Somehow I’ve managed to get old enough to accumulate a large number of old injuries to torment me. I don’t know exactly when this happened.
I’ve played sports all my life. I’ve worked out for most of that.
When I was younger I played everything flat out. I never got hurt and I never slowed down. By high school I occasionally got hurt, but I’d always heal fast.
By college I had at least one injury that was serious and plagued me for years. I played hurt. I was invincible, unstoppable, slightly damaged.
After college I developed a few more chronic injuries. I’d do my exercises and try to put them back right. Over time they’d get better.
By the time I moved to Memphis I was mostly healthy again, but there wasn’t much left of my 20s. I played soccer and lifted weights. Everything was good for awhile.
I was fast. I was still young. I was still playing flat out, hurling myself at my opponents.
Then I got hurt. I got hurt bad. After surgery, rehab, and 2 missed seasons I was on the field again. But I was never 100 percent after that.
And then I got hurt again. More surgery. The ER nurses were getting to know me on a first name basis. My surgeon was actually asking me out to have a beer from time to time.
My weightlifting workouts went from being all about building beach muscles for the babes to building support muscles for all the injuries and pain.
I’ve reached the point where I go to the gym because I have to, not because I want to. I actually took a job once that paid less than a better offer I had, simply because that company had a gym onsite. I considered it a health benefit, and one which I absolutely had to have.
When I miss workouts, and I have to admit that I haven’t been regular at the gym in a year, my body starts to complain. It complains loudly at times.
One day you’re going to see me as an old man, with white hair, in a wheelchair, in your gym, lifting weights and sweating. I won’t be there to build beach muscles. I’ll be there because I have to be.
There’s a saying about not finishing your life with a shiny, beautiful body, but instead careening across the finish line, a shattered wreck who lived life to its’ fullest. I can’t say I’ve had the most exciting life, but I’ve got that shattered wreck at the finish part covered.
Now if I can just make it to the finish before the wheels fall off
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