Running from Scratch Twenty Years Later

On our way to a high school track yesterday so I could run repeat miles (which Greg also ran with me), the Beatles song "Let it Be" came on the radio. I was immediately taken back over twenty years to when my high school head track coach Mr. Moody handed me a notecard that said "Let it be!" on it. He had heard the Beatles song and it reminded him of me and how that was what I needed to do. It wasn't coincidence that I heard it on my way to run a track workout, my first in over ten years.

As a high school runner, I had an incredible ability to push through the pain except on race days. Instead, on those days I would put too much pressure on myself and end up blowing off the races. Running meant everything to me: it was a means to a future of a dream of a college running career and the Olympics. I so badly wanted to make the state meet. I wanted to show the people in my life who hadn't been nice to me that I was so much more than they ever thought I would be. But I couldn't stop the mental side from getting in the way during competition.