Hitting the wall

Yesterday I spent most of the day on my own, as I had tickets to the first round of the Men’s Golf competition and, well, Allison doesn’t like golf. It’s not so much that she doesn’t like golf, she just thinks it’s one of the dumbest, most boring sports in the world – grown men and women chasing a little ball around a big field. She could think of a million things she would rather do, so yesterday she decided to take a day off from being an Olympic spectator.

She would chill at the apartment. Sleep in, read a bock, maybe pop out to the store to grab a couple of things, but otherwise just relax after a hectic schedule over the last 11 days. Not me, though. I had golf to watch.

Unlike my wife, I love golf. I’ve played since I was 12 years old, I’ve been a member on and off at the same course since I was 14 years old, and I religiously watch every tournament every weekend there’s one on TV. I’m in a couple of golf pools every year and when I saw the lineup of golfers participating in the Olympics, I scooped up tickets fast.

The golf venue, Le Golf National, is southwest of Paris and quite a distance from the city centre. Getting there was a sport in itself. I took the RER (Réseau Express Régional) one stop west from our apartment, before jumping on the U train for another eight stops, where I arrived at Guyancourt station. Once out of the station, Olympic organizers had shuttle buses waiting for all the spectators and we then made the 25-minute ride to the venue, followed by another 20-minute walk to get through the front gates. All in, it was 90 minutes from door to door.

The venue was packed, and you won’t be surprised to hear, it was hot. I immediately made my way over to where Canadian golf Corey Conners was playing on Hole 7, as he was one of the first to tee off and I followed him for a few holes. I was then able to double back to catch our other Canadian golfer, Nick Taylor, play Holes 4 through 8.

As my friends are more than tired of hearing, I had the opportunity to golf with Taylor back in 2012, when I was still in the media business, and he was recognized as the best Canadian amateur golfer at the time. I was in Scottsdale on a press trip for up!, the inflight magazine for WestJet that our company was publishing at the time, and they lined up a round of golf with Taylor and me at the TPC Scottsdale. He was quiet and polite throughout our time together and I remember he shot the easiest round of 68 (4-under par) that I had ever seen. I can’t imagine he ever thought he would go from playing with a schlep like me on a media day to eventually becoming the first Canadian to win the Canadian Open in nearly 70 years and then represent his country at the Olympics, but here he was.

While I had a couple of bottles of water and was able to get some food in me, after three hours on the course – where I also caught glimpses of the likes of Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy –?I was done. I made the trek back to the shuttle buses, got back on the train, back on the RER, and made it home around 4 p.m.

Allison and I decided we would grab an early dinner, as she hadn’t really eaten all day, and then enjoy a Seine River boat tour, before figuring out where we would watch the evening’s swimming competition, where Summer McIntosh would eventually go on to win her second gold medal of these games in the 200-metre butterfly.

We decided on a Moroccan place near the apartment (because, you know, when in France…) and had the waiter pick us a few of his favourite dishes over a bottle of Chablis. And that’s when I hit the wall. It was only 7 p.m., we were only halfway through our meal, but I was done. Eleven days of travel, nearly a week’s worth of Olympic events every day, the heat, the Metro rides, all of it – I was done. Suddenly, Allison’s day off to chill looked like a pretty smart move.

The river tour would have to wait. We finished dinner, paid our bill, picked up a couple of items at the nearby convenience store, and retired back to the apartment where we watched swimming on my laptop in bed, before I feel asleep shortly after 10 p.m. Tomorrow we would rise early to catch the first day of the Athletics competition. Tonight, I would sleep.

I had been saying to Allison at the start of our dinner that it hadn’t felt like 32 years since I first came to France on a backpacking trip. That, in my mind, I still felt like that 21-year-old back in 1992, excited to get up to see what the new day would bring. That was in my mind. My soon-to-be 54-year-old body had other ideas.

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