This blog exists in great part due to my friend, Scott Tucker. In an earlier post I've spoken of our history as training and racing buddies in Seattle and elsewhere. Scott was and is a standout cross country skier, triathlete, and, most recently, runner, and in part due to his achievements and example I've felt awed and inspired. It was Scott who contacted me with his Ironmania in 2010, and who then called me from Kona that October and told me to get my triathlon butt back in shape so he could meet me on Ali'i Drive in 2011. Had I not followed his advice, qualified in South Africa and competed in Kona, this sporadic column would never have been. Good or bad, the writing in this blog is due to Scott's original urgings for me to pack my transition bags and get on the Road Back to Kona.
More recently Scott had been living in Boulder, CO, and working at Pearl Izumi. Although not as excited about his work designing PI's running shoe line as one might expect, having him there made it even more fun to visit in-laws in the Denver area. The past few times in Denver, including this past summer, we'd gotten together for rides, general hanging out and having fun, comparing notes on training and racing, and catching up on family news. His daughter had doted on our boys when they were tots, while his son, though quite a bit older than our boys, had gradually grown into the student/athlete example of father. A keen math/science mind who just happened to be one heck of a cross country skier, he'd followed his parents' examples and was attending a top college, pursuing his academic and athletic dreams.
Which is why receiving news of his untimely death, at a collegiate cross country race in Vermont, where he was competing for Dartmouth, has sent my heart reeling and my thoughts ever returning to Scott and the anguish he must feel. Being an endurance athlete exposes you to sometimes relentless pain. The final miles of an Ironman bring emotional and physical deprivations I'd wish on no one. All Ironman races aren't created equal; Kona raises the pain stakes even more with its heat and humidity and world championship tableau.
Scott has been through all of this and more and yet, as a father, I am sure that nothing prepares us for the kind of pain Scott and his family must be feeling just now.
They say that outliving one's own child is the cruelest fate. As adults, we can have our health setbacks, our troubles at work, our challenges in relationships, etc., but having a child die prematurely is a curse that can't be named, or that at least is so statistically rare that most of us are unfamiliar with its wrenching intimacies in the First World of the 21st century.
Competing for a Division I Ivy League school, Scott's son was doing what any of us would want our sons to be doing. Sport, especially endurance sport, can provide the kinds of hard lessons and real learning we so hope for our children, and my guess is that is what Scott's son was reaping as a member of Dartmouth's legendary ski program this winter.
Cross country skiing may not be so well known a sport as some, but there isn't a sport out there with higher aerobic returns, which is another way of saying that it's a sport that punishes and demands as much as any endurance sport, even as much as Ironman. No world class athletes have higher VO2 maxes than the top Nordic skiers, not even triathletes, cyclists or runners. Although there may sometimes seem a fine line between physical demands of competition and death, in reality the average endurance athlete couldn't be more removed from the sad statistical realities of modern mortality inhabited by those with chronic diseases, or those who make poor choices.
Death in sport is rare, particularly in endurance sport. While triathlon has lost some swimmers over the years (written about in this blog), death during competition is rare. Particularly for a strong and healthy college student, in the prime of his life, competing in a sport few of us would associate with the kind of risk more often correlated with contact sports like football and hockey, death is all but unheard of.
Which makes today's news all the more unfathomable.
Last April, after hearing of the tragedy at Boston, I went out for a long run and pushed and pushed, hoping to spiritually complete a few of that Patriot Day's abbreviated miles and abridged races. Running for them in solidarity, as an expression of brotherhood-through-sport, however, those athletes were unknown to me personally - though Scott, incredibly, was in the race that day.
Today, not coincidentally, I went out on my longest run since completing the marathon leg at Kona in 2011, now more than two years ago. As I ran, I thought once again about the untimely intersection of athletic competition and premature death. And while I gave thanks for the health of my family and the visible ongoing growth of my boys, chastened and anguished and on the verge of tears the whole way, I was also reminded to take nothing for granted. We can't know when our last race will be, just as we can't truly know what the incredible demands of training and competition may really preparing us for. My thoughts are with Scott and his family in this dark hour, praying for a new dawn ahead.
More recently Scott had been living in Boulder, CO, and working at Pearl Izumi. Although not as excited about his work designing PI's running shoe line as one might expect, having him there made it even more fun to visit in-laws in the Denver area. The past few times in Denver, including this past summer, we'd gotten together for rides, general hanging out and having fun, comparing notes on training and racing, and catching up on family news. His daughter had doted on our boys when they were tots, while his son, though quite a bit older than our boys, had gradually grown into the student/athlete example of father. A keen math/science mind who just happened to be one heck of a cross country skier, he'd followed his parents' examples and was attending a top college, pursuing his academic and athletic dreams.
Which is why receiving news of his untimely death, at a collegiate cross country race in Vermont, where he was competing for Dartmouth, has sent my heart reeling and my thoughts ever returning to Scott and the anguish he must feel. Being an endurance athlete exposes you to sometimes relentless pain. The final miles of an Ironman bring emotional and physical deprivations I'd wish on no one. All Ironman races aren't created equal; Kona raises the pain stakes even more with its heat and humidity and world championship tableau.
Scott has been through all of this and more and yet, as a father, I am sure that nothing prepares us for the kind of pain Scott and his family must be feeling just now.
They say that outliving one's own child is the cruelest fate. As adults, we can have our health setbacks, our troubles at work, our challenges in relationships, etc., but having a child die prematurely is a curse that can't be named, or that at least is so statistically rare that most of us are unfamiliar with its wrenching intimacies in the First World of the 21st century.
Competing for a Division I Ivy League school, Scott's son was doing what any of us would want our sons to be doing. Sport, especially endurance sport, can provide the kinds of hard lessons and real learning we so hope for our children, and my guess is that is what Scott's son was reaping as a member of Dartmouth's legendary ski program this winter.
Cross country skiing may not be so well known a sport as some, but there isn't a sport out there with higher aerobic returns, which is another way of saying that it's a sport that punishes and demands as much as any endurance sport, even as much as Ironman. No world class athletes have higher VO2 maxes than the top Nordic skiers, not even triathletes, cyclists or runners. Although there may sometimes seem a fine line between physical demands of competition and death, in reality the average endurance athlete couldn't be more removed from the sad statistical realities of modern mortality inhabited by those with chronic diseases, or those who make poor choices.
Death in sport is rare, particularly in endurance sport. While triathlon has lost some swimmers over the years (written about in this blog), death during competition is rare. Particularly for a strong and healthy college student, in the prime of his life, competing in a sport few of us would associate with the kind of risk more often correlated with contact sports like football and hockey, death is all but unheard of.
Which makes today's news all the more unfathomable.
Last April, after hearing of the tragedy at Boston, I went out for a long run and pushed and pushed, hoping to spiritually complete a few of that Patriot Day's abbreviated miles and abridged races. Running for them in solidarity, as an expression of brotherhood-through-sport, however, those athletes were unknown to me personally - though Scott, incredibly, was in the race that day.
Today, not coincidentally, I went out on my longest run since completing the marathon leg at Kona in 2011, now more than two years ago. As I ran, I thought once again about the untimely intersection of athletic competition and premature death. And while I gave thanks for the health of my family and the visible ongoing growth of my boys, chastened and anguished and on the verge of tears the whole way, I was also reminded to take nothing for granted. We can't know when our last race will be, just as we can't truly know what the incredible demands of training and competition may really preparing us for. My thoughts are with Scott and his family in this dark hour, praying for a new dawn ahead.
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