Speed = d/t, Velocity = d/t

Aging is not for the timid

Hello friends. Maybe it’s the fact that the Winter season is fast approaching—or for some of you—already here. I know that I consciously fight some melancholy that typically sets in for a week or so when the clocks roll back, and it starts getting dark at 5-6 pm. Whatever the reason, I’m feeling all of my sixty-five-year-old body lately.

This post is about aging and time and running away and from the things in our lives. If you figure out how they’re all connected, let me know. I’m still trying.

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Without getting into Calculus—which is something I don’t pretend to have a grasp on—speed is defined as distance covered over time. Velocity is defined as distance over time and direction. Loosely. Here’s Newton’s Law and it’s 3 rules of motion:

1. A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force.

2. When a body is acted upon by a net force, the body's acceleration multiplied by its mass is equal to the net force.

3. If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.

Once upon a time I was the fastest person I knew. I’m not saying I was the fastest person—just that of the people I knew in my school, on my team, of my age group at any given time, in my community—I was it. No one I knew could outrun me. It wasn’t until I ran track in high school that I discovered a few guys across the state that could outpace me around a track—and even those were few and far between. Running fast was my jam. It wasn’t anything I worked at—at least not until the idea of actually training to run was introduced to me in college. Speed was a gift I was born with. A gift of genetics. A gift of spirit. Both of my younger brothers were quick and athletic. I could flat fly. (borrowed from Chris Schenkel or Curt Gowdy or Pat Summerall or one of those former maestros of the microphone)

Being able to move quickly across the surface of the World informed everything I did. It seems to be me that I was always running to or from something or someone very quickly. I’d never associated those memories with the fact of my having been swift—until now.

As the famous chanteuse Judy Collins sang, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” And for an athlete as they age, speed is the first thing to go. Today, after decades of running on cinder and rubber tracks, asphalt and pavement, grass and turf fields, and hundreds of miles of Rocky Mountain trails—I’d be hard pressed to run across the backyard for a damn snack. Almost exactly 11 years ago I went under the knife of one of the best knee guys in the World—trained under the famous Dr. Richard Steadman—and had both joints resurfaced and replaced with titanium. So now I’m old and slow, but really durable.

Let’s go back to Newton’s First Law for a moment: A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force.

If I was once a runner in constant motion, what was the force that acted upon me to slow me down or change my direction? I’d suggest there were several things:

—The natural process of aging and the inevitable deterioration of physical gifts.

—The growth and maturity forced upon me by life itself.

—The realization that regardless of where I ran to, there I still was. There was no escaping me.

Let’s examine the physical part first. I vividly remember two instances where I very suddenly knew I’d advanced into the next stage of my physical life. I knew my body could no longer cash the checks my mind had written.

I played competitive Ultimate Frisbee off and on for about 15 years during and after college. If you’re ever seen it or played it, you’ll recognize that it is a game of constant motion. A magical invention of the counterculture in the late ‘60s. A bunch of guys at a high school in Columbia, New Jersey decided they could create a fun, competitive game with few rules and no officials. It can be played casually in a park with no boundaries and no shoes. It can also be played fiercely at the highest level of athletic striving. That’s where me and my Ultimate bros lived. We practiced hard—running wind sprints and training away from the field—and competed at the highest level of the game. I captained two different teams that played at the National Championships for five consecutive years, winning the title in 1984 with my St. Louis teammates—the Tunas.

There is much more to be written about my Ultimate experience in future essays, but today we’ll stay the course. My competitive playing era began to take a backseat to my career after that. My business pursuits in events and sports television allowed me to stay involved when I could—creating and running several national tournaments that had lasting impact on the game you see today played professionally on ESPN.

I don’t remember what famous athlete once said it—Joe Montana maybe? Bill Russell? The quote—and I’m paraphrasing—went something like this—A legend is born of past achievement. The fastest way to become an un-legend is to overstay your abilities.

I was seduced by a friend and former teammate to show up and play at a Denver summer league game. These games were fun and competitive but several notches below what I had retired from. I was in reasonable shape at the time—still running and cycling regularly—but not in “Ultimate shape” as we used to say in the day. I figured I could rely on my wily veteran instincts and just go have fun. Until the moment when the youngster that I was defending suddenly did to me what I’d done to hundreds of opponents over the years. He turned and he left. Me. Me. The former fastest guy on the field. He said “buh-bye.” He put me in his rear-view mirror, and I was getting smaller by the second. That 20-something dude with the ponytail flying behind him dropped this 40-year-old bald and somewhat thicker onlooker like a bad fucking habit. I turned to chase after him as the long arcing frisbee rocketed tantalizingly over our heads—there was nothing there. Where was my 5th gear? After he caught the goal about 20 yards hence, I grudgingly congratulated him. A cagey Joe Pantoliano to a cherubic Tom Cruise: “Time of your life, huh kid?”

I left the field that day and never have stepped foot on one again. Ego? Sure. Realistic? You bet. How many athletes have stuck around too long and embarrassed themselves in the twilight? Too many. The sport of Ultimate went the way of many other individual and team sports and created Masters (reasonable), Grand Masters (old and just in the way), and Legends (really?) levels of competition. Appropriate to play with and against only those with an equal lack of speed and mobility. Not for me. When speed was your gift, slow just doesn’t feel natural.

More recently, the decision to get my knees replaced came on the golf course. Not just any golf course. I had a coveted invite to the Nantucket Golf Club courtesy of my life-long friend Andy. I changed my shoes in between Jack Welch’s and John Kerry’s lockers. It wasn’t my first time playing there with him, but it was the last. He has since sold his home on the exclusive island, which marked the end of a wonderful decade-long chance to rub ruddy, crusty elbows with the muckety-mucks on the ‘Tuck.’

Nantucket Golf Club is walking-only, preferably with caddies. It’s real links golf and it’s a truly treasured experience for any golfer. This fateful day I was walking and playing with Andy, Rick, Roger, Jack—my crew that has tried more or less successfully to gather once a year since our days together at SMU. Only I couldn’t—walk I mean. My host Andy was no stranger to orthopedic surgeries; having gone through skull, neck, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle, foot surgeries and lost a left arm. Here he was strolling along next to me telling me I needed to get a cart for the back nine. Only disabled players could use carts—with the little disabled flag atop—indicating their disability. No disrespect meant to golfers or people with actual disabilities—especially on this December 3rd, which is The International Day of Persons with Disabilities—but I didn’t qualify as one. I was a healthy (and newly sober) 51-year-old who couldn’t walk the Nantucket Golf Course with my buddies. Poor fucking me. Start the violins. I scheduled knee replacement surgery the week I got home.

The mental and spiritual part of Newton’s first law is different. He was a physicist—not a psychiatrist. But if you apply the same principal of Law #1 to your spirit it makes sense, right? Richard Rohr writes “To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe—and usually be humiliated by—the habitual way we encounter each other at every moment. It is humiliating because we see that we are well-practiced in just a few predictable responses.”

What Rohr is saying, and what Law #1 implies, is that we humans tend to do the same things in the same way over and over again until we’re moved, shocked, motivated by some force upon us that makes us finally deviate from our predictable straight-line path. The observation—the awareness—that we might need to change either our behavior, or our expectations of our own performance—often have to be forced upon us.

Which brings us to Law #2: When a body is acted upon by a net force, the body's acceleration multiplied by its mass is equal to the net force.

In layman’s terms, this is the everyday idea of a push or a pull. Forces in Newtonian language—trust me I Googled it—are often due to strings and ropes, friction, muscle effort, gravity, and so forth. Like displacement, velocity, and acceleration. What gets a body moving and keeps it moving—what is momentum? When you (a body or mind) encounter a force that is pushing or pulling you—can you really resist it? Physics says you only can if you have the sufficient mass and force to counteract the force being put upon you.

Which brings us to Newton’s Law #3: If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.

How strong are you to push back? How deep is your denial of necessary change? This ain’t a schoolyard game of tug-of-war—this is your life. Isn’t acceptance an easier path? As it relates to physically aging—yes. As it relates to emotionally maturing and spiritually growing—yes. Give up the fight. It’s physics.

These days, as I trot around the yard after the dogs and spin around the neighborhood on my bike and observe and manage my responses to the forces outside of me that might push and pull me in a different direction; I’m armed with a healthier—albeit slower body and mind.

Since you asked this surgically improved, remarkably still standing 65-year-old, here’s my daily routine.

—Wake early after a solid 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Usually 6:30-7:00 AM.

—Chug 16 oz. of water.

—Fix one cup of Nespresso for my reading.

—Make the dogs breakfast.

—Read 10-15 minutes of positive reinforcement. Usually Light Watkins, Richard Rohr, Eckhart Tolle, Joseph Campbell, Big Book of AA, a passage from the Bible, etc.

—Meditate for 5-10. Whatever the dogs let me get away with before the four of them start whining for their walk.

—Walk the dogs around the neighborhood. Typically, 1 1/2 to 2 miles with some hills and some start and stops.

—Come back to my home gym. Minimum 20 minutes of Zone 2 cardio (5-6 times per week)

—Resistance training: includes pullups, pushups, kettle squats, curls, chest flys, dips, shoulder raises (2-3 times per week)

—Planks, crunches, and roman chair for abs. (every day) What can I say—I love to eat.

—Stretching routine to finish.

—Gratitude Prayer.

—Done by 8:30. Shower either now or later depending on who I need to see and when.

—Time for the rest of the day’s work to begin.

—First meal of any kind is generally between 10-11. AG1, protein smoothie, etc.

Am I perfect at this routine? Hell no. Hardly the point. I’m human, so every day I must fight the resistance to inertia. Compounding that are my tendencies as someone with an alcoholic mind. I do love a couple of quality cigars in the mix each day. So, there’s that. I call it working on my immune system. Whatever.

I beat the living shit out of myself for so many years—both physically and spiritually—that any effort to make positive change is a huge step in the right direction.

As Newton’s Laws indicate, you’re either a body at rest or a body in motion. Same with your mind. You’re either comfortable at rest—stuck in old ways of thinking and being, or you’re a mind in motion—learning, growing, changing.

Each day is truly a gift. I lived fast and furious for a long time. It’s truly a miracle that I’m even sitting here writing these words to you today on Substack. Only by God’s grace, am I here.

I’m OK with slow.