Olympic-sized lessons

Like just about everyone else at the moment, I'm a professional armchair sportsman.  Or woman if you're a feminist.  Or person if you're PC.

More a team sports kinda girl, I've not paid a lot of attention to the athletics, but I've been missing out.  It's got the lot.

I've just watched an athlete from the Bahamas stumble out of the blocks and break the start in the 200m semi-final.  Instant disqualification.  After, what, 10 plus years of training, he's out.  Just like that.  A split second of imbalance, or brain freeze and his Olympic dream is over.  Not that he ever had a chance of winning.  Bolt seems to have it sewn up already.  So what motivates these guys? What keeps them training, knowing that while Bolt remains fit he's unbeatable?  Especially the older guys who are lining up in their last Olympics.  What keeps their heads in the game?

A little earlier, a young Aussie girl, Zoe Buckman, was running in the 1500m semi-final.  Zoe finished 10th with a time of 4:05:03. She ran a PB by 200th of a second, yet she was a full 5 seconds behind the winner of her final.  She was never going to win the event, yet still she's trained and trained for years.  She discovered her time while she was being interviewed, and her whole face lit up with the knowledge that she'd just ran faster than ever before. At the age of 20, is that enough to push her to keep on working at it?

The semi-final straight before that, also the 1500m, had another Aussie running by the name of Kalia McKnight.  Her semi-final was much slower than the one that followed.  So much so, that Zoe's time was 0:00:08 faster than the winner. Kalia came dead last in her semi with a time of 4:08:44, and when interviewed, was devastated to have run so poorly and apologetic to all the people back home who had supported her.  She said she had no excuses - her legs just felt heavy.   Those of us who've done a little bit of running know that some days are like that, but it was interesting to see a professional athlete on the world's biggest stage also feeling the same.

So after my little afternoon of armchair athletics, which by the way has completely exhausted me, I've come to the conclusion that it really is ALL about what's between your ears.  And that even when you're competing against the rest of the world, in reality, you're only competing with yourself.