fifteen-and-a-half seconds of sheer awesomeness

Today I went to my very first track meet. It's the final district meet we have this year; I missed the last one due to previous commitments.

I went to school in my uniform and left five minutes after the bell (missing a day of school is always a bonus, even though I do enjoy school). We drove for an hour and arrived at a very large, really fancy private boarding school. The students were all wearing button-down shirts, slacks or skirts, and ties. I wouldn't have been surprised at all if I had heard them speak with proper British accents. I got a kick out of seeing the students. I've always thought that I would enjoy a dress code like that.

Anyway, we pitched camp and warmed up and waited for the preliminaries to start. I was running sprints, the 100- and 200-meter dashes. I didn't expect to be any serious competition for anybody. I'm not a very good runner. I feel that I mostly excel at 50-meter dashes, and they don't even have those at high school track meets. I'm not really in track for the competition anyway. 

I just decided to give the race everything I had--to leave it all on the track--and I would be fine with that. One thing I was nervous about is that I would really mess up just because I didn't know what to expect, like which colored line was the starting line, and I wished I had practiced my sprinting starts more. But I didn't mess up, and I started well, and I gave it everything I had, and my 100-meter dash was glorious. I may not have made it to the final round, but it was the best 100 I have ever run. It felt ah-ma-zing. 15.45 seconds of awesomeness. . . and I wasn't even the last person to cross the line! That was really cool, because I expected that I would be the last. I didn't make the final round, but it didn't matter that much. I did my best, and it was good.

I wonder how much different my life would be if I completely poured myself into everything I did, like my 100-meter dash? If I chose to leave it all on the track, so to speak, and reach for my goals, completely focused? Breathe in, in, breathe out, out. In, in, out, out. Pump my arms. Elbows in. Do not look back. Push it; leave everything on the track. 

I think that if I really strove to attain excellence and poured my best effort into everything I did, I would be a lot more selective about my activities, etc., and just choose the ones that were really important and pertinent to my life. And then I would go for it. I'm learning that it's better to do a few things with excellence than to do a lot of things half-heartedly. I have a looong way to go here, but I'm making progress.

I'd rather not talk about my 200. . . no, it wasn't that bad, it's just that I do better with short and sweet races. By the end of the 200, I didn't have anything left in me to sprint across the finish line, and I wasn't feeling so good physically. It was a good 200 for me, but I'm just not great at longer distances.  

However, my 100 more than made up for my comparatively sorry 200, and I was still delighted. Now I have exciting new goals: to shorten my 100 and to improve my 200.  

The track meet was so much fun: fifteen seconds of bliss, hanging out with my team, enjoying the sunshine and the break from school, cheering on the others, and getting excited about next year. It definitely made all the painful days of practice well worth it, and I'm really excited about continuing to improve my running. This is me, delighted and excited: