“We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else.”

“My Losing Season” by Pat Conroy, page 330

Our personal athletic Odyssey is not typically one anyone will ever read or even know about. The trials and tribulations on the trails are between us and the woods, us and the mountains, and ultimately, us and God.

The disfigurements and markings don’t only come from the competitions. The practices, the pre-race meditations, the post race mournings shape and mold us perhaps even more. Those intimate moments alone — in the locker room after a bad game, in the training room doing rehab, or in the middle of the road, pulled over in frustration, so deep in despair over a lost sense of purpose that stopping seems like the only option — are how sports etch its permanent tattoos into our soul.