Yet another gem from againfaster.com. I love these guys...
His name was Brett and he was the fastest kid I ever knew. He was shorter than I was, and lighter. He never seemed to get tired. He ran the 400-meter race every meet, and that confused me. I didn’t understand anybody who would want to do that. Every time he did, though, I was relieved. If he ran the 400, then it meant he couldn’t run the 200, and that was my race.
Senior year in high school, I only lost the 200 was when he was in it. I couldn’t catch him.
The end of the season came, and our team of athletic misfits gathered in the center of the track for the league championship meet. A few hours later, I was setting my blocks for the 200-meter final. Twenty-two and a half seconds after the gun, I crossed the line ahead of everybody else.
Call it hubris if you like, but there was never any question in my mind as to what the result would be. Over my entire athletic career, the only moments of clear, unquestioned confidence came at the start of that event. They were the kind of moments where nervousness somehow transforms into energy instead of dread. The kind of moments where your body is light and your mind uncluttered. The kind of moments I never felt when Brett lined up beside me.
I lost my competitive fire not because I’ve stopped wanting to be the best, but because I stopped wanting to be disappointed.
No matter how many races I won, I never believed I could beat Brett. And so I never did.
And that’s a hard habit to break.
From the first CrossFit workout I hit, and almost every subsequent one since, I knew where I would finish before the clock ever started. I never thought I could win, and so I've finished lower far more often than I have higher.
High school track and field long gone, it’s been awhile since I've felt that unquestioning confidence. Years away from organized sports have dulled my desire to win, and my inability to transcend my own muted expectations have left my progress stagnant in the gym.
I never beat Brett because I knew I never could. I didn’t let him make me better. Instead, I felt sorry for myself. I settled for being good rather than the best. And as a result, I never grew as an athlete.
I’ve watched this video (Usain Bolt's last race) fifteen times now, and every time I do, I am amazed at something. Something other than Usain Bolt and his new world record. It comes at the end of the video, while Bolt takes his victory lap.
The camera finds Tyson Gay, second place in the race and amongst the few men on this planet even remotely in the same league as the Jamaican. The race is over and the results are on the board. Bolt runs a 9.58, Gay a 9.71. With a slightly injured groin, Gay sets the American record and runs the third fastest time ever recorded.
The camera finds Gay, and though we can’t see his face, the gesture he makes is familiar to us all. It’s one of disappointment.
Instead of lining up next to the 6’5” Bolt and thinking, “I’m just going to try and beat everybody else,” he went after the top dog. And because he did, he ran faster than he ever had before.
You can’t learn confidence, but you can earn it. Gay may have lost that race, but he knows he can go faster. He knows what it feels like, and it’s that feeling that he’ll be chasing every race, whether Bolt lines up beside him or not.
I never let Brett make me faster, and I haven’t let James Hobart or Stacey Kroon make me faster, even though I line up with them for every WOD. My progress is minimal and slow and I have grown impatient with it.
I lost my competitive fire not because I’ve stopped wanting to be the best, but because I stopped wanting to be disappointed when I was proved anything less. I have forgotten the single most important lesson we learn from CrossFit: Through struggles, to the stars.
I have beaten James at exactly one workout over the past year and change. It’s time I finally went after the big dog.
- Jon Gilson
Apply this shit to baseball, realize there is a message every time I post one of these that goes beyond CrossFit and workouts. Granted, very soon you will be experiencing feelings similar to the ones you've read about in the last couple months, these articles delve much deeper than just CrossFit.
