When an ordinary 30-something athlete runs the 40-yard dash, it is a ponderous exercise that can be timed with a calendar.
Others, such as Trevor Harris, defy the calendar.
“I’m going to be 38 years old next year and I plan on being the most athletic, the strongest and the fastest I’ve ever been in my life,” the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ quarterback states.
Always a supremely conditioned athlete, Harris has immersed himself in an off-season regimen that is designed to fully repair a serious knee injury he sustained in a July 15 CFL game against the visiting Calgary Stampeders.
“Whenever something like this happens, it opens doors to learn new things, to develop new ways,” Harris tells Riderville.com from his off-season residence near Columbus, Ohio.
“The team of doctors who I’m working with was talking about the knee. I keep hearing this term ‘the new normal for your knee,’ and I don’t like that term.
“It’s funny, because I asked the doctors, ‘The new normal will be what?’ The guy was like, ‘Trevor, I don’t like that term.’ ”
Harris provided this description of the specialist’s prognosis: “I think your knee is going to be stronger, and both of your knees will be stronger than they ever have based on the protocols and the things that we’re doing to get you to this point. You’re going to look back and think that your ‘old normal’ was a weak version of yourself.”
The doctor proved to be a like-minded individual.
“That’s really where my mind is — just developing myself to the point where I have a new normal that’s a better normal than what I’ve had before,” Harris says.
“Once I do that, I know that I’ll be able to take off and learn through those new avenues instead of just saying, ‘How can I get back to homeostasis?’
“To me, it’s not even about that. It’s about being able to elevate above where it was before.”
That is saying something, when you consider that Harris is the CFL’s all-time leader in completion percentage (70.6) — someone who has thrown for 29,884 yards and 160 touchdowns over the past decade.
The six touchdown passes he produced for the Ottawa REDBLACKS in the 2018 East Division semi-final are a CFL single-game playoff record.
Keep in mind, too, that the 2023 Roughriders sported a 3-1 record in the four games for which a 37-year-old Harris was available for the entirety.
“Honestly, to me, age is literally a number,” he says. “I know that’s such a cliché, but I truly feel that I was moving around better than I ever have last year. I was able to use my legs.”
Ironically, his mobility contributed to the injury.
A 17-yard scramble on second-and-long ended when Calgary Stampeders defensive lineman Derek Wiggan accidentally rolled up on Harris’s right leg with slightly more than nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter at Mosaic Stadium.
He underwent successful surgery the following day to repair a tibial plateau fracture of his right knee.
At the time, neither Harris nor the team ruled out a return to the lineup by season’s end.
“I was told that the fastest they’ve ever seen anybody come back from this is five months,” Harris says. “I’m at four months and I’m frustrated that I’m not at 100 per cent. It’s one of those things where every day I’m striving to get to that 100 per cent.
“I probably could have played in the West final. I probably would have been about 70, 75 per cent, but I think I would have been able to play.
“For me to be able to play next year, I need to be closer to 100 per cent than 95 per cent for me to be able to look an organization and my teammates in the eye and tell them that I’m able to put them in a position to help them win a championship.
“I’ll never step in a locker room as a player if I don’t feel like I can provide that for my teammates and hold up my 1/12th of the offence to do that.
“I’m working every day and I assume that, by the time we get to the new year, I’ll be creeping up toward that 90, 95 per cent.
“Then, once we get to mid-February, that’s when I’ll be at a full 100 per cent and I’ll be able to have a three- or four-month time period where I’ll be able to put the best version of myself in my entire career on the field.
“I can promise you that next year will be the best version of myself that you’ll see.”
