Adam Hodges

Colorado ranks as the most active state. That comes as no surprise to triathletes reading this. Especially for those of us living in Boulder, could life be any other way?

I have been an athlete all my life…perhaps endurance junkie is more descript. Once I started down the road toward endurance sports as a kid, I became buried in the lifestyle. I have gone through various gradations of fitness, but have never been inactive, or completely sedentary. I would literally go bonkers if inactivity were forced upon me.

The fact that I rely on activity and endurance sports to maintain my health and peace of mind has often led me to wonder what life is like on the other side. What would life be like from the seat of a couch potato? Every once in a while, I'll pass the antithesis of the active life on a trail during the middle of a workout and momentarily look through their eyes at the wonder of movement and fitness that endurance athletes live by.

In reality, the majority of Americans go through life without swimming, biking or running. The closest many get to the experience of a long ride on wheels is driving to work and being stuck in rush hour. Many people run less in an entire lifetime than some of us in a single week. And wading into water over chest deep can be a frightful experience for a large part of the population.

It's hard for me to imagine life without stretching my legs on wide open spaces or filling my lungs full of rarified air on a mountain trail or swimming through clear ocean waters far from shore-simply roaming over large distances without the aid of an internal combustion engine.

The freedom of movement and physical activity has come to mean more to my being than just physical health, going beyond the physiological aspects to encompass mental necessity and spiritual sustenance.

It has been theorized that any hard-core endurance athlete must be escaping from something. To an extent, I don't doubt it. There are many things worthy of escaping in modern society and spending a day swimming, biking, and running can be a welcome relief from the realities of life's main responsibilities. On a smaller scale, I don't know any endurance athlete who doesn't use a workout from time to time as a coping mechanism to life's pressures. And in this regard, endurance activity sure beats the numerous less health-oriented escapes available and acts as a built-in pressure valve.

More importantly, however, the active life of an endurance athlete provides more than an outlet from the world's headaches. The active life acts as an important map for proving what's possible.

The physical and mental demands of challenging activity provide important stimuli that positively affect other areas of life. It is no coincidence that a well-tuned athlete is often an equally successful student, worker or parent.

And beyond the individual, the feats displayed by endurance athletes act as important models for the rest of society, providing a look into the expanding realm of human potential.

When you learn that your 70-year old neighbor finished an Ironman, it begins to shatter the paradigm that old age is automatically coupled with weight gain and bypass surgery.

And in a society where the amount of TV time logged by kids is increasing while the amount of outdoor playtime is decreasing, the model of an active life may be an important lifeline to the future.

The active life proves to all of us what it means to be human: To celebrate life by participating rather than watching.

Adam Hodges
Summer 2001

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