Working hard or hardly working?

If I learned anything from high school it was this: find something you want, figure out a way to achieve it, and work as hard as possible for it.  For my four years spent there, I had one goal.  Everything else in my life was secondary.  Hereford was once known for its prestigious running.  I wanted to restore the name of Hereford and show the rest of the running world that Hereford was not just a cross country course but a team of proud dedicated runners with a rich history.    

I worked as hard as I could every day.  Every day I was confronted with the same choice; do I run until I pass out or take it easy?  Taking an easy day was rarely an option and usually only done because the coaches told me to.  This level of intensity quickly caught on to most of my teammates.  It didn’t take long for us to see the results. 

It’s true what they say, “success breeds success.”  The new incoming classes would see how my class trained and think that we’re all crazy.  But then they’d see us at races and notice something.  We were winning.  They wanted to win too.  It didn’t take long for the new class to become just as crazy as mine.

It isn’t a hard concept to understand.  The harder you work at something, the more you’ll appreciate it.  For me, running was my life.  For four years I had feared my final day of practice.  And on that day I experienced a level of pride that I can only imagine happens seven or eight times in a lifetime.  Those years were the most painful years of my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

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