I’m rounding the corner and I can see it. It’s the two mile marker up ahead. It’s also the point at which I start the second lap in my run. Everything about today, however does not feel good. I do NOT want to keep running. Every fiber in my being wants to give up. I want to keep on going straight and finish the run at two and a half miles instead of the scheduled four. That would be the easy way out, right?
Just then I remember a movie quote that a good friend of mine used to play for me at work. A short little Mexican guy named Ralph would play this audio clip from the movie Any Given Sunday
You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the f***ing difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying!
Here’s a link to the clip on YouTube if you’d like to watch for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs
So in the spirit of that speech I put my chin down, gave up my whimpering and fought on for the inches that made up the rest of my four mile run. When I got back and checked my time, it was actually the best time in the past couple of weeks that I had run the four miles.
Then I got to thinking about training. When do we actually train ourselves? When it’s easy? No, not really. In life we train when it’s hard. I don’t mind saying that I am a Christian and I grow and am trained in my faith when things go wrong and when life is not easy. Those are the times when I am forced to lean on God and pray even more for His help. In other activities do we train our bodies when doing easy things? Are we training while sitting in the leather recliner munching down chips and salsa, drinking cold beer and watching Dancing With the Stars… uh I mean football… yeah football? No, absolutely not. We’re just getting fatter and lazier. So the same thing applies when running. If the run is just the easy same old 2 miles then it’s not training. It’s when we really push ourselves to the limit that we find what we can accomplish and it’s in those times that we allow ourselves to grow and become more than we are.
Thanks, Ralph for the inspiration to keep on training today. I owe you one!