This all seems a bit odd to me. I have spent 8 years being immersed in high-performance sport, and not once have I taken the time to write about it. My mother has been after me for years to journal about my experiences, and I have always brushed it off as a superfluous chore of little interest to me. Yet, here I am, alone with my thoughts, trying to express my love for sport into words, and failing. This is no short story, and it almost seems futile to attempt to put it all onto paper.
So, how do I approach this? Well, I guess we should start at the beginning.
As a child, I was always fascinated by sport: soccer, hockey, football, basketball, you name it. As a young boy growing up in Canada, I wanted to be like all of my friends; a hockey player.
Unfortunately, in my household money was tight. My parents simply could not afford to pay thousands of dollars each year for me to participate in sport, when it was already a struggle just to put a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. There were times when it was really bad.
My mom has since told stories of going hungry some days just to afford juice for my brother and I.
It seems insane to contrast that point of my life to where we are now, but it was our reality back then. Things slowly got better, but even then, we were in no position to play organized sports.
At the time, it was the greatest adversity in my young life and the source of many tears.
Now, reflecting on that time, I am sure that it pained my parents incomparably more than it ever impacted me. Not being financially able to give your children everything they desire would be gut wrenching, and it sort of breaks my heart to think I unknowingly conflicted that turmoil onto them. This is a story all too familiar with families all around the country, I am sure.
Sport is something that should be accessible to all, and not just the privileged few. I owe everything I have accomplished to my parents and the sacrifices they have made to allow me to be where I am today.
But how do you repay someone for that? I definitely do not thank them enough.
The summer of 2009 changed my life forever. My family was a little better off financially, and my parents were sick of having my brother and I sitting at home doing nothing every summer.
As a kid in Dartmouth, it is second nature to be at one of the many paddling clubs during the summers. It is the city of lakes, and we essentially have the mecca of paddling in our back yard.
Finally able to do so, my parents registered us to the Banook Canoe Club, which is one of three competitive canoe kayak clubs on Lake Banook in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I was always eager to try kayaking, and my first experience in a boat was rather distressing. The second I sat in a kayak, I tipped over into the water. This process happened repeatedly that day to no prevail.
Typically, I picked up on sports related skills rather easily, but not this one, and that frustrated me. Falling out of a kayak tens of times a day was embarrassing, and deflating to my ego, but my competitive nature kept telling me to get back in the boat and try again. That summer I went on to race my first National Championships in Sherbrooke, Quebec, where I fell in love with the sport, and the rest is history.
Through my adventures in sport, I have been privileged enough to see parts of the world I otherwise may have never had the opportunity to visit. I have represented my country to my fullest potential on the international stage. I have made life-long friendships, and shared experiences that will forever be embedded in the fondest parts of my memory. Paddling is one of the unique sports where your biggest competitive rivals, are also most times your greatest adversaries.
Your biggest races are often against your best friends. It is a sport where even with your worst result, you can still find peace in knowing your friends may have achieved some of their goals.
A sport, though with the demoralization of failure, you can celebrate others success, and that to me is very motivating and empowering. I have been fortunate with the kinds of experiences I have had, and the people I have met through this sport, and I do not take it for granted.
Sport also comes with a dark side. For the past 8-years, kayaking has been my number one source of happiness and consequentially the greatest source of inefficacy in my life. Often kayaking for me becomes monotonous. Paddling circles around a lake for upwards of 2 hours can become boring believe it or not. There are plenty of times when I would rather go back to bed, or stay out with my friends on a Friday night, but there is always that obligation to train.
A weird voice in my head belittling me for a lack of dedication if I do not go.
I am sure any athlete can identify with this. There are ups and downs where sometimes I want nothing to do with the sport. In these instances, it seems as if I have lost everything. A bad race after months of strenuous preparation can lead you to believe you have completely and utterly failed yourself, and those who put work into your preparation. It has left me in a dark spot.
Wondering: “Is it worth it?“
“Will I ever achieve what I want to in this journey, or is it futile?”
“What is the point in working so damn hard if I continue to fail?”
These of course are egregiously toxic thoughts, but I am ashamed to admit that they have popped up far too frequently over the past few years. With great ambitions, comes great disappointment, and in a sport of inches, some days you are the dog and others you are the bush. The important thing I must remind myself when faced with adversity, is that the highs eclipse the lows.
If you dwell on the negatives, you begin to inhabit them. It becomes cyclical.
Learning to put total mess-ups into the past, and focus on the journey is one of the most crucial traits a person can learn as an athlete, and I will not begin to attest that I have mastered it, because I haven’t. The truth is, sport is complicated.
There is more to it than going out and moving from point A to point B as fast as you can. There are aspects behind the scenes that people rarely see. You watch the Olympics, and you see the Michael Phelps’, Usain Bolt’s, and the Penny Oleksiak’s and they make it look easy. They rarely show the struggle it takes to get to those moments. The early mornings, the multiple daily workouts, the financial stress, or the tears. You simply see them accomplishing the feat everyone dreams of, but sport is so much more than that.
I think part of the reason I have held on so long goes beyond the realm of grit and dips its toes in to the waters of self-identity. It is so widely promulgated NOT to define yourself as an athlete, but how don’t you when you spend upwards of 6 hours a day practicing that craft?
I define myself as a paddler whether I like to admit it or not, and I fear once my journey in competitive kayaking ends, I won’t know what to do with myself. I fear there will be a sense of desolation in my life that I will struggle to fill for a long time. And knowing that all now makes it all the more daunting to think of walking away from sport. I commend the people who are strong enough, and courageous enough to walk away from their sport totally satisfied, and completely at peace with their journey. I hope that once my day comes, I will be in that position, but I am not there yet. I still have a long way to go in this sport and some pretty big goals left to accomplish. Hopefully by the time I am ready to hang it up, I will be satisfied by knowing I gave it everything I possibly could.
Looking back, I am not sure what drew me into kayaking. Whether it was the fact that it was something I sucked at, and wanted to perfect, or if it was some subconscious love for being on the water (not in it).
Something individual to channel all my energy into. A sport that you decide your fate based on your own effort and dedication. Or maybe I am a masochist and need to be in full on cardiac arrest to believe I am accomplishing anything in my life.
Nonetheless, I am so lucky to have experienced what I have up to this point in my sport. I have made friends from all around the country. I have had the opportunity to train alongside some of my life-long heroes. Even if I never achieve my ultimate goal of going to the Olympics, there is some piece of mind to think that I have contributed – in one way or another – to the accomplishment of others dreams, and that brings me a lot of clarity. I have set and achieved countless goals in my life due to this sport, and I will always be eternally grateful for the lessons it has taught me, and the type of person it has molded me into.
Looking back on my life before kayaking, it is hard to imagine where I would be now without it.
Where would I be?
What would I be occupying my time with?
Thankfully, I will never have to live that reality. I love sport. I always have, and I always will. Sport is the closest thing to magic you will ever be able to experience in life, and it can teach you values you may never learn without it. I owe everything I am today to sport and I would not have it any other way.
Liam O’Brien, Canadian National Team Kayaker.
Anyone in sports and fitness who would like to share their voice, please submit to hank@hankfittraining.com.