It's a fair question. He/she (?) is not the first to ask that. I ask myself that all the time.

The short answer is "because I feel like it."

That's what an old tennis partner used to say, just loud enough for his doubles partner and opponents to hear, after hitting a winner.

Athletes know the feeling by other names — runner's high, in the zone, out of your head, grooved, unconscious — but I like "better than sex" for those rare moments of perfection for us amateurs more familiar with failures that are "worse than dental surgery."

As one of the PGA's attorneys said in court last week, professional athletes are held to high standards for the integrity of the game.

"When you become a professional athlete you don't always get to do everything the man on the street gets to do," said Rich Young, a lawyer in Colorado Springs who has worked on the Floyd Landis case and other major doping suspensions.

If, as a weekend warrior, you could take drugs to boost your strength, speed your recovery, improve your time, or calm your nerves, would you do it? I'm not so sure.

Enjoy 'em while you got 'em, athletes. Here's one man's story of injury, decline, and hopefully recovery next year.

The event includes something for riders from 5 to 55 years old, ranging from a 50-yard dash to a 40 minute race over the 1.5 mile course. There is also a men's pro division with a 50-minute race.

Registration will begin at 8 a.m. and the first races are at 9 a.m. Mountain bikes are welcome, and the entry fee is $30 for all categories ($10 for childrem 14 and under), benefitting the Church Health Center.

Cyclocross is spectator friendly and held on an obstacle course that requires riders to dismount several times and carry their bikes.

The best beers for athletes, according to an unscientific survey of athletes I know, are these:

More than 16,000 people signed up to participate in last weekend's 2009 Komen Memphis-Midsouth Race for the Cure in Germantown. The St. Jude Memphis Marathon in December is at capacity with 3,500 participants in the marathon and a good chance of making the goal of 12,000 more in the FK and half marathon.

There are some lessons for backers of other sports vying for attention and funding in Memphis.

In January I set personal goals for strength, weight, and competition with a goal of winning a national age-group championship. So far, so so. I've met two of the three goals but have been backsliding lately, and I come up with new excuses every week.

• Rosie Murrell

There is a method to the blandness. Dr. Scott Morris thinks this is the way you get people who are beyond out of shape to exercise, lose weight, and change their lives.

It is possibly the loudest sport not involving firearms or motor vehicles. The ball comes off the wall with a crack like a rifle shot, with the noise confined to the enclosed court. During breaks in the pro matches on Sunday, the music was cranked up to the decibels of jet engines. This is a sport for people who don't like to sit still.

Nobody plays it better than Kane Waselenchuk, who won the pro tournament for the fifth time in three straight games. He may be the best of the best, by the widest margin, of any athlete in any sport in the world. The guy is almost unbeatable. The only thing to stop him was a two-year suspension for drugs a couple years ago. Now he's clean and a machine.

The 14th U.S. Open Racquetball Tournament at the Racquet Club was also probably the last one for Memphis. The event lost its title sponsors — formerly Promus and Hampton Inns, which are no longer Memphis based companies — and is likely to move somewhere else next year, possibly Minnesota.

Not guilty on the language tort, but more on that later. The more interesting question is how much influence the sports intelligentsia should exercise in making public policy. Less than they think, is my opinion.

And every once in a while it does. Last Sunday, three people died running the half-marathon in Detroit, a jinxed city if there ever was one.

Could it happen here at the St. Jude Memphis Marathon on December 5th? Highly unlikely, but anything is possible when thousands of people participate in extreme sports, say runners, doctors and race organizers.

To those of us who have spent our athletic lives straining, lifting, grunting, running, jumping, or chasing a ball, this is very strange. Not that we aren't envious.

I hope I'm wrong, but Allen Iverson's torn hamstring, especially if it is black and purple as he says it is, could keep him down for quite a while.

One serious Memphis tennis player (and tennis dad and patron of both public and private tennis clubs) thinks so.