I’m never gonna be the strongest. Or the fastest. Or the winner of the race.
Because I’m not that person. But I don’t mind.
I don’t have a fire raging in my belly, no inferno that lives and breathes and cries for conquest. No voice urging to push harder than the guy beside me, no compulsion to pass anyone in sight. No drive to search the horizon for the next guy, and the next. I don’t have that competitive edge.
But I don’t mind.
I don’t understand athletes who need to bleed to make it count. I respect it. Am in awe of it. But don’t wish it for myself.
What I have is my own. I will be the strongest I can be. I will be the fastest I can be. If it means last place, I rejoice in my finish. If it means the back of the pack, I rejoice I wasn’t passed by succeeding waves. If someday it means the middle of the pack, I will rejoice in miracles. And if it ever means an age-group win… well, let’s not get crazy.
I cheer those who go before me, the ones who finish their race before mine starts, who wait patiently for me to straggle into T2 so they can get their gear and go home. I look at them with admiration – but never with envy.
I may never believe I deserve to run beside the strongest and the fastest, to share a course with the elites. But I love the sport that lets me try. So I will run my own race and revel in it.
Because I have a different kind of fire. Long, slow-burning embers. Hot enough to burn away the hurt of expectations – or lack thereof – placed on me by others. A belief that if I go on as if there is no such thing as failure, then I will not fail. My fire isn’t the stuff of champions, but it brought me to endurance sport just the same. Me. The non-athlete, the short one, the slow one. But also the strong one. And the strong-willed one.
I don’t need to tend my fire, it tends to me. No dazzling promises of glorious wins; I don’t need them. Am deaf to them. My mind’s secret murmurs are much more seductive. Just a little farther… keep it up… you can climb that hill… just a few more seconds. Like a light in the dark, my voices take me where I need to go. They push me beyond my fears, beyond my physical challenges. Push me until even I believe I deserve to be called a triathlete.
So I’m never gonna be the winner of the race. But I don’t mind. Because I run my own race, in my own way. And I win it every time.
4 comments:
You said this so well, I have many of the same feelings. I'm much more social than competative and somehow (in my brain anyway) the two don't go together very well.
I know what you mean. I play games for fun, my husband plays them to win. He now refuses to play certain games with me (Risk in particular) because I literally refuse to attack, and he'll never let me live down the "why can't we share the world equally?" incident. : )
My husband won't play games with me either... but I think that's because he just doesn't like games. He likes manly man sports like football and wrestling-- sports that women don't usually play. When I told him I wanted to do triathlon he looked at me real skeptical and said "why would you want to race against a bunch of guys?" Obviously he had never seen a triathlon. Ha! Remind me again why we keep them? ;)
Because in the long run they're cheaper than batteries and they sometimes mow the lawn ; )
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