By The Campfire

June 4, 2008

A 48 year-old man, coming off parole from life in prison, is standing in a boxing ring in Atlanta. He barely even sweats, his rigid muscles pumping, his once golden gloves whirling in quick unison off the head of his opponent, a boxer 18 years his junior. Yesterday, Bennie Heard was on all fours crawling down a hill meant for sledding. Tomorrow he will do 1000 crunches before you can finish a cup of coffee. He is physically younger than his time on this earth because he was preserved in a criminal, time capsule, serving time for a murder two decades ago.

He had no weights for years so he improvised his strange, punishing training routine. His determination is total, his life is in fast forward, he is on a mission to make up for lost time.

Mr. Heard is attempting a comeback never seen in sports, much less a pugilistic endeavor as brutal as boxing. George Forman was away for 10 years (but George was a superstar before). Bennie has been away 20 years, and he was just starting when he went behind bars.

He has supporters. Evander Holyfield has invested in him. His victim’s relatives vouched for his release. His manager believes in him. His opponents fear him. He carries no anger, no remorse. No time for that. He has too much work to do. Bennie never really ascended to the upper level of the sport he loves like an addiction. He was on his way – when Reagan was president – then he spent two decades paying for his crime.

A lot has changed since he last smelled freedom, but he is adjusting. Athletes who survive difficulties spend a lot of time adjusting.

Take Dale Webster, for instance.

Mr. Webster has surfed every single day for the last 32 years. He is a 59 year-old janitor at a school and he has seen more waves than the Coast Guard. Dale started surfing daily on September 3, 1975 and he is still slipping the waxed board through the salt off Bodega Bay, California. He hasn’t missed a single day. When you see his eyes and ears, you can see it has taken a toll on him mentally and physically, and there are no fat contracts to buoy him through the churn. There are no lucrative sponsors; he does it because he loves surfing. He is a poster boy for the purity of sport. Nike, where are you? A few people have noticed. He has a few minutes in a documentary a while back. Mostly, it’s just Dale, a waxed board, and the surf, shoving face-fulls of 50-degree water over and over and over.

Dale is in the Guinness World Records for surfing 10,000 days straight. That was back in 2004. He has now logged 11,919 consecutive days on his board. Cal, Brett, you have some company.

Then you have Eight Belles, a filly who nearly won the Kentucky Derby this year. She came in second behind a beast, Big Brown. And for her troubles, she was euthanized on the track after her second place finish after breaking both front ankles 100 yards from the finish line. Only three fillies have ever won the race and Eight Belles came within a single place of being one of them before her tragic demise at the hands of those who loved her most. Sports, like life, is measured in units called “Now.” There is only what you do right now. No guarantees for tomorrow. No points for memories. When Nike used to say “Just Do It,” they meant now.

I played sports in high school. I was never very good at any of them, certainly never as good as the athletes mentioned above. But I experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat enough to understand the purity of the exhausting experience. I played on a football team that won 58 straight regular season games in a town that had little to be proud of as the textile industry that had kept it alive for 100 years moved to China. It gave me a small window of vision into why people like Lance Armstrong fight to beat cancer and pain and the grueling tour de France year after year after year after year until he is considered something more or less than human. I have seen my children become the athletes I could only dream about and do things I never dreamed possible.

As we go through life, sometimes we find ourselves facing troubles or barriers or enemies or more likely our own fear, and we consider giving up. Maybe we just need to run on past the finish line before we allow failure to snap our ankles. Maybe we just need to wait until we have served 21 years in prison to start our resurrection and chase our goals. Maybe we just need to go out and get on the board every single day, weather and elements and feelings be-damned, and ride life until we can’t stand on the board anymore.

Is beating cancer harder than peddling a bicycle? Is facing the ocean for nearly 12,000 straight days harder than fighting a war? Is literally dying to win a race as big a deal as overcoming a heart condition? Is paying a debt by giving away 21 years of your life as difficult as being the victim of the crime?

Maybe they are all the exact same things.

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