1) How awesome were our American Women? 29 of our 46 gold medals came from women this Olympics.
2) We need a Women's MLS league in America and we need to do better at supporting a professional level of women's sport in general. There are too many potentially good role models for young girls to only showcase them once every 4 years. Girls of my generation grew up idolizing Jordan and wanting to, "Be Like Mike." I want my girls to grow up knowing the names Rapinoe, Morgan, and Wambach. If they choose a not sporty path, that's fine, but dammit I want them to have the option!
3) More on topic with my recent rambling is that all the hoopla about Michael Phelps being the, "Best. Athlete. Ever." started bringing some focus to the topic I've been struggling with of Health vs. Fitness. Six months ago, if you asked me about the relationship between the two, I'd probably have said that they had a mostly parallel track, meaning that as you increased your fitness, you became healthier. Today, I don't think that's necessarily the case and Phelps (or any number of other Olympic or Professional athletes) kinda helped clear the fog in my thought process.
Few would argue that Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps weren't in phenomenal shape. Each man is literally more fit that billions of other men. The same applies to Allyson Felix or Missy Franklin with regard to women. But are they healthy and should we strive to be like them? I found myself wondering what horrible, unnatural things must they do to themselves to be able to perform at that level? Humans were not designed to train with such a singular focus to run 100m in under 10 seconds or to swim that same 100m distance in under a minute.
Granted, I'm not even a decent amateur caliber athlete, but I know the toll it takes on my body to be remarkably mediocre. I've never done any real recreational "off-roading" in terms of dietary/training supplements or dietary wonkiness, but a quick look at professional cycling (or baseball... or football... or track...) will return a laundry list of top-level athletes busted for migrating too far out of the grey area of legal supplement into the land of performance-enhancing substances. It's a safe assumption that to play at the top, you need to understand where that line is and get as close to it as possible without crossing the boundary -- if you don't, you can be certain your opponent is.
How healthy can that possibly be? Sure, many professional athletes have physiques envied by billions, but at what cost? How many retired NFL players appear "healthy" a decade after they've left the game? Many, if not most, have chronic ailments that prevent them from living a normal life. Some of that is due to the abuse of the game. Even in the case of Phelps, what the hell does it do a human's system to ingest 4-5 times the normal amount of food that a normal person requires?
What are we, the Normal Folk, doing to ourselves in our attempts to get as close to that Ideal Form as possible? We weren't built for the constant abuse we put ourselves through trying to look better, be faster, and get stronger. It's only our own arrogance in the Superiority of Humanity that convinces us that we are somehow significantly different than the dude chillaxing with his homies around the campfire 20,000 years ago. What I'm coming to believe is that we're not, and that chasing the dream of any PR fitness goal I might have, whether it be a 3:30 Marathon, 1:30 Half, or a 300# squat will not be evidence of my increased level of health, but can only come at its expense.
* Bonus points to anyone who makes the connection between the Blog Title and its content. Your prize is the sad confirmation that you're old.
