“Water cuts through rock, not because of it’s power, but because of it’s persistence.”—James Watkins
This is one of my favorite quotes…which may be why I love distance running so much. Distance running, like life, rewards persistence and persistent people.
At the beginning of each training cycle, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. At the beginning of the summer, we look forward and it is twelve weeks until our first race at Earlybird, and twenty weeks until league championships. That amount of time feels like forever…how can we keep working so hard, for so long? It seems impossible to keep focus for so long. Perhaps there is so much time that it doesn’t matter if we skip a few workouts, and start working hard…later. Next week, or the week after. Or maybe if we are feeling insecure, twenty weeks seems like no time at all…and we are tempted to be heroic and ramp our mileage to double what we have ever done before—right away (don’t do that! You’ll get hurt)
The answer is that distance running rewards persistence. Distance running rewards those athletes that get out there day after day, out on the roads logging a few miles every workout, and the next week a few more. It’s hard to see the improvement from one run to the next sometimes, but we have to trust that each mile we run contributes to our goal. Distance running does not reward those one or two heroic amazing workouts as much as it rewards a summer logbook filled up with consistent numbers. (Have you ever watched a stonecutter at work? He will hammer away at a rock for perhaps 100 times without a crack showing in it. Then, on the 101st blow, it will split in two. It is not the 101st blow alone which accomplished the result, but the 100 others that went before as well.)
My experience is that life is like that, too. College is not about that one all-nighter or the one incredible term paper so much as four years of consistent results, whether that is a string of As or Bs or something in between. I think you will find that in your career, the single brilliant idea—for a company, for a novel, for a software program, for a cancer cure, for a symphony, for a non-profit company—is less important than the months and years of effort to turn that brilliant idea into a fabulous result. For your friends and family, they are going to value you more if you are there for them when they need you every day or week than they are going to value you for that one incredibly fun event. Putting the effort into making things happen, whether that is this summer of running to get a great cross season or the effort to accomplish something important and lasting, is more important than thinking about how great it could be.
As our friend Josh Cox says, “There is no luck in distance running, it’s hard work, it’s getting out the door. Like life, you get out what you put in.”
So as we look forward to our summer of running…I hope that you are persistent, that you get out there day after day and log a few miles consistently (persistently!). Even if you only get out the door for a half hour of running, I’m happy for you not only because you are going to have a really good cross country season (and if you run consistently this summer, you will have a successful season of cross!). I’m more excited for you because you are exercising your persistence ‘muscles’ that will lead to other great successes in your future.
You may remember Josh say to us the last time he was here, “The first step is the best step, it’s where intent meets action. Don’t talk about it, be about it.”
Think persistent!
See you on the roads!
–Coach
Thanks to Josh Cox, one of the more persistent people I know, who has shared many discussions with me on this topic…
