It looks like it's going to be us three holding down the fort this year. Darren Huang's coming back from serving a mandatory year in the Taiwanese military, Nancy from graduating Wheaton College in December and me from a spring semester at Wheaton as well.
I like this simple quote from the movie Cool Runnings a lot; "If you're not enough without a gold medal, you'll never be enough with it." In this age of sport, serious athletes around the world are demanded to endlessly train and compete to achieve and achieve and achieve and win races that people, countries, fans, coaches insist is worth the price. We so often give up everything and our future–just look into the world of American college athletics and their "athlete-students." Yet, athletes are constantly bewildered by and unprepared for their transition from their sport to a post-competitive world outside of their athletic bubble. This means that athletes are not just not enough without a gold medal, but not enough even without their sport (yes, the athlete identity crisis). Of course, we see the importance of determination, perseverance, resilience, and so on through the list of common sport-associated qualities that build character. But athletes often wonder why those who encouraged them never suggested to form a clear, tangible vision of how their life in athletics now can benefit those around them as well as how an athlete can still be a part of life outside their sport before the inevitability that age, injury, burnout or failure has ended their career.
In the end, most athletes have to face the fact that whatever sport they competed in was everything to them–as well as whatever "gold medal" they achieved. Why do we continue to let this happen to athletes and fellow athletes? How can athletes now be enough without their "gold medal" and their sport.
The answer I think has to do with things that really matter in life–like loving God with all our heart, soul and mind as well as loving our neighbor as ourselves. And that love meaning doing things for others and being a part of things that matter. This is a mindset as well as physical action. And with this in mind, TSP is going to be working with a couple organizations this year–R33M.org and World Sport Chicago–so we'll probably post some things about that in the future.
Anyways, we're coming to the end of our 3 week training camp in Calgary, Canada, training as hard as ever and Nancy's going to be posting cool videos and photos after this I think!
Our first races begin in mid-October.
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