Monday, December 17, 2012

The Spirit of a Warrior

My son is a runner, actually he is a very talented runner.

The other night he came to me with a very serious question, I could tell that he’d been thinking about it for some time.  He said; “Dad, why is it that here I am, tall, lean and running hard, exercising, eating right and really trying, and yet I’m struggling to achieve my goal times…I’m only going so fast…but yet,  I know that somewhere in Ethiopia or Kenya, there is a kid, the same age as me, same build, etc. but with less advantages…and he can probably run faster than me?  What is the difference?”

WOW…what a thought provoking question.  It was one that I really had to think about.  You see on the surface it doesn’t make any sense.  In the USA we have more money, state of the art science, excellent coaches and training facilities…but yet we still can’t seem to churn out world class distance runners very effectively…why is that?

To understand, you have to turn what makes sense on its head.

Here is what I told him: