When I was a kid, I thought that I hated all sports. The only types of sports that I was exposed to, after all, were team sports. I was a pretty coordinated kid, but I wasn’t a very good team player. I didn’t have an easy time paying attention to the instructions of the coach, and I wanted to do everything on my own. I didn’t really care whether our team won or lost. If I had been competing on my own, I think I might have liked it better. Nevertheless, I assumed that sports just weren’t for me until I reached the age of 20.

That is when one of my friends turned me on to some other types of sports. He was involved in all types of adventure sports. He loved rock climbing, off-road biking, and many other activities that I had never even contemplated before. I had never really thought about these as sports before, but the seriousness with which he took his activities made me realize that that was precisely what they were. They were competitive sports, and he excelled in them. He was not a professional, of course, but he was an athlete nonetheless.