"Twenty-Four Minutes"
Today I played in my first ever Speed Golf event in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you don't know what Speed Golf is, let me save you the Google. You carry four clubs. You run. You swing. You run again. Your score is your strokes combined with your minutes. It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If your first thought is "that sounds unhinged," congratulations, you're correct. Come do it anyway.
My dear friends at @GoodLionGolf put it on with my new friend @speedgolfrob and about thirty other players who love this game and are unhinged enough to sprint through it in the rain on a Sunday morning. Nine holes. Twenty-four minutes. Breathing like a sweaty ox over every putt. There is nothing quite like standing over a four-footer while your lungs file a formal complaint and your quads are threatening to unionize.
I finished +2. I am also, as I type this, discovering muscles I did not consent to having. My hamstrings have retained legal counsel.
Here's the part I keep turning over, though.
I drove hours to a course I'd never seen, to play a format I'd never tried, with a handful of people I actually knew. There was a crowd wrapped around the first tee box. And I wasn't scared. I wasn't running the tape in my head about what people would think of my swing or my score or my very obvious lack of running ability. I just showed up.
Some of that credit goes to the first player off the tee, who slipped and went down before the rest of us had our shoes tied. Muss, you nailed the landing. Legend. You took every ounce of nerves out of the air and I will be grateful to you forever. That fall was a gift to humanity.
But mostly it was just joy.
That word matters more than it used to. Recovery isn't about shrinking your life. It's about walking into it. Into the next healthy yes. Not long ago, a day like today wouldn't have been on the table. Now it is. And honestly, the only thing I'd change about today is the part where my lungs stopped speaking to me somewhere around hole 5.
Today was one of the best yeses I've said in a long time. Yes to the drive. Yes to the rain. Yes to showing up for something brand new and letting it rip. Yes to standing in a parking lot afterward, soaked and winded, listening to people tell me their stories. Yes to all of it.
This is what I get now. Not a highlight reel. Not a perfectly curated life. Just a long walk with the door propped open, and good people showing up in the gaps, and mornings I didn't earn but get to keep anyway. That's the round. That's the whole beautiful thing.
Oh, and there was a volunteer scorekeeper on hole 2, standing out in the rain for people he'd never met, who yelled out as I ran by:
"You're better than most, #16!"
Sixteen was my race number. I think he was commenting on my play, but I refuse to investigate further. Investigating would've required words and more breathing. I couldn't waste either. I'm taking that one all day long.
Not perfect, but good.
