couldn't return or hoped that he wouldn't return. He wants to prove those right who had faith and knew that he could return and that he would return. Sore becomes irrelevant to him, fatigue is not an option, weak is dead and gone because he has tasted defeat and he damn sure isn't going back for seconds.
We see athletes get injured all the time on TV. The football game stops and someone gets carried off by a couple of the linemen (it's always linemen right?). That player just disappears for the rest of the game. We don't see them because they're in the back getting X-rays or an MRI or whatever. Later in the game the camera might show them on the sidelines with crutches. We get some brief info on the injury and they disappear again. They might be gone for a game or two and then one day they're magically back, just like new. We see this disappearing and reappearing act all the time and unless that particular player is on our fantasy team we don't think anything of it. The show must go on, as they say. But what's it like to be that athlete? What's it like to 'dissappear' suddenly and have the game go on without you?
It sucks!
For most of the guys I've competed with, myself included, it's extremely depressing at first. You've worked your butt off for weeks, months, maybe years to get where you are and then in an instant you're out and whoever was waiting there to take your place (and there is always somebody) gets their chance. Imagine if you took a sick day from your job and when you came back they had already given your job to someone else. It happens that quick. As soon as I strained my groin in Calgary I thought, "That's it. My season is over. I've missed my shot at the Olympics."
Then almost inevitably the next thought is, "Why me? I did everything right. I worked hard. Why did this have to happen to me?" One of the worst parts about getting injured is that, often, it wasn't something that you did 'wrong' that caused the injury. It's one thing for an athlete to be replaced because they made too many mistakes or because their performance wasn't good enough. We can understand that, we know the expectation is perfection. But injuries happen unexpectedly and to everyone. It's part of sport. What we're left with then as athletes is the struggle to reconcile how we did everything, EVERYTHING, within our power the right way but somehow it still turned out bad and we're still out of the game.
It's easy to revel in that thought and to give up on yourself; to feel like a victim. You see that at lower levels of sport, in high school and even in college. Athletes suffer injuries and just never come back. At the national team level though something is different. We have too much desire to be defeated very long. Deep down inside we all believe that we can and we will achieve greatness. There truly is no quit inside a Team USA athlete. I've seen that in every American athlete I've met so far. We have the will to win down to our bones.
What happens next is the best part. Without fail, we athletes take that pain of defeat, that feeling of suffering and failure and we turn it in on itself. We use that emotion and memory not to create our demise but to fuel the fire inside and ignite the spark which will drive us back to where we were. An athlete returning from injury is the hardest working athlete on the team because failure is fresh in his mind. He believes that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain and he has a chip on his shoulder. He wants to prove those wrong who said we couldn't return or hoped that he wouldn't return. He wants to prove those right who had faith and knew that he could return and that he would return. Sore becomes irrelevant to him, fatigue is not an option, weak is dead and gone because he has tasted defeat and he damn sure isn't going back for seconds.
