"Every morning in Africa , a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa , a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running."
-anonymous
Some inspiring words from Coach Kiley:
What this quote underscores is that you are ALL training for your own life. Training for your health. Exercising for your sanity. But more than that, you’ve all put your bodies, minds, and souls on the line for others, people struggling for their own life. People who fight and survive cancer teach us a valuable lesson: to appreciate the lives that we have, the simple ability to get together, bond, and run/walk for a common cause… the ability to help another human being in a profound and meaningful way. People who succumb to cancer teach us another lesson: life is brutal and short and we should embrace the moment, seize the day, and dive into each and every opportunity that whispers to our inner-most children, beckoning us to come out and play. People never regret what they did in the grand scheme of life, they regret what they chose not to do, things they said they’d get to someday but just not now. You are all living this “Carpe Diem” life. You’re taking on the marathon, the half marathon, some for the first time, some for the 10th time, some to finish, some to run (or walk) faster than you’ve ever done so before! We do not care what you look like or how much ability God has blessed you with. We are less interested in what you have done than we are in what you are about to do. We are not going to listen to who you have been in the past, We'll only empower who you say you dream of being. Don’t even think you’ll be able to talk us out of who you declared yourself to be back in November. We are and shall forever be champions for you, the greatest version of you, even if you have trouble seeing that possibility right now. All of that said, this is the point in our training program where many people encounter the ‘gut check’ phenomenon…
THE "GUT CHECK" PHENOMENON
A very common term in competitive sports, the ‘gut check’ is a term that refers to when you question yourself, maybe you want to quit, maybe you think can't do it, it’s then and only then that you discover your true level of commitment, your true fire, drive, and passion. Are you all HEART or all TALK? When you overcome a gut check, you become tougher; mentally and emotionally stronger. This does not mean that you continue to RUN & WALK through an injury. That's not courage, that's foolishness; you’re merely setting yourself up for a MAJOR gut check to happen soon when you wind up with a major injury. Overcoming your gut check means that when you are fatigued, sore, feeling emotionally beat down… you persevere, you remember WHY you got yourself into this (program) in the first place. This training program is laced with opportunities to become a stronger individual spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, not to mention physically. It’s training to develop the character of a champion. And you are ALL champions! For some of you, it will be braving the cross training workouts we've told you to do in the pool and/or on a bike because you can not run for a week or even a month (or more). For others, it's just getting out of bed at 6:00am on Saturday when you “don't feel like it.” You will all have MANY gut checks in the half or full marathon, so we hope for your sake you have many before the event, to prepare you for the upcoming tests of will.
