Who's In?

I really don't approve of athletes taking drugs. It's cheating. It throws the whole thing into disarray and chaos and removes the beauty.

But I do think it's better to finally fess up, even if it takes a while, than to persist in bug-eyed denial. Sometimes the lessons from one who's erred or fallen can be stronger than all the lecturing in the world from the virtuous.

Hopefully, Marion Jones will say succinctly, it just isn't worth it. 

Marion Jones said she was sorry. And that she had behaved stupidly and was ashamed. I almost like her even more now.

It is more than so many others in her shoes have done.

I really didn’t want to believe that she had artificial help in achieving her amazing athletic goals. I loved her apparent joy in the process and like everyone, her apparently genuinely nice persona. She was beautiful to watch compete and you knew, drugs or not, she trained wicked hard. Plus she had braces as an adult at the same time I did.

The waste of her career, and her genuine efforts, that came from that little extra edge she got from outside rather than inside herself, is tragic in the classical sense: Hero brought low by one fatal flaw.

Marion Jones in the spring prior to the contentious Olympics. (Sports Illustrated)

She takes full accountability herself, which I admire. But you can’t overlook the pressures on her. Not only from her coach or whomever, but from all of us as well, wanting her to win, wanting a superchampion, and the corporate world rewarding that mightily with cash.

There’s a tunnel-visioned aspect of elite competition which gives it a certain beauty but also a potentially inaccurate accounting of reality. I remember it from years striving toward world championships on the U.S. rowing team. I believe American rowing, at least back in the day, was clean. The most unspoken-of drug I ever witnessed any U.S. rowers take was Ex-Lax. But we had the single-mindedness of purpose, the deep desire, and a sense of the self’s virtue that comes with incredibly hard work toward a respected goal. If “supplements” had been dangled in front of any of us (and if (a big hypothetical if) there had been any significant money to be made by winning rowing competitions), would we have remained so pure, albeit irregular? You can always make an exception for yourself, it seems. I suspect these little things (and I would posit that given all the issues across the globe, these are little things) don’t seem a crime when up close and personal.

An unrelated radio story today on All Things Considered discussed a very similar tale in the world of business. It was much shadier to begin with, a guy making millions off of inflated stock trading. But the key thing was that the guy, Jordan Belfort, who spent 22 months in prison on fraudulent trading charges, said that in the thick of his greed being positively reinforced, he stopped seeing certain actions as wrong or criminal. Actions which now, and well before his trading days, he would have thought were completely unacceptable. He too, like Jones, is contrite.

We inheritors of the Puritan tradition love contrition, I think. It makes a good story (which Scorcese has optioned the rights to, incidentally, in Belfort‘s case). And good stories often contain redemption.

The redemption in Jones’s case will come from her acquiescence to be brought so low. Ron Rappaport wrote in the L.A. Times (good article; he wrote a book about her) that she has thrown out her chance to go on to be a respected spokesperson or even announcer for her sport or advocate for women’s sports generally. I disagree. Puritan proclivities aside, I think we (as in We, the People) are pretty good at forgiving in some cases. (Or am I just being cynical about the seriousness with which the country views doping, all lamentations about disappointing role models to the contrary? (Though ESPN’s Jemele Hill might say gullible rather than cynical.)) Especially in cases where a personally appealing individual is truly remorseful, we want to forgive. (I’m not sure people would re-embrace a fallen Barry Bonds as enthusiastically, for example.) I hope Marion does not disappear after her expected six month prison sentence, though about now I bet she would like to. I think she could still have a lot to offer. I am still rooting for her.

Just glossing over the silent gaps here, as usual, I wanted to bring attention to a nice blog I like to read.

It's called  Mile Markers, and seems to be affiliated with Runner's World. I don't know what that affiliation represents; it is very much a personal blog, as the tagline says, "Sharing the road with Kristin Armstrong."  

I don't know Kristin, but feel like I'd like to. She would fit well in my roster of sporty women I admire so much and am lucky to call friends. Another adult mom jock who needs to give her sport (in this case running) some time in her life to stay sane.

I was talking about this dynamic recently with my colleague Diann, also a runner. How we feel a bit crazy if deprived of exercise for awhile. It's not like a day without it is so bad but... it's like brushing your teeth. Sure, you can survive a day, a couple of days... a week without brushing your teeth. You're unlikely to die because of it. But you'll feel pretty crummy. And be unpleasant to be around! 

Anyway, nothing eye-opening in Mile Markers, no secrets to new road speed or racewinning techniques. Just another experience in the world related by someone who is funloving, spiritual (not overbearingly), dedicated and hard-working, open to the world and humble in her way of sharing it. It's just satisfying to read. Like drinking a really good cup of coffee or something--entirely pleasant, a pause for thought, fills a gap. In the process you feel you get to know the writer, though in truth I don't know much... she has kids, maybe three? Divorced it seems like? Lives in Austin maybe? Maybe Oregon? Works doing something where she travels and has a varied schedule...? Isn't it funny? But I like her. Maybe you will too. Why not visit?

The other reason to enter races is because they are so often linked to good causes. I have never looked into whether or not this is a particularly efficacious way of raising money, but it’s got to be more fun than cold calling and bulk mailing. It also raises awareness and makes a community and engenders good feeling for the race and everybody involved.

The organization that ran and benefited from the race I recently ran is worth giving a little space to here. It’s called Love Lane Therapeutic Riding. The therapy in question is for kids and young adults who have central nervous system disorders or injuries—cerebral palsy, head injury, autism, muscular dystrophy, Down’s syndrome and the like. By all accounts it has amazing results. Especially for kids who can’t walk at all or not well, who can finally get the essential rhythm of walking to their brain by means of the horse’s gait transferred through their own body. Elegantly simple, when you think of it. Through that mind-body connection, as well as skill mastery, self-discipline and fun, young people speak who hadn’t before, gain muscle tone where they’d had none or relaxation where they’d had too much, interact and emote appropriately when that’s been difficult.

It’s hard not to get a little choked up reading about it. Which is one thing sitting at your desk reading it online…. I was getting choked up at the starting line, when the organizers gave an extremely brief outline of who they were, and the father of the girl in whose memory the race was named spoke a few words about how Love Lane had meant so much to his daughter and family. I kept thinking, surely, weeping at the starting line is not advocated by many coaches…. But, we all seemed to hold it together enough to make it out of the starting gate. It was a small race, and many of the young riders were obviously there, some littler ones in joggers pushed by their running parents. The fellow-feeling was strong. One woman even told me she got through the last hill (a big one at the end of a rolling course) because a little group of spectators were there yelling, “You can do it! Do it for Susan!”

I entered a little local running race last weekend. A good cause and pleasant roads that I was somewhat familiar with. No training other than 1.5 to 4 mile outings sporadically over the summer on top of the excellent base I inadvertently got from basketball (despite the eight week hiatus with the broken hand). But nonetheless, 5k, I felt I could survive that.

And I did all right—enough to win a little prize but not to give me any illusions of grandeur. The hard numbers are there, after all. At least they’re on CoolRunning.com. There’s something beautiful about hard numbers. People in business love uttering tedious truisms like “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” so one hates to utter it oneself, no matter how true a truism it is.

That’s one thing to be missed in non-racing sports. And I guess the reason I wanted not only to play tennis this summer, but to enter a tournament. I have that former racer’s love of quantifiable (hopefully improvable) metrics. Of course players of games keep score and keep stats, but I haven’t noticed it so much at the “citizen” level. I wonder if this accounts for a lot of hoops-playing gym rats thinking they’re a lot better than they are?

I know without benefit of numbers that my game improved dramatically since I started playing basketball as an adult ten years ago. (I was lucky enough to have a great teacher, who imparted some of his basic wisdom in a Men’s Health article a few years ago.) Leaving behind the novice stage is a huge and exhilarating leap that at its most fun outstrips measurement. The first year or two at anything there is so much to learn and master. But progressing along the subsequently flattening learning curve is harder, with improvement less obvious or less steady. In taking up a game I really missed having comparative numbers, even though after the preceding ten years of rowing I was feeling like they were a little rigid and confining.

So you try to come up with something. Find the measurable things where you can. Every now and then I do just go out and shoot 100 free throws, to face up to the harsh reality of numbers. And I don’t make fun of Shaq so much afterward (though of course he is getting paid more than me to be good at that silly skill). I did manage 72 percent last time out, I’ll mediocrely boast. I practiced 100 tennis serves last week, in the absence of anyone to play with. No boasting there, with a 55 percent result. Hmm, if I could say those were all first serves, that wouldn’t be so bad….

Or I could just keep entering these small friendly races to stay in the numbers. I gotta say, it reminded me how much I like organized competition. I wonder, is that part of the definition of being a jock/athlete?