07-07-10

What would you do for a Nike shirt?

At work we had this chal­lenge where for 6 weeks, each employee had the oppor­tu­nity to run 50, 100, 150, 200, or 250 miles.  The miles were tracked using the Nike+ Sen­sor.  I’m a swim­mer, not a run­ner, but I decided to do the 50mi chal­lenge since those who com­pleted their goals got a Nike dry-​​fit shirt with a really sweet cus­tom design.

I had slacked off quite a bit the last cou­ple weeks, and the next thing you know, it’s the day of the dead­line and I still had 14mi to run.  Well, I hate run­ning, and I was not about to let the 36mi I had run go to waste (not to men­tion all the swim­ming I had given up for those 6 weeks).  So, I deter­mined I was going to run a half marathon that night.

It was about 10:30pm, and I had just fin­ished eat­ing a whole pizza and watch­ing a movie.  Need­less to say, that was not the smartest idea before run­ning.  I still got out there and started run­ning and I was pretty sick the first 2mi.  Finally after run­ning around the whole neigh­bor­hood and feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter, I decided to take it out on the main road.  I ran out into the hill coun­try where it was pitch black and I had no light.  Dodg­ing cars was only part of the adven­ture.  I also had a Rot­tweiler come out of nowhere after me, but a mix­ture of run­ning (faster than nor­mal) and yelling I think ceased his attack.

The whole run was 2hr 20min. I don’t want to run for a long, long time.  But it was a huge accom­plish­ment for me. I’ve never run more than 5mi but to be able to get up and run a half marathon taught me a lot about what I’m capa­ble of.  If I can endure some­thing like that for a t-​​shirt, it makes me won­der what I’m capa­ble of for some­thing even bigger.

I’m in the plan­ning stages of cre­at­ing a busi­ness and there’s been a lot of inhi­bi­tions, but after than run, I have a lot more con­fi­dence and moti­va­tion.  Every­one has dreams for their lives, and the biggest dream crusher is the per­son them-​​self. Go hard and be pas­sion­ate about what you want to do, don’t let your inhi­bi­tions keep you in bondage.  Peo­ple respect extremely extra­or­di­nary, hard work­ing, indi­vid­u­als.  For those peo­ple, where there’s a strong will, there always seems to be a way.

Get out there. Metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, dodge the cars, run from the attack­ing dogs. Persevere.

If you think and live like every­one else, you can’t expect to some­day live like no one else.

Andrew is a 20-​​something Chris­t­ian who adopted a sim­plis­tic lifestyle after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and real­iz­ing the van­ity of rush­ing around and all the mate­ri­al­ism of our soci­ety. He wants to squeeze the most out of life and live each day extra­or­di­nar­ily through sim­ple means. Andrew is the author and edi­tor of Live [Sim­ply] Free, and con­tin­ues on the jour­ney of declut­ter­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing his life. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Andrew_Randazzo.
Andrew Randazzo
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Posted by Andrew Randazzo » Motivation
  • The Roman­tic Realist

    Very timely. This sub­ject had already been on my mind this morn­ing when I read your post. It was very con­vict­ing.
    I love chal­lenges, but my flesh hates them! There are so many goals I wish to reach, but too often, when I hit an obsta­cle I end up giv­ing up instead of per­se­ver­ing to the end. Too often I find myself set­tling for medi­oc­rity instead of get­ting out there and “run­ning the race with endurance…for the joy set before me”. Thank you for posting.

  • http://livesimplyfree.com/ Andrew Ran­dazzo

    Absolutely, we all fall into those pits of medi­oc­rity and it’s com­fort­able down there, but that’s not our call­ing. We have a holy ambi­tion and should have a con­vic­tion that com­pels us to turn the world around us upside down. (1 Tim 4:12)

  • final​lyget​ting​to​even​.com

    Great job on your accom­plish­ment. I am not a run­ner, ter­ri­ble at it in fact, but I can walk. And walk & walk.… Most in one day was 36 miles, yes in ONE day. (It wasn’t my idea I just signed up and went along.) About mile #20 I was ques­tion­ing my own judgement..haha.

    But I made it and you are right once you get over that hur­dle you start to think and know that you can do so much more. (That’s why my next goal is to walk a 100K in a 24hr time period). (I told you my judge­ment was a lit­tle wacked)!

  • http://livesimplyfree.com/ Andrew Ran­dazzo

    Well, walk­ing isn’t too bad, but 100k is pretty crazy. I can only imag­ine what my legs would be feel­ing like.… Ok, done imag­in­ing, now back to swim­ming. :)