The "high" of working out

By Ed Piper

I would run in the cold, wet--even rain of Chico--to work out, singing Chicago's "Feeling Stronger Every Day" in my mind or out loud (not much of one for headphones or air pods). Memories of the damp conditions, much colder than it gets here. Fond recollections.

I thought of this Chico State memory as I did my current workout just now, walking rapidly for 30 minutes. There is a liberation as the mind goes free, I suppose the endorphins are releasing. I have always enjoyed jogging (now walking), able to take in the outdoors without interference from podcast, music, other things piped into my ears.

Little did I know at the time of the workouts I undertook on the grass fields behind the athletic complex at Chico State, that my chance at playing NCAA basketball had passed. I enrolled at CSU Chico as a junior college transfer after my sophomore year, knowing that I had a chance--but it would be pretty competitive, even tough--to make Coach Pete Mathiesen's Wildcat team. And if I didn't, I made sure that Chico had a journalism program that I could invest myself into, to develop my writing and reporting.

The closest I ever came to competing in the NCAA was JV NAIA basketball at tiny Occidental College near Glendale, Eagle Rock (greater L.A.) my freshman year. Playing roundball was fun, enjoyable. I had no personal coach (they didn't exist at the time), I didn't undertake any special workouts. I did try to improve my jumping later, working out post-graduation in Santa Barbara at Nautilus, kind of a new thing then.

But nothing more. There was a certain joy in playing and competing for the enjoyment of it. Certainly, playing with teammates gave me a lot in the way of camaraderie and fellowship.

Singing the lyrics to "Feeling Stronger Every Day" (it came out as a single in June 1973; I enrolled at Chico in September), there was optimism, a bright look ahead. Youth. Energy. (Way more than I have now).

Not making Mathiesen's team, not even by a long shot, I poured myself into my journalism classes and reported on several sports the Wildcats played. One of my fellow JC transfers from Moorpark College in Ventura County was devastated when the roster was posted, and later dropped out from school and repaired cars (which he could already do) at JC Penney.

City league was a lot of fun--organizing a team, on a freezing cold night in Chico putting my hands alternately next to the car heater as I drove to a game.

Intramurals were a blast. Several guys like me, 6'5" or so who had been stars in high school, organized a dunk-ball game at a local elementary school on eight-foot baskets. We swept the blacktop court as best we could with brooms we brought, because there was slippy-slidy sand on it.

Then we declared anything goes: you could touch a ball in the cylinder, take a feed right over the hoop and slam it through, block a shot already arcing down toward the basket by swatting it away.

And--the elementary school court was so short, that on a fastbreak, one pass and the shooter would be either dunking or shooting immediately after a couple of steps going the other way.

The no-goal-interference rule made things wild, so you had to pretty much slam the ball through or it would be rejected before it nestled through the net.

A greater reward, not anticipated till I actually moved there, was playing men's basketball in Mexico City two years later, and winning a tournament in an Olympic venue (Mexico City hosted the Olympics seven years earlier in 1968). As I remember it, our guard Tito (this was pre-shot-clock days) stole the ball with 52 seconds left and laid it up for the winning basket.

"Feeling Stronger Every Day" blended the optimism for the future with the energy and effort necessary for working out in that cold, rainy environment that is Northern California.