Running The Race

This week’s email from Active.com, had a link to a great article by John Bingham, “Doing your best”. In the article Bingham talks about growing up doing your best always seem to be not enough unless you were the one setting the standard.

“…it became a matter of your being able to do not YOUR best, but THEIR best. For many of us…[it] suddenly became an opportunity for us to be ‘not as good as..’”

Growing up, I would never considered myself as athletic. I can remember many times my “best” was to just finish. One time in gym in the 8th grade we were playing flag football. I was lucky enough to block out a football player. He was embarrassed that a tall skinny guy could block him out so on the next play he came after me. He kept pushing me until I fell and broke my arm.

Bingham goes on to write:

What has changed, or what can change, is that we can now say to ourselves that our best IS good enough. Our best. OUR best, not the world’s best, or the group’s best, or the family’s best, but OUR best is good enough.

I understand that I have no more to offer than my best. It will be better than some and not as good as others. I’ve come to stop comparing my ability to run, to think, to love, with the people around me. And I’ve come to understand that my life, like my marathon, is for me — to get through any way that I can.

Over the years, I have learned to measure my success by my measuring stick and have learned that doing my best is something to truly celebrate. Coming to a sport like running later in life, I see that it is truly an individual sport (even though I may be racing with thousands of others.) I track my times and do my best, but it is by my standards and my PRs, no one else’s.

Age has brought a greater perspective of what’s important and what’s not and how to properly determine my best. I have learned that no matter where I am in the pack, I can do my best.

Onward and upward.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Why I run. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.