Have you ever run a race of any kind? If your answer was “No,” I won’t hesitate a minute to bet you are mistaken. The fact is, every one of us is, right now, running a race of some kind. If nothing else, we are all running the human race. We start somewhere on something with an end in mind – our Finish Line. We encounter and react to the challenges of the course. How we handle what we encounter makes all the difference.
If we aren’t running against someone else, we’re running against ourselves. Sometimes we’re in a race to find our better self, before the lesser person we could become brings us down. In some races we control the Start and the Finish; in some races we are in the middle before we realize it has begun. Some races are grand spectacle; other races, sometimes great races, go entirely unnoticed.
man running down mountainThe Race may be the Greater Reward than the Finish
For some, the race is the reward unto itself. Some see every detail of the race as if it were under a microscope. Others run their race without giving it the least consideration. Some race with pain, hating every minute. There are those for whom the race is exalted joy. For some, the race itself is more meaningful than the Start or the Finish, no matter how spectacular either might be in itself. Mark Twain was born (his race Start) during an appearance of Haley’s Comet in 1835. He died (his race Finish) on the day of its next appearance in 1910. The life he lived, the books he wrote, and the legacy he left humanity, shine more brightly that the comet which bracketed his race.
For most of us, whether we are shop speaking of our personal life or our professional life, how we run the race may be more important than where we started. The character and courage shown in the body of the race may outshine the placement of our Finish. Ultimately, we choose and run our races. Life is a marathon, but it is also filled with hundreds and hundreds of sprints. What distinguishes our performance in the marathon called “Our Lives” and the sprints we face on its course is our Preparation, our Training.
men running through fireCommitment, Focus and Concentration
For me, I am focused on what I want to do. I know what I need to do to be a champion, so I am working on it.”
“As long as I am in great shape, as long as I have trained and trained hard, no one can beat me.” – Usain Bolt, World Record Holding Sprinter
Usain Bolt knows he must train to perform with excellence in his races. We must train to be excellent in our races too. Effective training begins with commitment and focus. We do not perform because we have excellence. Rather our excellence is the product of identifying what needs work and working on it. We become what we repeatedly do. Aristotle said, “Excellence is not an act, it is a habit.” To know what we need to work on, we do a Personal Training Needs Assessment and, then, build a Personal Improvement Plan; we conduct a personal Deep-Look and Make-Over. This involves:
Determining the race we’ll run
Defining our current fitness level
Defining needed fitness level
Defining the Gap
Developing a Training Plan
Executing the Training Plan
Evaluating and adjusting the Training Plan
race up mountainTraining for excellence requires concentration. It is always about being “present in the moment,” being aware of what is happening in you and around you at all times. Edwin Moses, perhaps the greatest hurdler of all time, believes that concentration is seeing everything that matters and nothing that doesn’t. In his view, concentration is what makes some athletes better than others. He shares, “You develop concentration in training and concentrate during a meet (a race).”
If you quit in Training, you’ll quit in the Race
The 100 meter Olympic Champion, Jesse Owens, spoke often of the importance of training to his success. He spoke of a lifetime of training to run a ten second race. For him the reward was worth the training. He identified and overcame every weakness in himself he could identify. He never stopped training for his ten second races. He never quit in a race.