It's only the end of a chapter

Ten years ago I started something in order to be involved and make friends. I joined my middle school track team in 7th grade for the simple reason that my parents forced me to get involved. The fall of that same year I decided that it was time for me to abandon my less than mediocre soccer career to join the Cross-Country team. I joined because I was a weak and thin-skinned 12 year old who liked the warm, loving nature of the cross-country coach more than the emotionless, stoic personality of the soccer coach.

I never would have thought that that decision would have shaped my life immensely.

Flash forward almost 10 years. Tomorrow, I will toe the line for my last collegiate cross-country race.

I have been with this sport for 10 years, almost half my life. To say that tomorrow will be an emotional day for me is a HUGE understatement. It will probably be a day I will remember forever, but not only because of the fact that I stuck with a sport for 10 years.

Tomorrow will be a day to remember because of the blessings running has bestowed upon me.

I found my passion and it has provided me with more smiles then I could have ever imagined.

Find your passion and realize that it will never be perfect, but it will be yours.

Defining

I don't know where we went wrong. I'm sure my 8 teammates who were with me along with my coach are all thinking that same thought. The truth is, none of us know where we went wrong. We felt ready and we felt determined. All of us had the same thoughts going into Saturdays race. We were returning 4 of our top 5 from last years 10th place team and we were coming off a solid performance at the conference meet the week before.

We felt like we were the team.

I guess we weren't.

The truth is, this blog post has been written and deleted numerous times. I just don't know what to write. I want to write, but cannot think of what to write. I don't want to talk about everything working out for a reason or you win some you lose some. I don't even want to talk about how running isn't everything or how you cannot define yourself by one moment. I don't want to write about these things because it would be shallow of me to write about something I did not firmly believe in.

Do I think we are good? Yes, I think we are great, but 10 years from now no one will care about what I think. Ten years from now people will only look back at the results and those results say we weren't good.

There are many different variables that go into racing. Variables that to the outside eye are non-existent. Variables such as the 40 mph winds we ran into or the pancake flat course we ran on. Yet none of these variable matter. We did not show up when we needed to. Do I think we can bounce back? Absolutely. We're too strong to not bounce back, but do I think it stings? Hell yes. This will sting for a very long time. This is be in the back of our minds for a very long time.

This will define us until we prove otherwise.

I guess that's how life works too. You are defined by your failures until you have enough success to prove to people otherwise.

We are allowed to be confused. We are allowed to question why, but above all, we must look ahead and prove to those outsiders that we are capable of much much more.

History

There's a saying that someone is crazy when they try to solve a problem the same way, each time expecting different results. We live in a world where we are suppose to learn from our mistakes. The best way to ensure history does not repeat itself is to learn from the mistakes we've made in the past. I've made plenty of mistakes in the past, we all have. The key is taking the mistakes we have made and turning them into a learning experience.

I ran the most miserable race of my life, on the biggest day of my life. When I toed the line for the NYS Cross-Country championships I did not know what I was going to do. You see the whole season I had trained for one thing: to make states. What I never thought of was what happens once I do that? I had set my goals and accomplished my goals. Therefore, I was toeing the line without any sense of what I was running for anymore. Yes, I wanted to perform well, but I wasn't half as prepared as I was the races leading to that moment.

Flash forward 4 years. After an eerily similar college running career, I find myself in a similar situation. Similar, but not the same. You see I had a goal this whole season and I was blessed enough to have accomplished that goal. This time around however, my goal had two parts. I planned ahead. I assumed that I would accomplish my first goal and focused solely on the second. When my first goal was in jeopardy, I stepped up to the challenge. Now however, there is no more looking back on that goal. I am here. It is now time to step up again. This time it is to take care of the second goal I have set for myself.

In life, we will always be setting goals. However, we fail to think about what happens once they are accomplished. We should always have multiple goals in our lives. We should always be striving for something. One belief I live by is that when a great accomplishment happens, relish in the moment, but then understand that there are many moments to come. When I was younger, I did not understand this concept. I relished in the one accomplishment I had achieved. I neglected to see that there were more accomplishments around the corner. I just needed to be ready.

Then I was not ready.

Now, I am.

Will you be ready?

Streaks

We sat at our MAAC Championship banquet and watched the Iona College Gaels walk up on stage to collect their championship trophy. We also sat there and listened to the MAAC commissioner comment about how it was their 21st consecutive MAAC title. For twenty one straight years they have won the MAAC title. That means that from the year I was born until today Iona has never lost a conference championship. It is a streak that I acknowledge is much more impressive then it is given credit for. However, as impressed by the streak as I am, there is always a common theme among streaks...They have to end.

They have won for 21 straight years, yet I could only sit there and think about the one year they don't win. I have never in my lifetime seen them lose, yet all I could think about was the one moment when they do. People might think I am crazy. I would most likely agree with them. I am crazy, but you have to be crazy in order to believe in what many people might call the impossible. All streaks end. It isn't a crazy concept that I've made up in my head. It is fact and it has numerous real-life examples that back it up.

Why am I writing about this? I'm writing about it because there will always be times in our lives when we feel down. There will always be times when we believe someone we work with, are friends with, or related to, gets everything they want. We will sit there an wonder why not us? We will wonder why, after all the hard work we put in, we are not getting what we deserve.

This streak has taught me one thing. What is going to happen that one day it comes to an end? Will we be too busy complaining that the opportunity passes us by? I've always believed that complacency is the enemy of victory. When you get what you want over and over again, how badly are you going to continue wanting it? How badly are you going to continue working for it? Sooner or later you will get lazy and assume it will just happen. On the other hand, when you are constantly denied something you feel is rightfully yours, that is when you are at your strongest. When you are the ones fighting for what you want, that is when you believe the most.

All streaks have to come to an end, but we need to be ready for the moment they do. We need to persevere and continue to inch forward step by step. It may take 10 years. It may take 20 years, but one day that streak will end and when it does we need to be ready.

Greatness is not a gift. Greatness is achieved.