Approach the apparatus
Just watched a fuckton of Olympics over the weekend, y’all, and godaMIGHTY is that a lot of beach volleyball. And we’re still only on, like, the quarterfinals or some shit.
Watching the various sprint races, though (when they took a break from broadcasting the between-games toweling-off of the beach volleyball players) (really), I recalled my own sad and horrible track career, back in 7th and 8th grades, when if you were on the basketball team (which I was, nominally, because if you were cool you had to be on the bball team, even if you sucked, which I did, emphatically, my only strength being a supersweet move wherein I hooked the ankle of whomever I was supposed to be defending and often tripped them & sent them sprawling onto the floor but never once got called for it), you had to “run” “track” in the offseason.
Wow, was that a load of mis’ry to carry. The only thing worse, athletic-endeavor-wise, was that dreadful year I spent playing soccer in third grade.
Track. Holy flaming Shatner-and-asparagus canapés, y’all.
I am short, and s l o o o o o w, and hate competitions (particularly of things I’m bad at), and I couldn’t be arsed to get the proper equipment (running shoes) so I just wore my red Reebok hi-tops, and I hated running, and it was always BALLS FREEZING and sleety on track meet days especially – a whole goddamn Saturday blown, being physically stressed and miserable and antsy and full of dread, and because I was a “miler,” i.e. “one of the slowest people, so we’ll just stick you in the mile – the last race of the meet, natch – for the participant points,” I never got to relax. My memories may have blurred some over the years (mercy!) but I’m pretty sure my best-ever mile time from this Dark Chapter of my life was a 7:20.
These days, I run a couple times a week as part of my regular exercise program (for the runner’s high and the calorie torch) – still very slowly but without the tangy taste of fear and failure in my mouth, which makes all the difference.
But I do wonder, in re: the sprinters, how fast I could run the 100 meters. The ladies at the Olympics do it in about 10.5 seconds. Could I do it in 30? If it were just the once, and I did some training beforehand? I honestly don’t know. Could you?
Watching the various sprint races, though (when they took a break from broadcasting the between-games toweling-off of the beach volleyball players) (really), I recalled my own sad and horrible track career, back in 7th and 8th grades, when if you were on the basketball team (which I was, nominally, because if you were cool you had to be on the bball team, even if you sucked, which I did, emphatically, my only strength being a supersweet move wherein I hooked the ankle of whomever I was supposed to be defending and often tripped them & sent them sprawling onto the floor but never once got called for it), you had to “run” “track” in the offseason.
Wow, was that a load of mis’ry to carry. The only thing worse, athletic-endeavor-wise, was that dreadful year I spent playing soccer in third grade.
Track. Holy flaming Shatner-and-asparagus canapés, y’all.
I am short, and s l o o o o o w, and hate competitions (particularly of things I’m bad at), and I couldn’t be arsed to get the proper equipment (running shoes) so I just wore my red Reebok hi-tops, and I hated running, and it was always BALLS FREEZING and sleety on track meet days especially – a whole goddamn Saturday blown, being physically stressed and miserable and antsy and full of dread, and because I was a “miler,” i.e. “one of the slowest people, so we’ll just stick you in the mile – the last race of the meet, natch – for the participant points,” I never got to relax. My memories may have blurred some over the years (mercy!) but I’m pretty sure my best-ever mile time from this Dark Chapter of my life was a 7:20.
These days, I run a couple times a week as part of my regular exercise program (for the runner’s high and the calorie torch) – still very slowly but without the tangy taste of fear and failure in my mouth, which makes all the difference.
But I do wonder, in re: the sprinters, how fast I could run the 100 meters. The ladies at the Olympics do it in about 10.5 seconds. Could I do it in 30? If it were just the once, and I did some training beforehand? I honestly don’t know. Could you?
Labels: balls o'clock a.m., demoralizing confessions, deportivo, the horror ... the horror
posted by Gleemonex at 11:13 AM
1 Comments:
"Holy flaming Shatner-and-asparagus canapés, y’all."
AND NOW I JUST DIED. You are never not making me laugh, even via my time machine where I just read this in 2008.
Post a Comment
<< Home