Lucky You
Three months ago I was being rolled into surgery. The nurse asked if I had any anxiety about the anesthesia as he introduced me to the kind-eyed anesthesiologist.
I told him there was no point in being anxious about it. I wouldn’t have a clue if I didn’t wake from this surgery anyway.
I stared at those lights as my surgeon entered the room and I slid from the ambulatory bed to the surgical table.
“She’s wearing panties!” the male nurse yells. “Why do women always wear panties into the OR?”
I was embarrased but in good spirits as I snapped back, “she told me I could wear these, they’re made of paper damn it, and she said you would cut them off!”
“Yea, we’ll cut them off.” He says.
“So what’s the problem!?” I ask amused.
“It’s just that every woman does it.” He says with a smile. And I lay back on the hard cold table and fade to black.
When I awoke, back in my room in recovery I could feel my awareness returning back to my body, like how you come back to the present after a deep savasana at the end of a yoga practice.
I was there alone, and so my mind had nothing but time and space to wander. My surgeon entered the room.
Post Op instructions…6 weeks of Pelvic Rest.
Pelvic Rest? I asked him what that was.
He gave me this…”we’re both adults, you know what I’m saying” kind of look. He wished me a good night and left me to recover.
Recover, I thought. I’ll recover, but will my athletic career? It’s December and I’m having surgery. I hadn’t been able to train consistently because of my condition. I fish my iphone out of my tote bag and open the calendar.
Six weeks puts me at late January. A late January start date means five months until the Olympic Trials.
Is that enough time?
No, it’s not five months. It’s FOUR months because I have to chase qualifying marks.
Is four months enough time for me to go from zero to 11.15 in the 100, and 6.80 in the long jump?
Is it doable?
I exhale, sinking deeper into my pillow. I hate hospitals, but this one-UC Memorial felt more alive, than sterile. I’m nauseous, have a headache, and the weight of an Olympic Year sat heavy on my chest. Just hours before that I actually was ready to give up the dream for my health. Now, post-surgery, I’m trying to measure whether or not the mission is impossible.
What a difference several hours can make.
Which I think we’re all experiencing now in regards to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The virus situtation was evolving as I was grieving the loss of an indoor season and ultimately a chance to return to an Indoor World Championship and win what would be my second gold medal, and to actually get that gold medal and hold it in my hands unlike my first time where Tatyana Kotova’s documented doping robbed me of that moment then.
I wanted that before I go.
There’s not much I feel I have to do in my sport, but there’s a couple things I want to do, you know? That was one of them.
Then Nanjing was Postponed.
I remember calling a few people close to me and saying, “I still might get to do one more indoor before I go! And my body will be totally healed by then too!”
Mid-February is when Chuck and I had a “Come-to-Jesus” talk.
“Are you seriously trying to do this thing or nah?” He asks.
“I don’t know if it can even be done, I’ve lost so much time.”
“Well decide. If you want to blow the year and let your body heal. Cool. That’s the plan. If you want to go hard and see if you can do this thing. Cool. That’s the plan. But you have to decide. You get out there every day and your uncertainty is holding you back some, not by much- but it’s enough. And every little bit is going to matter. So decide.”
And so I decided. And getting back became a full-time, around-the-clock job. And my body changed, and my work capacity improved, and times were dropping, and my jumps were getting farther…
and then all my meets were cancelled.
Not just mine, but you know, everybody’s. I’m looking at the calendar, my qualification window is going to be smaller now.
We increased the intensity of the training sessions, fasted cardio, timed-mile runs, more jumps in one session than I’ve ever done. Block starts every day…
The urgency palpable.
The track gets locked.
The gym shut its doors.
The county ordered to shelter-in-place.
I’m looking at the calendar, my qualification window is going to be smaller now.
We rewrite my lifting program relying heavily on heavy medicine balls.
We scout tracks, search for pits.
Canada pulls their team…
Australia says be ready for 2021…
IOC says give us four weeks…
Dick Pound says it will be postponed…
IOC says that’s premature…
and then says twenty-four hours later the Olympics will be postponed until 2021.
What a difference several hours can make.
And then something peculiar happened. Online the conversation about postponing the Olympics from the athlete’s vantage point shifted from it being unfair due to lack of doping control, access to training facilities, inability to qualify…
to…
age.
“Can you hang on?” Several people have asked me via direct message. As if I’ve got one foot in the grave already. (I just snatched that foot back out of the grave damn it.)
But I was reminded of something I overheard after a yoga class. One student was jokingly complaining to another about aging.
And the other said, “yea. if you’re lucky.”
And it fell silent as the other paused to gather the meaning.
Getting older, only happens for those alive to do so.
And as common as it is for sponsors and fans alike to want to start ushering you toward the exit once you turn 31…
it is a privilege to be 34, still elite, still training, still pursuing goals and dreams. Because the truth of the matter is…
Being in my twenties didn’t guarantee me a spot on Team USA either
My youthfulness wasn’t the key to my consistency. If anything it was the cause of my inconsistency.
If and when any of us step back onto the track it’s because we did the work required to get there. None of us knows if that work is sufficient enough to win medals, hell, we find that out when y’all do. In the moment.
And so, I’ll be honest, I did have a loose retirement plan- well not really a plan but an idea…That I now will reassess.
Delaying the Olympic Games by a year was absolutely the right thing to do, in the spirit of fairness, athletes’ mental health, but especially for global health.
As athletes we have complicated relationships with time.
Being out of it. Needing or wanting more of it.
Trying to shed it.
Trying to increase it.
Trying to freeze it.
And we really aren’t all that successful manipulating it to our will are we? And maybe this pandemic has made everything about sports participation murky and complicated and difficult…
If you’re lucky.
Because thousands and thousands of our fellow global citizens have contracted this disease. Hundreds upon hundreds have died.
Figuring out how to hang around for a potential windfall of global championships in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024…
Is going to be difficult for a lot of coaches, and athletes.
Because we’ll be older.
If we’re lucky.
Blogger’s Note: Aging is not the death sentence we treat it as in sport. Growing up, growing wiser, is a privilege. Maturity on the field of play is an advantage. Our ideas, our egos, and expectations about how we think we should compare to others, or comparing ourselves to versions of ourselves long gone contributes to how we feel about ourselves as we age. And often, can lead to other problems as we dishonor and refuse to acknowledge ourselves as who we are right now. It isn’t an easy space to hold, as I took a 65% reduction AFTER winning a medal because I was getting older. I let that reality inform my perception of myself. But choose your fight, I assure you pushing back against the aging process is a losing one. Instead, train the body you have. And that means everything might change about your program, your fuel plan, your sleep schedule, your recovery time. Honor yourself and your journey by reacting and adapting to that, not the calendar and most definitely not external expectations placed on you because of your age.
Because you will age.
If you’re lucky.