Set goals to release your inner athlete

By Susan Dowse

Every January, after the holiday season chocolate-induced haze clears, I find myself thinking about fitness resolutions. I hold an impromptu AGM with myself, usually over teeth brushing, to ponder my options. Eventually, a series of fitness-related goals emerge.

This year, it’s doing a leg of an ultra-marathon, completing the P90X2 home workout program, and three days a week of weightlifting. Oh, and eat more fish. Then there’s my recurring goal. The one where I hope, against all odds and precedent, that this will be the year of the unassisted pull-up. Goals like these keep me focused. They set a course for another year of breathtaking, sweeping — and completely imaginary — personal sports glory. Having personal fitness goals releases the inner athlete, the competitor. They put the sport back in our, well, sports. We regular Joes need that. What we lack in performance clauses and the lure of the Wheaties box endorsement we make up for in the list of promises we make to ourselves. That list of promises is like cranking up Eye of the Tiger and announcing “Game on!” Do we get to call ourselves athletes, us coachless everyday hacks? I vote a resounding yes.

With Olympians and champions inspiring us from the headlines, sometimes it’s easier to see what we are not. We are not elite. We don’t have a stadium of adoring fans (unless you count our partners and kids, and even they sometimes think we’re a little nuts). We don’t win races. But here’s the thing. We keep showing up and getting in the way.

You do an Ironman. You win an Olympic medal. You compete for the Stanley Cup. It’s clear you are an athlete. But you run a personal best 10K? Let’s declare you an athlete, too. Actually, you run your worst 10K. You run 1K. You fall down. It doesn’t matter.  You do burpees and squats in your basement every morning. You are an athlete. You play basketball in a rec league. Athlete. You play darts with your buddies at the pub every Friday. Uh, let’s not push it. You decide — inspired by the upcoming Summer Olympics — to finally take up trampolining. You, my friend, are in. I checked with the judges; bum wars count.

Without going all Webster, the key to being an athlete is the regular practice of physical activity and striving to improve. Sticking your triple-flip dismount from the tramp is not required. You simply pick your activity, and then you self-declare. 

Ask around what drives the everyday athlete, and the answers are many. “Endorphins. I want to look good on the beach. If the apocalypse hit, I want to know I could run all night through the forest to save my family. I am done with sloth and the nagging sense of regret. Wow, look, my pants fit.” Frankly, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It just matters that it’s there.

I met a woman years ago at a triathlon. She was 74. I knew this from the number painted on her calf. She side-stroked the open-water swim wearing a flower-patterned rubber swim cap. She rode a fat-tired mountain bike along the highway. She ran/walked the 10K wearing a sun bonnet with a chin strap. She came in last. But I’ve rarely seen such adoring fans as when she crossed the finished line. She was like Paul McCartney trying to get through Heathrow Airport. After the race, I approached her and told her what an inspiration she was. When I asked how long she’d being doing triathlons, she said, “A few years now. It started when I learned how to swim when I was 67.” Tell me this woman is not an athlete.

In the end, being an athlete is a personal mindset that’s up for the choosing. Your goal doesn’t have to be a triathlon or making the local Scottish log-tossing finals. But you have to commit to something. Then comes the fun part: you get to follow through.

So choose a sport, an activity or a bunch of them. Grab your bike. Your running shoes. Some dumbbells. Whatever. Then set some goals. Get wild with them. Challenge yourself to improve, even just a little, every day. Once you do that, your own personal sports competition has begun. Order a team track suit. Prepare for random drug testing. Then limber up and settle into the starter blocks.
Competitors, on your marks . . .

Susan Dowse is a Calgary writer and fitness junkie.

January/February 2012