If I was an athlete...

If I was an athlete…

… I’d be getting ahead by putting my feet up!

It seems that, at every turn, I’ve been the big bad reality wolf recently, quashing people’s hopes that they’re going to finally get to play that promotion game, reminding them that even a truncated or delayed season was a faint reality.

But, finally, the sports world seems to be coming to the realisation that 2020 just isn’t going to happen.

And while every man and his training-partner dog has been busy demonstrating that they are tougher and more resilient than the next, devising a mega weights workout for their back garden, or calculating just how many miles they can tot up within a two kilometres of their house, the clever ones have been saying nothing.

In a competitive world, becoming ever more professionalised, sportspeople have been conditioned to prove that they want it more than the next, to fight against all the odds, to not, for one second, give up hope. It’s as though they must always fight to the bitter end, or to die trying, only stopping when they’ve been dragged kicking and screaming from the battlefield.

And that’s part of what makes sportspeople so special.

There’s little room, then, in that world for the ones who’ve played this smart. The ones who walked away as soon as the going got tough. The ones who figured that life itself was the only thing we’d be battling for this year. The ones who realised that being sensible, saving the strain for a later date, would yield greater results.

So often sportspeople talk about the sacrifices they make. The time they miss with their children. The lives put on hold. The constant effort. The pain.

And while not all alternatives are possible right now, there are still many opportunities to catch up on some of those missed life experiences. To give the body a break and let it fully recover for once. To do new things. To prepare for life after sport. To, perhaps, extend a career at the other end.

Whether you’re currently uncovering mental resolve you never know you had as you sprint up the stairs for the 400^th time today, or you’re giving the body the first holiday it has had in years as you finally crack on with that online course you’d put on the long finger, 2020 will certainly be a year to remember.

But if you're not rolling around the garden in tears of laughter after doing wheelbarrow races with those unluckly enough to share your space, you're probably doing this wrong!