WHAT THE LIFE OF AN ATHLETE CAN TEACH US
Full time athletes live punishing lives for the sake of their aims and dreams. While not all of us can become full time athletes, we can all take a slice out of their routines and introduce exercise into our daily lives to become healthier and happier.
Not many of us cubicle dwellers can even begin to imagine what it must be like to be a full-time athlete. For most of us, a job means getting out of the house and going to an office desk, where we sit in front of a computer for eight hours, and then return, sitting in our cars, back home to the couch, where we sit for a few more hours before we head to bed. In much of our lives, then, there is a lot of sitting and very little walking, let alone running.
But in an athlete’s life, there is running. A lot of running.
An athlete training for a running championship will typically have nine hours of training built into every day, and she does not take weekends off. This includes running, cross training, gym work, warm up and cool down. Not only do they do this during season, they move away during winters to warmer locations like Kenya to run on the hills so that the body could be starved of oxygen and forced to create more red blood cells in order to deal better with fatigue and exhaustion.
Some athletes don’t go away, but find ways in their winter towns to train. These are typically people who have young families they cannot move away from, Britain’s Jo Pavey being a case in point. Pavey runs in her own suburb throughout the winter, and during severe snow where only a tiny stretch of road is available to train on, she runs up and down the stretch in two-minute stints, attracting curious glances from passers-by.
This shows the limits to which the human body can be physically pushed. Can we not take the lives of these athletes as inspiration and incorporate small bits of exercise into our daily lives? That way we can all be just a little healthier, and just a little happier too.
