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My barber made small talk during a recent haircut, asking me which sports I favor. We proceeded to talk about the end of football season, the sorry future of the Lakers and LeBron, and a little bit about the Angels just to agree that the owner sucks and needs to sell the team.
We did not talk about the Olympics — the best thing in the sports world for sixteen days every four years. Some people just don't watch the Olympics. To them I say: you don't know what you're missing.
Want to feel good about the world? Watch the Olympics. Want to feel like maybe you need to take on a hard challenge? Watch the Olympics. Want to realize that the epitome of athletic achievement does not occur in a stadium on Super Bowl Sunday or on some World Cup pitch, but in the amazing small sports we only care about every Olympiad?
Now the 2016 Milan games are over. The playing of “La Marseillaise” reminds us the French get the next Winter Olympics in 2030. I've altered my television habits since these past sixteen day, waking every morning to flip on downhill skiing or cross country skiing or curling while I sip my coffee. I won't do morning TV again until the Tour de France in July becomes my daily dose of athletic energy. That's 132 days away.
I'm doing early publicity for The Long Run. Podcast hosts have asked why Frank Shorter’s marathon victory in 1972 was so important in changing how Americans saw running a marathon as a hard bucket list challenge.
I tell them it's because it's the first time the marathon was televised in its entirety and that until then Americans didn't really know the first thing about that distance…but what made it special was the Olympics. We search for greatness within ourselves when Olympians show us what is possible.
I will miss that daily dose. I will find joy in the upcoming Springsteen tour. I will revel in the publication of The Long Run. I will watch my emotions rise and fall with my track teams. But nothing's going to make me want to get off my butt and do hard things like the Olympics.
Consider: today is an amazing sunny Sunday here in the OC. You're going to laugh at this but when I took Sadie for a walk, I was inspired by the Olympics to make our adventure just a little longer than normal. The little things, right? Even took her to the mesa in O'Neill — an overlook more rocky and rugged than our normal walk around our nearby manicured park.
During that stroll I felt myself growing restless, tired of the holding pattern every writer endures as they wait months and weeks for pub day. Maybe I could fill that time with action? Perhaps rise an hour earlier to write in the quiet?
As our walk continued I asked myself what “impossible” feels like. A few ideas sprung forth. That little voice in my head said these were crazy thoughts, which only confirmed that maybe I shouldn't write them off. Crazy and impossible are often the same thing.
There's Springsteen in LA in 44 days and The Long Run in bookstores seven days later, so we'll see what I do about these nonsensical whims when the Olympic glow fades. I've been hooked on the New York Times app lately. The various sections of the “paper” are divided into tabs. The "Olympics" tab is going away. The "Today" tab of the world's news will once again be my first stop, reporting on the boggling stuff going on all around us. My impossible and crazy thoughts will have a hard time maintaining traction.
Someone please tell me how the Olympics and hope are so clearly intertwined. Need to find a way to bottle that magical elixir.