Compete at any Age

It makes me chuckle now when I m at this point of my life and I am just training my butt off trying to win a bicycle criterium or a road race. Some well meaning friends come up and tell me to slow down while some well meaning friends come up and tell me to keep it up.

I have been playing sports since elementary school but I was never good at it. I made the elementary varsity basketball team but I was benched, despite my size. I mean, talent will dictate whether you play or not but being benched when you re in grade 6 was just too much. We all should have been allowed to play, we re all freakin  grade 6! To make matters worse, my team uniform was confiscated by the coach. I really hated that coach.

In High School, it was the same. I was awkward, had very poor hand and feet coordination, and I was too self-conscious about myself. I would rather stay at home and read.

College came and sports was the farthest thing in my mind. While waiting for the board results, I played volleyball and I was fairly good at it, but volleyball wasn t mainstream and I cant go out and play volleyball by myself.

But in HS, I was intrigued by the bicycle. My HS had a cycling team and I was mesmerized by the beauty of the road bike. So I have tried to educate myself about professional cycling every now and then.

After I got my first salary, I got myself a road bike. I watched VHS tapes of the 1987 Tour de France and every year thereafter. Then somebody told me about bike racing at the Mandaue Area, this is where SM now stands. Now I was in a happy place. Cycling was different, I was never self conscious about it because I just whizzed by the onlookers, and cycling was a centric activity unlike ball games so no fancy 3-pointers or crossovers.

For over three decades, I have been racing and training all by myself. I sometimes can have an odd win or good placing here in there but I wasn t consistent. I was doing a lot of kilometers every weekend but I still was inconsistent at best.

I have heard of hiring a coach to structure my training but I thought it would just be a waste of money. But then, I thought, I m not getting any younger so why not get a coach? Fast-forward 12 months  under a coaching structure and finally I was getting consistency and better results than my previous self-coaching strategy.

It s ironic that I have a better understanding of my body and my mind when I m in my 60 s. I have a clearer picture of what I want and what I need. Age doesn t matter if you take care of yourself. It s crazy now but I believe thatI still have a lot of things to fine tune myself to be better in competitions. And I am doing well in competitions when I should have been mediocre.

So if you think you re too bad, too old and have no time, it s a lie. Some folks want it to happen, some people wish it to happen, some just make it happen.