I found my father’s training notebook on his nightstand.
At first, it reads like data. Dates on the left. Heights on the right. The record of his jumps, measured carefully, almost clinically. March, May, June, July, and so on. Page after page.
Then, the pattern shifts.
There are stretches where the entries thin out, then stop altogether. Blank pages. And then, suddenly, they return. New dates, new numbers, written with the same deliberate hand, as if nothing had been interrupted.
Between the entries, he writes to himself:
El dolor es temporal, pero rendirse durará para toda la vida. (Pain is temporary, but quitting lasts for the rest of your life.)
The notebook begins to feel less like a record and more like a conversation. Something he turns to when the body resists, when the numbers don’t follow.
There are drawings too. Small stick figures, bent at impossible angles, carrying a pole toward a bar that never moves. As if he is drawing the version of himself he still sees.
En esta etapa de la vida, todavía me siento joven, pero requiere más esfuerzo. (At this stage of life I still feel young, but it requires more effort.)
My father trained with the Colombian Olympic team when he was young. His life was built around repetition. Run, plant, jump. Again and again. Until the movement became instinct. His body still carries this memory, but at a cost: screws in his knee and shoulder, a reconstructed foot, a torn calf, and scars layered over years of falls.
And still, he trains.
I read the numbers again. The heights are lower now. Measurably, undeniably lower.
I used to think I understood what guts is. In my world, it meant long nights, pushing through exhaustion, studying harder, staying later, and enduring the demands of medical training and research.
Ganar requiere talento. Repetir requiere carácter. (Winning takes talent. Repeating takes character.)
I thought that was what guts looked like: pushing through until the body gives in.
But then I see him outside, measuring his steps, gripping the pole, beginning his run with the same quiet focus.
Not as fast. Not as high. But still going.
I’m no longer certain I know what it means to have guts. I don’t know if I’m watching him lose something, or witnessing a kind of strength I don’t yet understand.
Maybe guts has nothing to do with what the body can still do, but with what the spirit refuses to release.
Andres F. Diaz
Phoenix, Arizona
