Is It OK To Be a Klutz?

Have you heard? It’s time for the Olympics! I told myself I would not get involved this year. If I watch, I’ll get interested in people. I’ll get invested emotionally in events that permit very few winners. Inevitably, I’ll see heartbreak. I don’t need that right now.

And yet, I found myself staring at cyclists pedaling up a winding road in the rain. I can’t seem to look away. If I’m around a TV when coverage of the men’s or women’s marathon is on, it will be hopeless. I’ll be hooked for sure.

I look at the athletes, and I wonder about them, about their lives. What brought them to this moment. What their expectations are. What their routines are like. Gazing at a close-up shot of a female swimmer who had medaled before, I marveled that she looked like … well, an ordinary person.

There was a shot of her parents, and they looked like ordinary people, too.

So I keep wondering. Were there any klutzes among those athletes who paraded into the stadium in London on Friday night? Unfortunately, I don’t think there are accurate records about how many klutzes have won Olympic medals. I suspect some have, but I can’t know for sure. What I do know is that a different kind of medal, a marathon finisher’s medal, has been draped around the neck of a klutz. Yeah, me. And it’s not televised or played up in the media or widely noticed in any way, but that’s my Olympic moment. It’s something that as a teenager suffering through my mandatory PE classes, I never hoped to experience.

I guess I’m thinking about this now not only because of the Olympics, but also because of recent news coverage of the proposed ban on large sodas in New York City, another episode in the seemingly endless saga of America’s “obesity epidemic.” Pardon the pun here: coverage of this issue disturbs me on a gut level. Discussions of weight always seem to favor, either overtly or indirectly, approaches that alarm me. I dislike the heavy-handedness of the soda ban, apart from any arguments about its effects, but last week when I watched an interview with some public figure opposing the ban, I recoiled from his message, too. The place to make a difference, he argued, isn’t in the “mom and pop” shops selling drinks, but in the schools. Mandatory gym classes for all grades! If only the New York budget would allow.

Thank goodness for the limits of the budget in this case, I think at his image on the screen. I don’t even know why he scares me so much. I don’t live in New York. He’s not my gym teacher. He’s not going to toss me a pair of short shorts and throw me into a violent game of dodge ball.

He isn’t … right? Bad memories die hard. I was running on a treadmill as I watched him; I was feeling good, a welcome blessing after a few difficult weeks in mid-June and early July. I’m a pretty active person these days; I do things I never used to think I could. I go into sporting goods stores with no self-consciousness or timidity. Still, the thought of gym class makes me want to curl up in a ball in the corner. (I seem to be full of puns today.)

It’s not that I spent the first 25 or so years of life being sedentary. I have glowing memories of playing with my cousins on my grandparents’ sprawling property in rural Idaho. I loved riding my bike around a private loop, lost in daydreams. I loved going for walks in the field out back. Once a few of us kids used a baseball cap to scoop up dirt from the field and then twirled around with the cap held at arm’s length. It made an impressive dark cloud, from which we could emerge as superheroes. Wonder Woman I think, for me and my girl cousin.

Only, in spite of those fun early activities, I had a huge problem. I was a klutz, and even worse maybe, I knew I was a klutz. I couldn’t manage anything involving a ball. It didn’t take many ball games on the playground or in elementary school gym periods to realize I was the worst player I was ever likely to encounter. I developed a deep conviction of this, that I was hopelessly flawed, that for some reason I was doomed to look and feel stupid trying unsuccessfully to do what seemed easy and even fun for everyone else. Once the conviction took hold, it got reinforced easily. In high school, I was the only student in my PE class to receive a grade of C for the golf unit. Yeah, I am hopeless at golf. Just like dodge ball. And basketball. And softball. And volleyball. And on and on. One particular talent I did seem to have—well, I don’t know if you could call it a talent or more of a magnetism. Balls of all kinds seemed drawn to my head. If I’d been braver, I could have used this gift in soccer.

Looking back at the whole of my gym class experience, I have to admit that it wasn’t THAT BAD. I mean, everyone in all my gym classes always knew, as I did, that I was the worst player and nothing but complete klutziness could be expected of me. Still, I can’t remember anyone actually being unkind. For the most part, I went to school with good kids, and they didn’t make it a huge issue. The only person who was truly cruel to me then was me. I thought horrible things about myself, and I let them hold me back from getting involved in activities, from taking part and having fun. And now, as a “grown up,” a “runner,” a “marathoner,” I still fear the phrase “mandatory gym class.”

Again, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect there are others out there like me. I was lucky to finally discover running in a way that opened it up to me … from running two minutes and then walking a bit, to the huge accomplishment of running two miles consecutively, to participating in my first 5K. All I wanted going into the 5K was not to finish last. I came in solidly in the middle of the pack. But you know what? Whoever came in at the tail end, if they had a good time getting out and being active, they have nothing to regret.

I’m grateful now to have an active lifestyle, and I support good health and fitness. But I also know that gym class for me was a deterrent from an active future, not a boost toward that goal. I know when I get upset at the media and the topic of combating obesity (which sounds like maybe we should just beat our jiggles with a stick), I’m interpreting what I hear through my own experiences and perceptions. I may be coating all the messages with guilt and encouragement of self-hatred that isn’t really intended. Still, I wish some of the messages could come across a little differently, offering hope to other klutzes that fitness can be achieved even with limited hand-eye coordination. If there could be a little more positivity, a little more “you can do it” and a little less “why in the h*** would you drink that when you know it’s bad for you and eventually you will cost taxpayers money by making bad choices like ordering a Pepsi.”

Yes, a little encouragement instead of discouragement could go a long way in promoting healthy activity, I believe. Because I may still be hopeless at all kinds of ball games, but even a klutz like me can experience the joy of movement and the sweet victory of doing more than I thought I could do. When I watch the drama of an Olympic competition, when I witness the moments of gratification and disappointment that come with a medal ceremony, I do it knowing this important truth: sometimes they give out medals to klutzes, too. I don't have to cower in the corner or hang back on the sidelines--I can put on my looonnnggg shorts, lace up my shoes, and run.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

OK, you know I didn’t come up with the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy,” but ever since I first heard the title of Irvine Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo—let’s see, I must have been in middle school then, and I can still smell that intriguing aroma of old paper that permeated the first floor of the Preston city library—the words have resonated with me.

I am no artist. I am engaged in no masterpiece. But even ordinary mortals like me can know what it is to have a passion that drives you, a pursuit both painful and exquisite. As it says in the Book of Mormon, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). As Bono sings in a classic U2 song, “I can’t live with or without you.” Joy and pain are mixed up together. Rewards require sacrifice. Great rewards require great sacrifice.

I’d never run a whole mile when I first heard of Irving Stone. I had different pursuits then, before the miles took me over. Now running is a solace, a friend, a hard taskmaster that shapes my world above and beyond the role of a regular daily workout. Last month, in Sweden in June, I experienced the ecstasy: such an incredible high, coming off that terrible run in the worst conditions I’ve faced, and knowing that I finished in spite of all my doubts and fears. I felt, as I wrote at the time, that I could do anything.

And I’d been back from Sweden only a week when suddenly I couldn’t manage my normal routine. I have these “bad spells” now and then, periods of physical and mental rebellion—it’s hard to figure out sometimes where the physical aspect ends and the mental one begins. I knew my willpower was tired. But my body wasn’t working right, either, and that became more apparent as the days went on, as they turned into weeks when I fought hard to complete a fraction of my usual mileage. I avoided looking at my photos from Sweden. I felt swallowed up in a new reality. The smiling woman in Sweden became an image of myself I feared I could never live up to again.

She looks stronger than I am

Eventually, lab results offered some objective explanations for my sluggishness. I spent a night in the hospital with red “Be positive” flowing into my veins. I left the next morning with orders to take iron supplements and a dozen (or so it seemed!) other vitamins. I am not usually good at sticking to a vitamin regimen, but I went right to the store—well, OK, after going for a run—and I bought iron supplements at the prescribed dose, which turns out to be an impressive 361% of the recommended daily value for the general population. The supplements had better be potent, though, because I am pinning a lot of hopes on them.

Gradually, more gradually than I would like, I seem to be returning to “normal.” I just finished a week of running back at my usual level. It’s frustrating, as I surface out of this trough, to wonder what the next few weeks hold. I wanted to run three more marathons before the end of the year. So far, I am registered for only one more, the Hamptons Marathon at the end of September. I can only hope I’ll be feeling good at that point. But there is always uncertainty, and I have missed out on planned marathons before. There are stress fractures and freak snowstorms on the beach (see White Holiday Mixup). I think all I can do in the moments of agony is remind myself that there are two more words in the Irving Stone title. I intend to keep running for a long, long time, and the moments of ecstasy will come around again.