My "Bob" story Pt. 1

Preface: I started typing, and this got to be pretty lengthy. So I'm going to split it into two parts. This is part one.




For as long as I can remember I have been a bit of a sports junkie. In elementary school I prided myself on my pickle skills. Come junior high I took up cross country. I wasn't too enthused about it at first to be honest, the idea of running for running's sake seemed borderline insane. After the first few practices and seeing my time start to drop it became tolerable.

Somewhat surreal side story... to this day, the first memory I have of running cross country was in the summer of either 7th or 8th grade, it's kind of a blur now. I was walking up the steps from the junior high to our little hill where we set up "camp" before starting our runs and I see some barefooted (yes, barefoot, running long distance) maniac turning the corner and sprinting up the hill. It was Chris Dyer, probably trying to work up some callous or something for the marine boot runs he would soon be doing. Or just displaying that token Marine mentality, whatever you want to call it. Weird how one thing unfolds to another sometimes...

There were three important life lessons I learned from cross country. First, running is not fun. For me at least, I don't think I ever wanted it to be fun. In a twisted way, I think I ran for the pain more than the joy. Sometimes (and more often than not during junior high at least) I let the pain get the best of me. If I got tired, just walk! Duh!




Then came high school. Here I learned two other things. For one, there will always be doubters. Regardless of how much you may think you have busted your ass, there will always be someone out there screaming for your failure. I learned to not only accept this, but embrace it. Use it as fuel for the fire. Ask anyone who was at the Richmond Invitational (admittedly, the one and only race I ever ran in when we were by far the best team) when one of the more vocal parents (nicely put) decided to run in the race also. Yes, this was a high school race. But this man also knew everyone involved and it was a small event anyways, so coaches and parents were allowed to join in.

That our team whole of five average runners finished in the top ten out of about 100 runners. It was the only medal I ever won.




Lesson number three. My legs never were the limiting factor. Neither were my lungs. The mind is always the limiting factor. That damn ugly step brother of Jiminy Cricket just reinforcing what all the doubters are saying on the outside. Sometime's running is even more than an individual sport. Sometimes I had to nearly divide my own body into two parts. Screw you brain, show me what you got legs. It is because of this I started to learn to embrace the pain. It took a while to figure it out but I started to discover that the more I made my body hurt while training or at a race, the better I felt at the end. By the end of freshman year, the last year I ran, I understood those three lessons pretty well. Running isn't fun, but it doesn't have to be, there will always be doubters, and my mind is always the limiting factor.

Continued tomorrow...