Thursday Thoughts ~~ Training?

“What are you training for?”  I was asked that recently.  Turns out it’s a pretty good and interesting question.

The overwhelming majority of us are amateur athletes.  We pursue athletics as a recreation, a hobby, a pastime.  We have jobs and occupations which are primary in our lives.  We pursue some field of athletics for the pure love of it, or for the challenge and joy of competition.  But we don’t get paid for it.  We don’t have to do it.  So why bother?

In my own case, I haven’t entered a serious event in the last year.  So what am I training for?  For the last year my training has been on “autopilot.”  I have been training from the habit of training.  I was doing so because I knew that there would be an event or challenge in my future.  I just had not defined a specific goal. 

This past year has been instructive.  For many years, I’ve had very well defined, tightly focused training goals.  I needed a break.  I needed to reassess who I was, and what I was training for.  In short, I needed to refresh, clear my head, and define some new and different goals.  But that hasn’t stopped me from training.  I train because it is a large part of who I am.

I am in the process of forming some goals for next year.  By that I mean, I am looking for a few, very specific, well defined events to aim at.  When I have decided on those events, I’ll have a short answer to that first question.  I will be able to say,  “I’m training for such-and-such.”

There is a larger meaning to the question.  It can be read as,  “Why are you training?”  or even as,  “Why would you even bother to set goals, pick events, and go through the hassle, pain, and stress of training for them?”

The surface answer to that would be,  “Because it makes me happy.”  I enjoy the process of planning training, of charting progress, of selecting short term, intermediate, and long term goals.  I am greatly rewarded by achieving those big goals.  And there are big benefits that accrue from the process.  I relish the feeling of coming into “condition.”  I like being healthy, and strong, and having good endurance.  I get a kick out of walking with a spring in my step.  Perversely, I enjoy the feeling of arising in the morning, feeling stiff and a little sore, as a result of recent hard training efforts.  I relish the activity of working toward an achievement, and then standing at the finish, goal met.

I will have some very well defined training goals and events to work for in 2011.  The training for these events will begin soon, in the Autumn of 2010.  There may be finish lines and medals involved.  There may not.  But there definitely will be ironclad times, places, and accomplishments.  That, after all is what a goal is.  It’s a dream with a deadline on it.

But, “What are you training for?”  I think the real answer is,  “I’m training for my life.”