In early youth, in addition to the normal gymnastics exercises “school sports”, there is also an interest in the sport that gives you this feeling of inner satisfaction.
It was no different for me, but the range of sports on offer back then was quite limited. Neither the BMX nor the skateboard had been invented or were more widely known. Even the humble mountain bike wasn't really on the market yet. What you did have as a child was a bike. My parents always had a lot of understanding for children in this area, they always made sure that the size fitted.
I got my first “racing bike” quite early on, rather than a typical Torpedo 3-speed bike. It was one with wider wheels, mudguards and a pannier rack. These days they're called “gravel bikes”, which sounds much more interesting. At some point, I got my first racing bike and from then on, cycling was an important part of my life.
But as was normal for me, I was always interested in far too much. My neighbor was a tennis teacher and I really wanted to learn that too. The advantage: we had a tennis hard court right next door, the disadvantage: my parents were strictly against it. They were afraid for my arm. You could kind of understand that, my mum always had extreme problems with her wrists. So tennis was more of a secret “operation”.
I got tennis rackets as a present from a school friend, he had new rackets every year and left me his old ones. I was grateful to him. Tennis then disappeared from my life again at some point, too little time, too little money and the people in a tennis club were not the kind of company I liked.
It was only through my husband that I came back to tennis. He had been playing tennis at the club for a long time and lovingly convinced me that the people at the club were really nice and not the way I remembered them. In the meantime, I had convinced him to take up cycling.
From then on, we had two sports that were very fulfilling and I was amazed to discover that the people at a tennis club are really very nice. From then on, we spent all our time at the tennis courts in the summer and they offered to put a letterbox at the front to save us the time-consuming journey home to collect the post.
Some of us meditate to bring body and mind into harmony, others go out into nature or are always in balance with themselves anyway. I chose archery for this, I can hardly explain what happens inside me there, but after 2 hours with the bow I am completely relaxed. You are simply alone with yourself, the target and the bow. Sometimes I just sat down at the target line and internalized the arrow flight in my head. After that, I was a new person.