Serious & Focus = Day One Zero Week. "Grit, Pain, Determination"

            With other peripheral stresses on the sideline it was time to ramp it up.  It has been nearly a year since a serious injury.  Welcome to Zero Week!  Things are going to get rough.  This is where the money is made.  Yeah the extra eighty pounds, yes as in 80.  It will stop.  Sincerely enough is enough.  Taking into account the necessity to beware of injury again.  Sometimes one must run before they walk.  That time has long since arrived.

            I certainly know what it takes to succeed.  Hence this entry’s title.  Grit - Pain - Determination.  There will be tears, there will be blood, and lord knows there will be bruises and not aching but SCREAMING muscles.  Every single morning.  One day on, one day off.  There is no championship, there is no glory.  It will hurt.  It will test my commitment each time out the door.  Some days I will hardly be able to walk.  But this is the necessity.

            A darkness of storm had rolled in.  It was painful.  Every nerve in every muscle being shocked to life as each pounding of landing toes.  For two hours.  Heart racing, lungs burning.  At the first half mile Is this really a good idea? It would be so easy to just quit.  Can’t quit, too late for that now.  Damn it hurt.

            As the saying goes, ‘pain is weakness (or sometimes fear) leaving the body.  Grit is a word associated with Scrappiness, hard deliberate work, “Heart” and not the Valentine’s type.  It was high time.  Pain will be.  This is not the easy road.  Can a repeat be achieved, a perfect undefeated stretch? No absolutely not.  There will be defeat and failure on this road.  It is not the path of journey for the faint of heart.  Every time you falter, every time you fall down, you believe.  It is about getting up when you fall, no matter what.  You don't quit because of one bad day, or two or ten.  You keep pushing.  You get better, and then you push some more!  It is not easy, it is hard, tough, and it WILL suck.  It is a gut check.  When you run out, you reach way down and find some more.  When you run out again, you just keep going.  One foot in front of the other.  It is that simple.  Not easy, simple, and it will be the toughest thing you ever do.

            Once, many lifetimes ago a small grouped believed.  It was my group.  We worked, we toiled.  It was painful.  We bled, we cried, we persevered, we worked, we ran, we pushed, until our lungs burned.  Every week we broke records and expectations.

            There was no cruise control.  The determination and tenacity was ferocious.  We needed to run a mile we ran three.  We believed, and then in almost a blink of an eye.  For hundreds of miles we ran, hours and months continued the push…  In a very quick 202 seconds, we expended everything.  In 202 seconds at 5000 feet, we dominated.  We were ready that day, and we brought it all.  We believed and we triumphed.  We brought fire, and white kids from the ‘under privileged’  we finished.  Undefeated in every footrace, for the entire season.

             The emotional impact was exhilarating.  The physical pain, the exhaustion was complete and total.  In Just over 2 minutes and 20 Seconds (exactly 2:21.7), we had garnered the school’s first State Championship in several years.  We had completed our self given task.  Against the odds, with poor facilities and less than the best resources.  We pushed our own boundaries.  When it was over we could barely walk.  Slumped together arm to shoulder, we managed to take our victory lap.  The last event in the last classification at the State Track Meet.  Out of some 40 schools competing overall, with a fraction of members compared to the rest, tied for 11th out of 40 overall as an entire team.  By the end of lap 1 (out of 4) we had dropped to #3 in the final race.  By the end of lap 2, we were in the lead.  A lead that was not surrendered even though it was challenged the last 3 laps.  An epic, legendary performance.   

            There was merely fleeting hope for the competition.  As happened many times before throughout the season, when it came down to Grit, Heart, and hard tough work, we had never considered enough had been done by us.  We always pushed.  We stayed late after exhausting practices.  Just being good enough was not enough.  We didn’t want to be better than “them” - we wanted to be better than us.

            Each week, brought faster times.  Each week brought a faster all time record.  Each week we worked our guts out, and then pushed some more.

            No, I know what grit is.  We knew pain, and blisters, and exhaustion.  We embraced them.  We were in the end, rewarded with satisfaction.  In 202 seconds, we had staged a monumental coup d’état of our field.  That final day as we walked out to begin the last race, we knew that we could win.  We knew we would win.  We just had to give everything, and were burdened with the simple task of not screwing it up.

            It was a triumph of will over odds.  Now on the eve of the two decade anniversary, it is time again to work.  It is time again to be better than myself.  Everything must be pushed to the limit, and then far beyond.  As the thunderheads rolled in over the valley, black and full of attitude, I embraced the suck.  It will be my only dependable companion in this journey.  It is time to reinvest, gritty scrappy determination.

            Today was DAY ONE, ZERO WEEK.  The journey has begun.  It will suck.  It must be done.