Are You Flirting With Quitting Your Sport?

How I found a way to renew my vows with the sports I love.

I’m no quitter. I have an imaginary vision of me in some ultra race, dragging my naked body across a fallen barbed-wire fence in the middle of some field trying to get to the finish line. I have a saying that I live by that goes with this image - “I’d rather bleed out than quit.”

So it struck me as alarming when back in January, way before Covid, that I openly flirted with quitting it all.

I was running injured - again. Heading into the Boston Marathon hopelessly unable to put in the miles. Dreading another triathlon race season with shitty bike splits I just couldn’t seem to improve on. There was no joy. There was no meaning. I was done.

Once Covid swooped in I sensed I was not alone. Athletes wrangling with the loss of, for many, one of the few things they actually felt a sense of control over in their busy, unpredictable lives.

No joy from the reward of racing. No meaning in a PB. A future in sport so uncertain we could no longer see how we fit in. Beginning to wonder why we got so swept up in competition, seduced by mediocre swag and swindled by astronomical race fees. What were we thinking anyway?

For me, Covid was a quiet rescue. It gave me exactly what I needed at that moment - a way out.

I was free! I could quit without being a quitter. I delightfully deleted a month of planned workouts in Training Peaks and felt the first pangs of excitement looking at an empty calendar month. I didn’t have to do any of it … or, I paused, … did it mean instead that the possibilities were endless! I could do MORE of it, or different of it, or I could do it backwards or I could turn the whole thing upside down.

What I discovered was not that I wanted to quit sport, I just wanted to quit what wasn’t working. I cycled more miles this summer - free, out in the benchlands and in the mountains and along deserted country roads, than I had ever done before - on a whim! I ran less, I swam when the lakes were calling me, I ate way too many cherries. I fell in love again.

I let it go and it came back to me. I now I have no doubt why I do it - because I love to do it. It feels good whether it’s in front of thousands of people or no one. Falling into a rhythmic trance when you hit that “pocket” when running. Getting chewed up and spit out on some monster climbs during your random bike trek, having a lake all to yourself when its raining. It just feels good.

So I have renewed my vows with the sports I love, and they have reciprocated by loving me right back. And despite my moment of weakness, lusting for a life of leisure, I have even gotten stronger, faster, and happier - and isn’t that an edge when the gun finally goes off!

So go out there and get your love on! It’s been waiting for you.