Well, here we are again.
I’ve bought some discus throw shoes and hopefully soon I will be buying some discus’ to throw! As mentioned above, I have been here before...
Many of you might know that until the age of 23 I was quite an enthusiastic discus thrower. That enthusiasm helped me earn a walk-on spot to the University of Houston track and field team and I eventually earned a scholarship. During that time I was able to win a few conference championships, rank within the top 25 of all Division 1 NCAA discus throwers, and also become the 5th best discus thrower in school history! Sorry to toot my own horn there...but I’m pretty proud of it.
I did indeed throw for another year after college in an attempt to qualify for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Obviously, I did not make it but I made a pretty valiant effort. I threw an Olympic “B” standard qualifying mark that year and was again in the top 25 throwers nationwide this time having been ranked against post-collegiate athletes. After that year, I suppose it was a time to quit and maybe decide to be better at trombone, my desired career path! Years later I decided to start throwing again...but never really got the ball rolling. As lame as it is, the generic excuse can be inserted here: “life got in the way”. And it is truly a lame excuse.
Well...here we are again...I’m wanting to throw! This time I took it at least one step further than my last attempt and actually bought some shoes!
I’ll have to be honest here (especially with myself) and check my expectations. Sure, it MIGHT be possible to become world-class but I need to hold on to the reality that I have a very time/energy consuming career path that I am currently very much in the thick of. It’s most important to me that I am simply spending time participating in the act of throwing the discus. It is such a life-affirming act and I’ve missed it every time I’ve thought about it since my hard days of training as a younger man. Sure I was always training to be world-class back then but I still remember why I ever started throwing in the first place; because I truly loved it. I have a finite amount of time in this life and discus (along with music) needs to occupy a lot of it. The thought of failing myself, in regards to how much time I have spent throwing in my life, truly scares the shit out of me. I will try to find a few meets to compete in. And if i can’t do them all, no biggie. I’ll still throw. I’ll still learn about myself in my practice. I’ll still watch that disc fly and let it tell me about my life. I’m telling you, the discus is a spiritual experience. I’ll throw, at a meet or on a practice ring, because my soul has craved it since the day I first picked it up at the age of ten.
So, I’m older now. I know a few more things. I might not get as fast as I used to be...As strong as I used to be. But...I still might have a chance of being a better thrower than that handsome stallion of a Korean man ten years ago. Looking back I see a lot of inefficiencies in my training. I definitely worked hard but was it producing optimal results? In fact, was I starting to promote negative results? The discus is a sport in which you are engaging only seconds at a time. You have to keep that in mind as you train...Something I didn’t think a lot about when I was a young man. I was never one to shy away from hard work but I also didn’t think that it could also hurt me when channeled in the wrong direction. Maybe I can devote another post to what kind of training ideas I will have going forward...
It is a bit of a challenge being a professional musician. I mean, we work....but work doesn’t stop when rehearsal is over or after we are done teaching. At this point we go in to our own practice or we might spend some time in thought about or craft and do things like listen to music or study scores/parts etc...it’s unlike most professions. It’s always been a challenge to me to know the dynamics of being competitive in a highly competitive field yet trying to maintain excellence in another unrelated competitive field. One will inevitably take from the other. I’ve accepted that. Has throwing ever taken away from my trombone practice/improvement? It sure has, without a doubt. The discus takes your heart and soul and so does music. Even if you were to have an extraordinary ability to provide tremendous amounts of energy to both simultaneously you are always going to deprive either side of your full capacity of energy. I’ve decided that it’s ok. Music is important to me...and so is throwing...and I should do both as long as I can while I still can. Then the day comes....when I look back on life...and what realizations can I make about how I’ve spent my life?
