As the 2016 Summer Olympic Games wind down (just in time to turn your attention to the Little League World Series) I’m realizing my own summer games have been long gone.
In my late teens and 20s, as is the case with most of those professional-amateur athletes in Rio de Janeiro, I was in my prime. I may not have had a six-pack but the case of light beer and spare bike tire around my abs didn’t hamper me much.
There were plenty of summer afternoons spent playing beach volleyball or football, swimming in the surf and chasing after girls who always eluded me.
Still, while I would have been out of medal contention in phone number gathering I scored perfect 10s in carefree passing the time.
Toward my late 20s and early 30s the games were still there but the events had changed.
The running and diving of ocean side football had given way to boardwalk strolling and wave jumping. There were no catastrophic injuries that cut short a promising recreational sports career, it was simply a matter of time taking its toll.
When it takes just as many minutes to stretch as it did to play paddle ball, knowing that the next morning you will still wake up slightly stiff if not sore, it is time to move on.
By my mid-30s the case and bike tire had been replaced by the pony keg and whitewall. The summer games committee, in their benevolent wisdom, did away with boardwalk strolling and wave jumping in favor of sand sitting and ocean wading after the horrific calf cramping incident of 2003, followed by the hamstring catastrophe of 2005. And 2006.
New events, however, did allow a once magnificent summer games player to shine.
Year after year the world record in gut-sucking-until-the young-20-somethings-pass-by were shattered in what historians should refer to as herculean displays of mental toughness and Trump-esque ego.
But that all came to an abrupt — some might call it heartbreaking, others long overdue — end when, as I was making my way through what seemed like a one mile stretch of bikini models and professional women volleyball players, a voice came to me from the heavens (and not from one of the young ladies side-eyeing someone old enough to be her father: Ew! What are you doing?
In that moment the gut plummeted down toward the sand, the shoulders slumped slightly and the shirt slung over my shoulder came on to protect me from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the menacing sun.
There was a brief time where I thought of making a comeback, jogging and eating right to get back into the competition. But the summer games are best left to those who have the youth, patience and stamina to withstand hours of looking for a parking space at the beach in the summer. And gut sucking.
