On Running: Running Vs. MMA
Even though I'm not a very naturally athletic person and I dislike most conventional sports, I have always had a very strong physical drive in me. It's like I have a demon inside me constantly tell me "go go go!" like I have to find a way to fortify my body and really push it for something. I tend to be drawn towards physical culture that involves pain and/or non-mainstream activities.
For many years, specifically between the ages of about 19-25, one of my main goals in life was to compete in MMA. I had been a fan of the sport long before The Ultimate Fighter launched the sport into the mainstream, and loved the idea of violent combat. When I was in college, I started taking Kenpo karate classes, and occasionally trained with shoot fighters to learn submission holds. I trained constantly, research fighting theory, and gained 30 pounds of muscle. I even went so far to have a heavy bag and a speed bag installed in my basement to train with when I was home. My plan was to get a good base in college, then either start working the amateur scene towards the end of college, or wait until I graduate, then immediately join a full blown MMA school to get fights through.
Unfortunately for me, when I was 22, I was in a very bad car accident and broke both my legs. I had to drop out of school, and recovery was very difficult. By the time I returned to college, my Kenpo class had disbanded, and my knees were too messed up to train hard (I had gotten kind of fat too). I still trained with some local MMA fighters I knew, and was optimistic that once I graduated, recovered more, and found a good MMA school, that I would be able to start competing in the sport.
Well, I graduated while the economy was in the tank and couldn't really find a career to make money, and there was no where for me to train back home. Not to mention that my knees were so bad, that I ended up getting physical therapy almost three years after my accident just to be able to walk properly again. Life got in the way and my MMA aspirations were not looking good. However, I still trained at home alone and held on to some believe that something somehow somewhere would happen.
I held onto this belief until I hit my late twenties. I put things into perspective a little bit once I got to that age: here I was well past my athletic prime with very little formal training. Knees were shot. Not to mention that people change radically once they get out of their early twenties; by then, I no longer had my youthful edge and felt like I had nothing left to prove. I am too old to go anywhere with it, and my drive is gone. My MMA dreams, I concluded were done. Around this time, I had began running again, and my knees had finally recovered. Not to mention I had lost weight and was improving with my endurance. Instead of focusing on that depressing what could have beens, I started to refocus on that what could bes in other areas of physical culture.
I have now decided that I am going to dedicate all the energy that I would have spent on MMA and transfer it completely to running and endurance athletics. This is my new focus. In the long run, I think it's better too. I don't have to worry about the long term effects of TBI, I don't have to compete directly against one other person, I can still get good by training completely alone, and there is much more longevity in running than in MMA competition.
I am going to give running my all and I am DETERMINED to do great things with it.