My Three Favorite Olympic Moments

Dedication, Spirit, and Courage.

Each of those words sums up one of my three favorite moments from the 2008 Olympic Games.

Dedication - This one will be on lots of people's lists. A swimmer took advantage of his natural physical traits and extreme dedication to his training and made history this year. He won eight gold medals in the Olympics. It wasn't easy. There was one race won by one one-hundredth of a second. He didn't do it alone. In one of the relays his team was behind on his leg and another swimmer came from behind to give his team the gold. His dedication to pushing his endurance, strength and speed as far as he could paid off and he is in the record books.

Spirit - Another swimmer got in the water with two swimmers whose previous times were far better than hers. She dove in and swam her heart out, she pushed her body as hard as she could. When she touched the wall she turned around and looked at the times. She leaped upwards in the water and pumped her fist in a show of pride and victory. She had come in dead last. She had also beaten her best time by two seconds. She wasn't celebrating a medal; she didn't even qualify for the finals. She was celebrating the fact that she took her strength, endurance, and speed to a new level.

Courage - An Olympic hurdler walked out onto the track in his warm-up suit in front of thousands of his home country fans. Over a billion people recognized him as one of China's two greatest athletes and expected him to take gold. He tried a warm-up run of the hurdles and it was obvious his ankle was injured. The injury was to his Achilles tendon. He stopped his warm-up run after two hurdles and crouched down to rub his ankle. When it came time to race he lined up in the starting blocks in obvious pain. The pistol fired, the runners took off, but there was a false start. The agony of the takeoff was obvious on his face. As the runners headed back to the starting blocks he showed to me what was one of the greatest acts of courage in the Olympic games. He removed the number from his shorts, turned his back on the expectations of a billion people and walked away from the largest moment of his life to protect his body from further and possible permanent injury.

Sometimes it takes the most courage to recognize that it is time to walk away from something.

Perspective

Perspective

One fine July morning I put on my glasses, took my allergy medicine,
put on my shoes with arch supporting inserts, and got up to train. I
said to my wife, "I hate having to take allergy medicine to breathe.
I hate not being able to train barefoot. I hate having to have my
glasses to read words on TV."

As soon as those three sentences got out of my mouth I could taste the negativity I had just started my day with. So I started thinking
about those statements. I started thinking about the facts behind
them. I decided to step away from my emotional reactions to those
facts. I have allergies and I don't breathe well if I don't use some
type of sinus or allergy medicine. I have frequent flareups of
plantar fasciitis and am bowlegged, so training without the proper
support for my feet causes my feet, ankles, and knees to ache. I am
nearsighted so I need my glasses to read things at a distance.

At this point I had stepped away from my reactions to those facts and
was able to look at those facts as if it weren't me experiencing them.
I thought about what I would tell someone who had those issues and
had asked me for advice in dealing with them. I discovered that my
advice would be the same: Take your allergy medicine, wear your shoes, wear your glasses.

Then I was able to smile at myself and find some gratitude.

I am grateful that I have found affordable effective sinus medicine.

I am grateful I have found shoes that give me the support I need.

I am grateful that I have glasses that help me see well.