Reading Time: 6 minutes1 Corinthians 9:24
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Yesterday I had the chance to watch two events that taught me the importance of one truth. First, let’s talk about what I saw and then we’ll dissect what I learned.
What I saw – Part 1
Yesterday was Patriots’ Day, and anyone who knows anything about running knows that means the running of the Boston Marathon. Since it is pretty much the gold standard of marathon running, it’s the one time a year that I fork out money to watch a television broadcast on my computer. It’s also the one day a year that is my least productive, because until I’m fast enough to qualify to run Boston, I have to run it vicariously through people I know. This is done by text alerts and through online runner tracking, and while technology is amazing, the constant texts and page refreshes do make it hard to accomplish any real work.
So I’m sitting at my desk doing some creative work (creative license is a lot like poetic license in that you can do just about anything and still call it part of the work you’re not doing!) and the beeps are sounding on my phone while Al Trautwig and Larry Rawson give me the play by play of the race on my laptop, and for most of the men’s race Ryan Hall is leading and looking strong. Only down side to the race is that there isn’t an American woman anywhere near the front of the women’s race because Kara Goucher is still coming back from childbirth and isn’t as competitive as she usually is.
Just as I gave up hope of an American woman winning, I hear the distinctive Trautwig voice ask, “What’s this? A newcomer to the women’s lead pack?” I check the monitor and see little-known
Desiree Davila thrilled us!!
Desiree Davila running with and – perhaps more shocking – staying with two other Kenyan runners. They ran together for the final 10k and about a mile from the finish it became a two-woman race between Davila and Caroline Kilel. As they rounded the curve toward the end, Davila surged ahead only to find that Kilel answered and pushed a bit ahead coming down the final stretch. The B99 and I groaned as we watched the American’s hopes fading, but when Davila found the strength for one final pass, were suddenly screaming, high-fiving and three-throwing each other! Sadly, it was short-lived, and Kilel had the last surge and went on to win by 2 seconds over Davila. 2 seconds.
That’s how long it takes Apple to sell an iPad. 2 seconds.
If I had lost that race by 2 seconds, I’d have beaten myself senseless thinking about how close I’d come (of course, in this scenario I’d be a woman and that’s a little awkward), but Davila was all smiles recalling the race later. “It was the most excitement I’ve had in a race ever and just really carried me the last six miles,” Davila said. “I felt that energy, and I felt comfortable at the front and pushing the pace because of that. It really just carried me through to the finish line.”
While I was digesting how close our new-found hero had come to winning the Boston Marathon, I saw that the coverage had shifted to the men, and Ryan Hall was nowhere in sight. He had fallen out of contention, according to Trautwig, and I realized that the American draught at Boston was going to grow to 25 years. Hall, though, was upbeat in his post-race interview, and why shouldn’t he have been? He’d just run the fastest American marathon ever and finished 4th in the Boston Marathon. “I was out there running, and I was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now. I’m running a 2:04 pace, and I can’t even see the leaders.’ It was unreal.”
2 Americans, 2 amazing races, 2 losers, 0 winners, 0 regrets, and 0 whining.
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