Last night I overheard my wife “complaining” to her friend about something that happened last week. We had just worked out at the gym and she dropped me off for a 10km run on the Baden Powell from Lilhoette Road to Deep Cove. This run isn’t your normal 10km as it’s very undulating and is extremely technical. She was going to pick up her friend and drive to Deep Cove and hike to the lookout. Maybe I’d see her along the way…
No doubt Usain Bolt is fast, but is he a Natural Athlete?
Now why exactly was she “complaining”? Well it wasn’t really complaining but maybe a tiny bit of disgust that her husband who was hit by a car 6 months ago, who took nearly 4 months off of any sort of training, could up and run 10km without stopping immediately after a super-intense gym workout on a technically demanding trail like the Baden Powell with little more than a granola bar in his belly. She mentioned to her friend on the phone that I was some sort of crazy natural athlete…
So what exactly is a natural athlete? I don’t really agree with the term, rather I think it’s something that is developed early on in child hood and is learned over many years. Personally, as a child I was always outside, always active and I loved gym and recess. I was always running around. As the years went on I played hockey and then got in to mountain biking. I didn’t actually start “running” until 2003, when I moved to Medicine Hat. At that time I couldn’t really run for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. Ask the Mad Hatters Group. I was at the back of the pack with the women who were there maybe a little more for the social aspect… But I worked at it and got better, to the point where I could run 10km in 40 minutes. Similarly, with mountain biking, I started “really” mountain biking in 1995. Gradually I got better, fitter and faster. I was probably an above average athlete in the mid 2000′s when things changed for me. I hired a personal trainer with an incredulous goal of wining a world mountain biking championship. It was in the following 18 months that I became a “natural athlete”.
The next 18 months of my life were hard core training, diet restrictions and lots of sweat. What was developed in those 18 months was a base of training that I still have yet to lose. This base is so large that I’m able to go out and run 10km without much thought. This base is so large that I can race a 36hr Adventure Race tomorrow if someone asked me too.
I’m not a “natural athlete”, rather I worked my ass off to train my body to be in a physical shape that others just might not actually truly comprehend. And because of that, they assume that I must have some “natural” skills, or I must have been born with it, because there’s no way they can see how what I do is possible. Well anything is possible, you just have to set your mind to it. I did, and that’s why I am who I am today. So the next time you want to call someone a “Natural Athlete”, or any other term, sit back and think for a minute, because most likely they put in the hard time, sweat and tears to become the person that they are and they probably deserve a little more credit than just being naturally gifted.