Flying Poodles

Sports and Agility

I was thinking about my previous sports experience related to my experiences in agility.

Four years on my high school’s swim team as a diver and butterfly swimmer taught me that persistence matters–often as much as skill (I occasionally won, even though I was terribly slow–when everyone else got disqualified, as the rules of swimming butterfly were then pretty arcane). Diving taught me focus even when nervous and being watched…and to laugh off mistakes (because the alternative was to cry in public, which was far worse).

Three years on my college’s swim team as a diver and butterfly swimmer taught me that training can only take you so far if you lack talent,but that a better coach DOES make a difference. And that being part of a team effort is worth being the slowest, least skilled member of that team.

Five years of running with the Greater Boston Track Club taught me that I have reservoirs of stamina and pain tolerance that many others lack, including the ability to run 5 kilometers on a broken foot–another instance where persistence mattered, as I ended up ranked tenth in New England in the 5K cross country… because everyone else got lost, and I didn’t.

Fifteen years of childraising without doing any sports at all, really, taught me that I missed sports but that sometimes life comes first.

SCUBA diving taught me that sometimes leisurely participation is more important than a competitive goal, and that saving your oxygen can matter later, when you get to swim with a humpback whale after everyone else has gone to the surface.

Seven years of weight and cardio training taught me that anyone can improve; I can sustain a 7 min/mile sprint now, for 30 seconds at a time–when I started, I could barely manage an 11 min/mile pace. And I can easily lift a fifty pound dog.

My husband’s five years of post-cancer-diagnosis bike riding–he went from overweight couch potato to being so fit that he rode cross-country (3400 miles) in 26 days–taught me that small goals add up.