C.: Well, now that everything is going in the right direction, I suppose I should get to training for the Cat Skills Games, since they are less than one month away. D.c. gave me this workout, but I just don’t feel very motivated today. I’ll call d.c. and see if he can motives me (ring).
d.: Hi, Cal.E., have you finished the workout I gave you to do today?
C.: No, d.c. I just can’t get motivated. I’m down in the dumps. Afterall, I’m just a ne’er do well cat with two divorces under my belt on two different planets who was kicked out of her home galaxy and came to earth to give birth to fourteen kittens. Then, I abandoned them, leaving my ex-husband with the responsibility to raise all fourteen of them while he worked a fulltime job. How can I aspire to do anything productive?
d.: Well, I can give you a few examples of people who started their lives off badly, and then did amazing things. Leonardo di Vinci was the illegitimate son of a church clerk who was thrown into prison for minor offenses several times in his youth. When he was older, he came up with the design for the helicopter. It took several hundred years to invent the materials to build one.
Di Vinci was one of the first people to declare that the earth was round, not flat. He studied the way the sun set into the horizon and figured that out. He also was the first person to theorize that land existed beyond Europe and Africa by studying a map of the continents and deducing that there had been more land attached to these two continents at one time. When he was…mature, he oversaw the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Neither he nor the man whom many consider to be the greatest American president, Abraham Lincoln, never obtained any formal education.
Closer to home, I had a good friend who was taken out of her home due to abuse and raised in a foster home. She went on to obtain a degree in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University, a very high-level private school. She then secured a job with Compaq computers when it was a fairly new company. She got in on the ground floor of a company that became successful. Does that help any?
C.: A little, but I need more. Tell me something that you did that will get me motivated to train for the Cat Skills Games, please.
d.: Okay, read this.
"And those that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk, and not be faint."
- Isaiah 40:31
This is my favorite inspirational verse in the whole Bible. I read it before every race, run, or ride I do. I even have a tee shirt with part of the verse printed on the back. I’ve been told several times when I wore it to a race that it encouraged the people who saw the verse printed on my tee shirt to finish the race, even when some thought that they couldn't go on and finish.
That’s the main reason I wear it; to encourage others, as well as me.
That tee shirt became a self-fulfilling prophecy on an extraordinarily beautiful spring day in Brazos, at my favorite run. This run, of course, is my favorite distance, ten kilometers.
I started the run at a 7:45 per mile pace, nothing spectacular, but good enough to stay in the top 20, even though my shoelaces came untied twice. One-half of the way through the run, another runner alerted me that my right leg was bleeding. It seems that my $150 knee brace was rubbing a cut on my leg, prompting a steady flow of blood to trickle down my leg and bloody my shoes and socks. At mile five, a deputy sheriff, who was riding support on this run, radioed the paramedics at the finish line that there was a bleeder coming through. That is, if I even finished the run.
It wasn't nearly as bad as it looked, but I simply didn't have enough time to stop and pour cold water on it to stop the bleeding if I wanted to hit my goal. I continued on, with bloody socks, shoes, and all, and finished the run at an 8:05 pace. It wasn't a spectacular time, but it was good enough for me to take first place in my division for the first time in my life.
I suppose it would be more dramatic to say that I dove for the finish line and touched it with one finger, à la Bill Bell at the 1997 Hawaiian Ironman, or that I mimicked Julie Moss in the February 1982 Hawaiian Ironman distance triathlon, and crawled across it on my hands and knees. The truth is, however, that I planned my race and raced my plan and, for once in my life, it was enough. Not just for my first division win but, for once, I knew that if I could do the whole race over, I wouldn't have changed anything, except for my shoelaces, no matter how much I worried, planned, or trained. For once in my life, I trulysoared like an eagle, and it was enough!
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