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Thanks Jeff By Mike Lushington

There are days when one feels like he just cannot fool the calendar any longer. Numbers do add up and when one subtracts the year of his birth from the present date, reality can sometimes set in with a thud. For the most part, I feel pretty youthful. I think that it has something to do with my hanging around with kids. I would like to think that I bring something to the lives of the young people whom I coach, but I know, beyond a doubt, that they give me something, and that something is their youth and vitality.         Oh,yes, there are days when I realize that the years have been adding up. I see these young people scampering up and down hills as part of their biathlon training and I am secretly quite happy to be able to justify to myself that, after all, I can't go with them - one has to supervise the shooting range after all. When I see how agile and quick they are, I can remember the sensation, but that is about all I can do; there is no possible way that I am going to be able to contort creaky limbs and joints in such a fashion any longer. I console myself that I can keep up quite well in the longer, endurance based, workouts and that I can still run and ski well enough to be able to offer valid coaching demonstrations of the skills involved. However, it has been some years since I have felt tempted to challenge any of them into races.         They, on their part, flatter me by not commenting on the graying, thinning hair on my head, or the obvious creakiness of my joints when I have to get into an awkward position (awkward for me, that is) to show them something - that is, unless I happen to have been teasing them about something and they retaliate with some little reminder of the obvious. (I am overlooking the comment that one of them made to another some time ago to the effect that, "Well, Mike is not going to be around forever, you know.") Still, the signs are there and not always easily ignored.         One's peers are often harder on each other. I think that it is simply because we are all going through the process together, and we seem to think that we need to remind each other of the fact, if only because misery loves company. We tease each other about this and that, secretly pleased that we are all doing as well as we are, but genuinely ready to sympathize should one of us encounter a real problem. As we often remind each other, getting older is no particular fun, but it beats the alternative by a long shot. Still, it is often just a word here and there that snaps with a real bite of reality.         I happened across an item in a recent edition of The Tribune that wrote, in part, about my contributions to the development of biathlon in the sport. In it, the writer referred to my "many decades" of work in the area. That one little word did it; I reread it several times, feeling older and older each time I did so. By the time I finally put the paper aside, I could think only to totter off to bed, resolving that I would head to the pharmacy the following day for an extra large supply of Geritol, and wondering how much longer I had for this world. "Decades?" My goodness, where did the time go? Have I really been around for that long, or does it only seem so?         Thanks, Jeff!