Friends - I have been asked by Dan to re-start this topic. There is a similar thread below from last year where I described encouraging athletes to abstain from alcohol during January 2018 knowing for some it would be easy but others a significant challenge. A challenge that could be made easier in a group setting of likeminded athletes. Basically I’m asking you to take control of your alcohol consumption for the month. Show yourself that you can do it. And we’ll help you! As one who has wine every day, and some Jack Daniels now and then, I am fully aware that this is not simple.
However, I learned a new word (which many of you might already know) last year. Micro-aggression. Or something close to that. It occurs, I’m told, when a speaker/author/poster makes some kind of statement with a positive** intent, but that the listener hears it in a way that they could interpret as racist, sexist, etc. The listener disregards the intent of the speaker, using only their own filter, and calls out the speaker for what is perceived as an infraction, regardless of how pure the speaker’s intent. There is no quarter given for possible variations or misuses or subtleties of the English language.
I have 20+ years of triathlon experience including 6 Kona finishes, and 20+ years at the bedside as an orthopedic surgeon. I have helped many ST athletes over the years. But have done very little here recently. I had not intended to bring this year’s alcohol challenge to the ST audience for the reasons above, but I was contacted by an athlete wondering if we were doing it again. We are.
In reading the more recent posts on the 2018 thread, they seems to illustrate the above personal choices. I do not know Devashish Paul but my impression from this site is that he’s one of the good guys. Wears a white hat and posts here for the good of the sport. I hope I’m not wrong. But even he is given no slack for word choices or perceived differences in approach to the issue under consideration.
Friends - I’d like to help ST athletes in the future with their musculoskeletal issues and would simply request that as our 2019 New Year’s resolution, that when we see an attitude, an approach, a statement which we might feel differently, that we might pause before responding and consider the **intent of the speaker. When I was an undergraduate at the Naval Academy, our calculus book used a certain phrase when illustrating the evident. The text read something like, “It’s intuitively obvious to the most casual observer…”
So my New Year’s request of all of us would be, “If it’s intuitively obvious to the most casual observer…” that the poster’s intent is honorable, but perhaps they didn’t phrase something the way another might, we just let it rest. And finally, on this last day of 2018, also from the boat school, here’s wishing each of you “fair winds and following seas” in your training and racing efforts in the year ahead. Oh, and that you join us in our January Challenge.
John Post