I don’t harbor any fantasy of becoming a professional runner. It takes an immense amount of dedication, training, natural talent and luck — and honestly, I’m just not speedy enough to cut it in the pro circuit. But I do college track. The same is true for a large percentage of college athletes: We don’t lay down plans for future Olympic gold, but we dedicate twenty or more hours a week to training, competing, rehabilitating, and preparing for more training, competing and rehabilitating. And sometimes, it’s difficult.
Probably the most common issue that athletes run into is the sheer lack of time and energy needed to do much of anything other than classes, studying and competition. For some reason or another, UCSD athletes tend to have a reputation as wild partiers on an otherwise relatively quiet campus.
Although parties and other outings certainly do happen, a lot of athletes I know, even at notorious party school UC Santa Barbara, are so wiped out from a long week of classes and training that their ideal Friday night involves some tea, a warm bed and Netflix Instant.
The lack of free time can also restrict athletes’ abilities to accept job and internship opportunities. I’m one of the lucky ones, with a job I love and a supervisor who understands and tries her best to work around my schedule. Others are not so lucky. An old friend and competitor of mine, who now runs for the University of Miami, is one of those people whom one envies and kind of wants to hate, but can’t. She is beautiful, extremely talented, has a 3.8 GPA, and is one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met. But despite her intelligence and work ethic, she can’t hold down a job because she just doesn’t have enough time with a sport in her schedule.
Now, add onto that the stress that comes with collegiate competition. Athletes train five or six days a week all year, with maybe two weeks to one month for rest during the off-season. But the average college athlete can anticipate a whole year’s worth of pain, sweat, scrapes, bruises, pulled muscles, broken bones, comparisons to better athletes, articles on how to improve performance, sacrificed dates or even sacrificed boyfriends and girlfriends — all of that comes down to a 10-second race. A 40-minute game. A two-hour match. Coaches are watching, families are watching, friends are watching as that athlete tries to apply a year’s worth of all of that crap into one moment.
That gets pretty darn stressful.
So with the lack of time, the depleted energy, and the near-inconceivable stress, the question remains: If we aren’t going to make money off it someday, why do we do it?
Obviously, the answer is different for every athlete. For some, it’s that sense of belonging to a community that “gets” them — a community that knows what excruciating yet self-inflicted physical exhaustion feels like, or that near-familial bond that forms between teammates. For others, it’s to stay in peak shape. While still others are addicted to it — the floods of endorphins, the surges of adrenaline, the unbelievable rush that follows a big win or even the soul-crushing despair that comes with a big loss. And, as one of my friends ever-so-eloquently put it, some do it for “the chicks.”
But what it all comes down to is actually pretty simple: we do it because we can’t imagine what our lives would be like without it.