This recent focus of mine to run 1000 miles in a year has had me thinking a lot about my "career" in sports!
I've often pondered some of the great life lessons that I've learned from all of my years of playing sports competitively and for fun.
I thought it would be fun to share a series of posts here on some of my personal victories and defeats and some of the principles that they have driven home to me over the years!
It could sound like a lot of boasting (and honestly there is probably a little bit of that) but I hope you will listen for the lessons I've learned and forgive an old guy a few trips down memory lane for the sake of a teaching moment!
First of all, I'm well aware that I'm no Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice etc! I was probably only a little above average as a high school kid and I never did make the college sports scene.
I grew up loving football and in elementary school I was introduced to track and field and did pretty well at it. I never was any good at baseball and eventually found that basketball neatly filled the empty time in the winter between my other two favorites.
I was good enough to letter in 3 sports for 3 or 4 years in high school and to start on the football and basketball teams 3 of those years but that's about it. There were lots of personal victories and defeats along the way and those are what I want to share with you and see if I can convey what they have taught me.
I'll start with what I have always considered my greatest personal victory in sports.
Interestingly, it came in a team event in what is normally a sport dedicated to individual performances.
I've won many ribbons, medals and awards over the years including a medal at the state track meet, but the one that has always stood out to me happened in 8th grade in a tiny little town called Bowie, Az. Why, because I learned more about myself in one minute there than maybe at any other time in my life!
It was towards the end of my first year in a new school. We had a track meet at our neighboring rivals with 5 or 6 different schools there. I actually had a good day there, I think I won 4 blue ribbons in all now that I think about it. But I don't have any memories of the other events.
One of those blue ribbons though still occupies an honored place in my office even today.
One of the last events of the day was the 4 X 440 yd relay. It's a race where a team of 4 guys each runs a full lap around the 1/4 mile track before handing off the baton to the next teammate. First team to complete 4 laps wins!
I think I was the only one of the four on our team who had much experience running this race. The other guys were more accustomed to the shorter sprints or other events. So I was the one whose job it was to run the final, or anchor leg.
Normally, in high school, the 440 is almost an all-out sprint for the entire lap and is strategically a very difficult race. However in junior high it requires an even more disciplined approach. You have to figure out how to run as hard as you can but still have enough energy left to finish at a full sprint. Finding that balance is the real challenge!
I had the opportunity to run a lot of relays through the years with some really talented athletes. But this one taught me a personal lesson about "how bad do you want it"!
My teammates performed admirably, but when my turn came to take the baton for the final lap, there was one team that had pulled ahead of us by some 10-15 yards.
Now that doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that you only have one lap to make it up in and you are trying to do it against the other school's best runner who has his heart set on maintaining that lead for his team.
On top of that it just happened to be our arch rivals who we had to catch!
As my teammate was racing towards me, I realized that I had a split second decision to make. I could either run my normal race strategy and hope for the best at the end, which would probably result in a second place finish or I had to think of something quickly!
With a lead like they had, nobody was going to be angry at me if I couldn't overcome it. But it's at times like that when you need to learn to ask yourself one of life's defining questions...
What If?
Are you willing to "leave it all on the field" for the chance at a victory? Or will you allow yourself to be content with second place?
I knew second place was in the bag, but...What If...I could catch him???
The chances of having enough gas left to overtake him at the finish line were slim and risky at best.
So I made the decision that if we had any chance at all at winning, I had to catch him right now and hope to out-last him to the finish line.
With a successful hand-off from my teammates who had given it their all to put us in a position to have any chance at all...I took off at a dead sprint as hard as I could go!
I actually caught him at about the 100 yard mark and in my young junior high mind, I thought I had him beat! I thought that when he saw me catch him so fast, it would be so demoralizing that he would just give up and I'd breeze right on by to a victory!
But I had forgotten to count on his own intense competitive spirit! There was no give in this guy! He wanted to win as badly as I did!
So rather than settle into a nice easy reserved pace until the final 100 yard sprint for the finish, he took my challenge! It immediately escalated into an all-out sprint with over 300 yards still to go!
This was the part that I hadn't counted on! I had not prepared myself for this obstacle! I had thought that my initial sprint from a fresh start would assure me a victory.
Isn't that how life usually works? We sprint off after a new victory, thinking that we will get it done in the initial rush of effort, only to find that almost anything worth while requires real time, effort and perseverance!
Back to the race. I now found myself locked in one of the defining battles of my life!
We were both good sprinters so nobody could gain any significant advantage for the next 250+ yards. It really settled down to a contest of who could hold on to this killing pace for the longest.
You're running all-out, lungs screaming for air, legs beginning to turn to rubber, brain telling you to STOP torturing yourself, it's only a stupid junior high track meet for heaven's sake! Can I keep going longer than him? Is he going to give up first or am I?
But something deep down in the human spirit is programmed to win! To become the best we possibly can! To give our all to something we deem worthy of our efforts! Can we endure to the end? Can we win at what's important to us no matter what the naysayers and competition may throw at us?
On that day I learned that if I could hold on long enough, if I wanted it bad enough, if I could keep going even when it seemed impossible, I could win at what was important to me!
We came into the final 100 yard straight-a-way neck and neck, then somewhere about the 50 yard mark, I saw him begin to fade. Somehow I had been blessed with a little bit more stamina or a little bit more adrenalin that allowed me to keep going just a little bit longer than my challenger!
I don't know how much we won by that day because that was not what was important. The victory was what was important for our team. I don't know if any of my teammates or my opponents even remember that day because in the grand scheme of things it was really almost irrelevant.
It was an obscure little junior high track meet at an out-of-the-way little school somewhere in the Arizona desert. But for me it was a day that will probably live forever in my memory, not necessarily for the victory in the race, but definitely for the lessons that I'm reminded of every time I see that little blue ribbon on the wall in my office!
I can win! I can persevere even when it's extremely difficult! You have to keep going UNTIL IT'S DONE! If it's worthy of your time, never, never, never give up!
I've often pondered some of the great life lessons that I've learned from all of my years of playing sports competitively and for fun.
I thought it would be fun to share a series of posts here on some of my personal victories and defeats and some of the principles that they have driven home to me over the years!
It could sound like a lot of boasting (and honestly there is probably a little bit of that) but I hope you will listen for the lessons I've learned and forgive an old guy a few trips down memory lane for the sake of a teaching moment!
First of all, I'm well aware that I'm no Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice etc! I was probably only a little above average as a high school kid and I never did make the college sports scene.
I grew up loving football and in elementary school I was introduced to track and field and did pretty well at it. I never was any good at baseball and eventually found that basketball neatly filled the empty time in the winter between my other two favorites.
I was good enough to letter in 3 sports for 3 or 4 years in high school and to start on the football and basketball teams 3 of those years but that's about it. There were lots of personal victories and defeats along the way and those are what I want to share with you and see if I can convey what they have taught me.
I'll start with what I have always considered my greatest personal victory in sports.
Interestingly, it came in a team event in what is normally a sport dedicated to individual performances.
I've won many ribbons, medals and awards over the years including a medal at the state track meet, but the one that has always stood out to me happened in 8th grade in a tiny little town called Bowie, Az. Why, because I learned more about myself in one minute there than maybe at any other time in my life!
It was towards the end of my first year in a new school. We had a track meet at our neighboring rivals with 5 or 6 different schools there. I actually had a good day there, I think I won 4 blue ribbons in all now that I think about it. But I don't have any memories of the other events.
One of those blue ribbons though still occupies an honored place in my office even today.
One of the last events of the day was the 4 X 440 yd relay. It's a race where a team of 4 guys each runs a full lap around the 1/4 mile track before handing off the baton to the next teammate. First team to complete 4 laps wins!
I think I was the only one of the four on our team who had much experience running this race. The other guys were more accustomed to the shorter sprints or other events. So I was the one whose job it was to run the final, or anchor leg.
Normally, in high school, the 440 is almost an all-out sprint for the entire lap and is strategically a very difficult race. However in junior high it requires an even more disciplined approach. You have to figure out how to run as hard as you can but still have enough energy left to finish at a full sprint. Finding that balance is the real challenge!
I had the opportunity to run a lot of relays through the years with some really talented athletes. But this one taught me a personal lesson about "how bad do you want it"!
My teammates performed admirably, but when my turn came to take the baton for the final lap, there was one team that had pulled ahead of us by some 10-15 yards.
Now that doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that you only have one lap to make it up in and you are trying to do it against the other school's best runner who has his heart set on maintaining that lead for his team.
On top of that it just happened to be our arch rivals who we had to catch!
As my teammate was racing towards me, I realized that I had a split second decision to make. I could either run my normal race strategy and hope for the best at the end, which would probably result in a second place finish or I had to think of something quickly!
With a lead like they had, nobody was going to be angry at me if I couldn't overcome it. But it's at times like that when you need to learn to ask yourself one of life's defining questions...
What If?
Are you willing to "leave it all on the field" for the chance at a victory? Or will you allow yourself to be content with second place?
I knew second place was in the bag, but...What If...I could catch him???
The chances of having enough gas left to overtake him at the finish line were slim and risky at best.
So I made the decision that if we had any chance at all at winning, I had to catch him right now and hope to out-last him to the finish line.
With a successful hand-off from my teammates who had given it their all to put us in a position to have any chance at all...I took off at a dead sprint as hard as I could go!
I actually caught him at about the 100 yard mark and in my young junior high mind, I thought I had him beat! I thought that when he saw me catch him so fast, it would be so demoralizing that he would just give up and I'd breeze right on by to a victory!
But I had forgotten to count on his own intense competitive spirit! There was no give in this guy! He wanted to win as badly as I did!
So rather than settle into a nice easy reserved pace until the final 100 yard sprint for the finish, he took my challenge! It immediately escalated into an all-out sprint with over 300 yards still to go!
This was the part that I hadn't counted on! I had not prepared myself for this obstacle! I had thought that my initial sprint from a fresh start would assure me a victory.
Isn't that how life usually works? We sprint off after a new victory, thinking that we will get it done in the initial rush of effort, only to find that almost anything worth while requires real time, effort and perseverance!
Back to the race. I now found myself locked in one of the defining battles of my life!
We were both good sprinters so nobody could gain any significant advantage for the next 250+ yards. It really settled down to a contest of who could hold on to this killing pace for the longest.
You're running all-out, lungs screaming for air, legs beginning to turn to rubber, brain telling you to STOP torturing yourself, it's only a stupid junior high track meet for heaven's sake! Can I keep going longer than him? Is he going to give up first or am I?
But something deep down in the human spirit is programmed to win! To become the best we possibly can! To give our all to something we deem worthy of our efforts! Can we endure to the end? Can we win at what's important to us no matter what the naysayers and competition may throw at us?
On that day I learned that if I could hold on long enough, if I wanted it bad enough, if I could keep going even when it seemed impossible, I could win at what was important to me!
We came into the final 100 yard straight-a-way neck and neck, then somewhere about the 50 yard mark, I saw him begin to fade. Somehow I had been blessed with a little bit more stamina or a little bit more adrenalin that allowed me to keep going just a little bit longer than my challenger!
I don't know how much we won by that day because that was not what was important. The victory was what was important for our team. I don't know if any of my teammates or my opponents even remember that day because in the grand scheme of things it was really almost irrelevant.
It was an obscure little junior high track meet at an out-of-the-way little school somewhere in the Arizona desert. But for me it was a day that will probably live forever in my memory, not necessarily for the victory in the race, but definitely for the lessons that I'm reminded of every time I see that little blue ribbon on the wall in my office!
I can win! I can persevere even when it's extremely difficult! You have to keep going UNTIL IT'S DONE! If it's worthy of your time, never, never, never give up!
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