Run the race well
How do we finish a race well? What does that even mean? In a race only one person gets the first place trophy. My goal is to run every “race” well. Even if there is no trophy to take home I want to run it in such a manner that I feel my effort was focused, precise and effective.
One “race” I try really hard to run well is the way I treat my wife. As you can imagine, knowing Bre, this is not a hard task. She is an incredible woman. But still, this is something I have to work on. If I don’t treat it like it's a competition putting in the focused attention then it is easy for me to get irritated at some little thing she does. Or if I am not looking for any excuse to tell her how important she is to me then I can easily forget those very things I value.
Or how about the sleep race? Man, I need help on this one. If I let it happen I will stay up super late and my body now just automatically wakes up at 4AM and won’t go back to bed. So obviously I have to do the right thing and plan accordingly. Or I will short myself and reduce how well I recover from work and working out. Which then makes me more hungry throughout the day and less likely to want to do what's right for my body…
If we go back to running a race. Let's take Dijon (who just finished his race a few hours before this posts) for example. I don’t know all of the ins and outs of his training, sleep and diet routine but I am sure Dijon paid attention to all of the details before racing at CIM. I am sure he followed a routine of some sort to get his miles tapered at just the right time for his body before the race. I am sure he tried to work on getting to bed at a certain time so he had enough time to recover. What about his diet? He probably had some practice runs with different meals, squeezes, drinks and supplements to make sure things would work ok on race day. Basically he prepared. He actually focused on the task in front of him more than just deciding one day and then running out there and doing it the next.
I think we can learn from that and take it into other areas of our lives. How cool would it be for our fitness, personal life and work to examine each of them the same way we would a 26.2 mile race?
Find an area in your life and treat it like it is a race worthy of taking home 1st place for. Get really good and working each little piece of it so that you can improve it all over time. You can do this.
Sarah competing at Legends
It's coming up. Coach Sarah Howard will be competing at a huge event. It is actually an event put on by the same people that will be running the Masters events at the Games this year. So for all of you that see this woman putting in the work, know that this is such a great experience for her. Know that when you have seen her in the gym over the last couple months and cheered her on she takes that on the competition floor with her. She is a woman that feels the support with so much love and care. So thanks for doing that.
We will be running any event that they stream on the lounge tv. Sarah isn't sure where they will be streaming yet but as soon as she knows I will get the information out to you all. So pumped for her. This is going to be a huge year for Sarah!
Legends Championship: December 7-10. Tempe, Arizona. Arizona State University.
Keep building,
James and Bre Cooper
