IN A RACE AGAINST...

I think a lot of adults walk around believing there is still one moment left that could physically redeem them.

One sprint.
One game.
One play.
One perfectly timed burst that reminds everyone, or maybe just ourselves, who we used to be.

We carry these versions of ourselves around for decades. Former athletes. Former fighters. Former fast people. Our hearts remember a version of us that our bodies quietly left behind long ago.

A few weeks ago, I went on a run and accidentally put this theory to the test.

I ended up on the track at a local college just as a high school team was finishing practice. I didn’t realize where I was until I started to feel heat on my heels.

I checked over my shoulder and saw a handful of teenagers in track tank tops flying down the straightaway behind me. I have never been a tank-top guy - which should shock nobody.

Before my brain could make a responsible decision, the competitive juices kicked in, and I started sprinting.

And honestly? If I had pulled my hamstring in that exact moment, it would’ve been worth it just to feel that exhilaration of competition again.

It was a vanity move. A move built entirely out of insecurity, denial, and the desperate belief that maybe there was still some juice left in the tank.

I wanted to prove something to those kids.

Who am I kidding?

I wanted to prove something to myself.

Nobody looks at me anymore as the kid who helped take South Florida to the gold medal game in basketball at the Maccabi Games in Cleveland, Ohio, only for us to lose to Israel on a bad call. A bad call, my non-Jewish father, who coached the team, still complains about to this day, like the international governing body might suddenly overturn it thirty-two years later.

Nobody looks at me as the guy who won two gold medals in track at those same games either.

Now I’m a middle-aged dad jogging in public with the posture of someone trying not to wake up an old injury.

Somewhere along the way, my athletic career quietly became a series of cautionary tales.

I dislocated my kneecap trying to pull a cutback move on my son that I used to do routinely during my soccer days. In my memory, the move was still there waiting for me. My body disagreed violently.

I developed tennis elbow. Not from playing tennis. From typing too aggressively, which somehow felt even more embarrassing to explain while wearing a forearm strap at a cocktail party.

For years, I played pickup basketball every Sunday. But that changed one afternoon when, after the game was cut short, I drove my brother to the hospital after he tore his Achilles tendon. Somewhere during that drive, without telling anyone, I quietly retired from full-court basketball forever.

I almost came out of retirement once for a dad’s game at my kids’ school. I got added to the email chain and spent weeks building the courage to say yes.

Then, right before I finally committed, an email went out from another dad thanking a few other dads for helping him get to the hospital after he tore his Achilles tendon for the second time in three years during the game.

The injured dad apparently couldn’t wait to play again.

I remember reading that email and thinking two things simultaneously:

That guy is insane.

And I completely understand.

Because the truth is, we never fully retire from competition. Instead, we simply move to different arenas.

We race teenagers at tracks.
We try to beat our sons to the corner.
We practice our jump shots in the mirror.
We sprint through airports like someone’s timing us.
We overexplain old accomplishments.
We tell ourselves our injuries are “tightness.”
We say things like “I still got it” with absolutely no supporting evidence.

It wasn’t really a race against those kids.

It was a race against time.
Against my knees.
Against vanity.
Against denial.
Against the version of myself that still believes there’s one good race left in him if life offers just the right moment.
Against the terrifying realization that teenagers now look at me the same way I once looked at middle-aged men trying way too hard.

Against reality itself.

I did okay for a moment. Maybe even a few moments.

Then, like a herd of buffalo let loose across the plains, each kid passed me one by one.

Smoothly.
Effortlessly.
Violently humbling.

When the last kid passed me, I veered off the track before the first one could lap me, and I went out the gate.

Somewhere between the second kid passing me and the last one disappearing around the turn, reality had become official.

I slipped around the corner and sat down against the wall behind the building, trying to catch my breath, pretending to stretch anytime someone walked by.

Eventually, the kids got back on their bus and left.

I remember wondering if they knew I was trying to compete with them.

Did I look fast?
Did I look cool?
Or did I just look like somebody’s dad having a very public spat with aging?

I limped home, convincing myself that for a minute, I still looked pretty fast.

CUE: “GLYCERINE (acoustic)” by Bush