The Accidental Athlete

I started life as the kid who runs away when the ball comes toward her. Who can’t learn to swim because she doesn’t like to get her face wet (but goes to the pool anyway because BOYS are there). Who didn’t learn to ride a bike until she was nine years old, and then rode it infrequently. Who was always chosen last in gym class – or rather, was reluctantly accepted when there was no one else to choose. After all, no self-respecting and victory-hopeful captain wants the kid who thinks the baseball is her enemy and never manages to touch a racket to a badminton birdie.

With that kind of history, how did I become a senior citizen athlete? Running in 5Ks and even a half-marathon (always coming in last, but finishing every time), biking in long group rides, and now ice skating. Again.

Since you asked, I’ll tell you.

Biking and running started as practical pursuits. During times when I didn’t own a car, either from necessity or by choice, the bicycle became my main mode of transportation, then morphed into a recreational sport a few years ago when I joined a local bike club.

I started running in 1984 – on October 31, to be exact. I know the date because it was the day after I quit smoking. Or rather, the day after the last time I quit smoking. I had quit a few other times but always started again. This time I was quitting with the help of a smoking cessation clinic and wanted it to take, so decided to start running in order to have a new healthy habit that would be jeopardized if I returned to the old unhealthy one.

Although maybe running isn’t quite the right word for what I did that first day. I couldn’t even make it around the block. My friend who lived in the apartment building next to ours said she heard someone wheezing beneath her window that morning, and was amazed when she looked outside and saw it was me laboring to get to the corner. Persistence paid off, however. Eventually I could run for a whole block, then two or three, then a half-mile … etc., etc., etc., to quote the king And participating in 5k events, complements of my employer who sponsored staff teams, also helped the habit replacement theory become reality.

So. Two practical sports, right?

Then there’s ice skating. Once upon a time, in parts of what is now Europe, skating was a way to get from place to place along a frozen river or lake. Now it’s a way to go around and around and around and around an indoor rink. In other words, to go nowhere, while wearing heavy boots connected to a thin middle-of-the-foot blade and attempting to stay balanced on a cold, wet, slippery surface. This was not an activity that appealed to me, and definitely not practical. So how did it become a major hobby? Actually pretty much of an obsession?

Since you asked, I’ll tell you.

It started the weekend my then six-year-old daughter attended her first (and last) Brownie Scout meeting at another’s Scout’s home and left with a pair of ice skates. The host mother had taken one look at my tiny-for-her-age kid, dived into the closet to find the skates her own kid had recently outgrown, and offered them to mine. Which is as much as I know about that meeting, since all I heard afterwards were whenarewegoingskating and canwegotoday and pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!

Ignoring her didn’t work. Promising we’d go “someday” didn’t work. She was relentless. So the next afternoon found us at the local rink, accompanied by her dad and our neighbor and her son. Dad and neighbor both told me it would be OK, they knew how to skate and would help me.

Notice I wasn’t worried about whether my six-year-old would be OK, I was only worried about me.

And I was right to be worried. Because the minute we all set rental blades to ice, it became clear that neither dad nor neighbor could help anyone. They could barely hold themselves up, but could skate just enough to get from point A to point B and leave me in the dust, or rather the ice vapor. Meanwhile our kids had attacked the ice with innocent, if totally unwarranted, confidence. So there I was, all alone. Just me and the wall.

Ah yes, the wall. You see them at every public skating session, the wall skaters. Clinging desperately to the ledge that holds up the Plexiglas. Mincing carefully along at the speed of a snail. Looking down the whole time to make sure their feet are in constant contact with the ice. Hooray for the wall.

Muttering to myself about the ingratitude of daughters who first badger their mothers into attempting this insane sport and then abandon them, and about the duplicity of husbands and friends who make promises they can’t keep, I managed, with the help of the wall, to get around the near end of the rink, inch by terrifying inch, and to the other end.

Almost.

Because all of a sudden there was no wall. Or rather, the wall was no longer available. Seems some treacherous rink worker had decided to take the hockey teams’ pictures during that particular Sunday public session, and had used a line of orange plastic cones to demarcate a “no skating” zone. And the wall, my lifeline, my savior, my only hope for survival, was in that zone.

Now comes one of the defining moments of my life. How was I going to get off the ice and back to the relative safety of the lobby? My choices were: (a) to wait until husband or friend came by and insist they hold my hand and lead me to the other side of the rink and to the door; (b) get down on all fours and crawl across the ice; (c) stay right where I was for the rest of the public session, another 90 minutes or so, and THEN crawl away; (d) bawl like a baby; or (e) let go of the wall and skate to the other side.

(a) didn’t sound like a very good idea since either of them trying to lead me would probably end with both of us lying on the ice in a tangled heap of bruises and potentially broken bones. (b) didn’t seem a much safer alternative, given the crowd of skaters whizzing by who would be likely to trip over me, or worse, on me. (c) and (d) would only forestall the inevitable. After all, I had to get to other side … someday.

Which left (e). Somehow I gathered up enough courage to remove my hand from that blasted wall and very-carefully-oh-so-slowly-omigod-I’m-actually-doing-it get across the ice, past the cones and the hockey team, and back to the wall on the opposite side. Just me, by myself.

I made it! In one piece!! Without the wall!!! I do believe in miracles, I do, I do, I do.

There was actually one more alternative. (f) I could have asked a skating guard for help. But thank goodness (f) never crossed my mind, because I credit that thousand-mile wall-less trip across the rink, and the surprisingly exhilarating feeling of accomplishment that it engendered, with the decision to register both my daughter and myself for skating classes starting the next week. And in no time flat, we were hooked. For the next several years we took more classes as well as private lessons, performed in local ice shows, and skated in competitions as soloists and on precision teams. And for a couple of those years figure skating, when the above-mentioned dad also became a serious student of the sport, was a total family hobby.

When my daughter reached adolescence her interest in skating withered, and by then husband had also stopped hitting the ice on a regular basis. I kept at it for another year or so, then quit as well. One major reason was money. I just couldn’t afford to keep practicing this relatively expensive sport. Never had been able to afford it actually, just did it anyway. Because it became, as I might have mentioned above, an obsession.

As obsessions go, I suppose this one was relatively healthy and constructive. Daughter, who is now four years older than I was on that history-making Sunday afternoon, says that growing up on ice was one of the better influences in her life. And for me, the accidental athlete, learning one sport at what I thought of then as an advanced age (mid-thirties? riiiiight!) gave me the impetus to try others. (Nothing involving balls, though. Let’s keep some perspective here.)

In the 20-plus years since I stopped skating, there have been many moments when I missed it intensely and thought about starting again, but with money or time concerns, or more urgent priorities (like taking classes to complete my bachelor’s degree), it didn’t seem like the right time. Someday, I’d say. One of these days.

So how did “one of these days” become here and now? Since you asked, I’ll tell you.

Next week.

-30-