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Olympic inspiration

Sunday, August 12, 2012: Jennifer Aniston finally confirms it – she’s engaged!; My daughter dives head first onto our light-beige couch with a tomato-sauce-covered-face; Masses of pesky raccoons continue their German invasion and the Olympic men’s marathon is super-duper-wicked- awesome

Sunday, August 12, 2012: Jennifer Aniston finally confirms it – she’s engaged!; My daughter dives head first onto our light-beige couch with a tomato-sauce-covered-face; Masses of pesky raccoons continue their German invasion and the Olympic men’s marathon is super-duper-wicked- awesome.

What a race! Over a hundred twists and turns past some of London’s most historic buildings and thrilling to watch 23-year old Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich upset the Kenyans to win the first gold for his country in 40-years and its third Olympic medal ever. Equally exciting to watch our guys, Dylan Wykes, Eric Gillis and Reid Coolsaet climb up and up and up through the rankings to finish 20th, 22nd and 27th respectively. Not too shabby considering the brutal conditions – it was so hot Eric Gillis’ shirt quit in protest (see pic) – and especially impressive when you add up the stats like Reid does here and see that as a team Canada  came third.

I love watching these races.  Not necessarily because they show me what’s possible – because let’s be honest the closest I’ll ever come to running an Olympic Marathon is streaking it (that was awesome), but in a weird way it shows me that all us runners are kind of the same. Sure, most of us will never run a sub-3:15 minute kilometer once, let alone 42.2 times consecutively, but most of us runners do work our butts off in the hopes of achieving a goal that sometimes we get  and sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes things are out of our control – heat waves or blizzards, stomach problems or cramps. Sometimes we accidentally lose our clothes (happens to the best of us Eric – seriously during last week’s speed work I had the same problem see below) and sometimes it’s just a bad day.

But then sometimes we hit our paces and make our goals. Even better? Sometimes, like Kiprotich, we do what no one, including ourselves, expected us to do. More.  That’s why we keep at it — for that one time, for that one triumph. And of course, the free race t-shirts.

So way to go boys – keep up the good work!

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