The
summer before my sophomore year in college, I dedicated myself to qualifying
for the national meet as an individual.
My college was in the NAIA division and, as a team, we weren’t that
strong. Also, it was hard for us to have
the minimum runners to make a team. If I
qualified as an individual, I would be the fourth or fifth person to do it and,
I believe, the first who was not a senior.
That
summer was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. (Yes, I am old.) I got
to watch Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Joaquim Cruz, Sebastian Coe, Carlos Lopez and
Mary Lou Retton (and many others) in their gold standard events. Every night I would be so pumped up, I HAD to
go running. It may have been midnight
but I was running down gravel roads, looking up at the stars and envisioning
how I would qualify for nationals. I
would wake a few short hours later and go work in the corn fields or my other
job. I loved it.
There
was a dynamic euphoria about those two weeks.
In my mind, I was watching people who were the embodiment of what I
hoped to accomplish. Then I went out and
took the steps, literally and figuratively, I needed to take in order to reach
my goal. At that point in my life, other
than being the next wildly famous and successful singer, I didn’t know what I
wanted to do when I grew up. I was
beginning to wonder if I had what it took to push to the world class level of
running. As I flew down the road those
summer nights, I got a glimpse of that horizon.
In
I Corinthians chapter 9, the apostle Paul speaks of how he buffets his body and
makes it his slave. Olympians understand
this phraseology. Their bodies are
toughened in order to handle the rigors of their sport at that level. Needless to say, I have enjoyed the Rio
games. In particular, I love the track
events. I have an understanding of what it
took for them to get there and it always makes me a little sad when the games
end.
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