Adversity and Resiliency

I was watching a pre-season Monday night football game between the New York Jets and the Baltimore Ravens when one of the commentators, Jon Gruden made an interesting remark about the New York Jets quarterback. The Jets quarterback is named Mark Sanchez. He played his college football at the perennial powerhouse, the University of Southern California.

Because the QB Sanchez played for an elite team and had an excellent offensive line protecting him, Jon Gruden implied he had not experienced much adversity in his collegiate career. Jon made the statement he wanted to see the rookie Jets quarterback experience some adversity and then see how he reacted. He mentioned a successful quarterback in the NFL needs to be resilient and have a short term memory. By short term memory he meant forget about your mistakes and move on - although you don't want to repeat your mistakes either.

I was absolutely rancid in my last 10K race. I could not have performed more poorly had I tried. I need to bounce back for my next race, a twenty kilometer race. I have a fortnight to prepare for this race. I am struggling with striking a balance with my intestinal fortitude toward wanting to accomplish finishing the race and the physiological reality of how capable I am of achieving this goal. We'll see how my training progresses these next two weeks.

Notes: I had my wife take a couple of pics with me decked out in my running duds. Let's just say I should not be wearing short shorts and a tank top yet. I really need to do some strength training over the winter to tone my muscles. It was nice I didn't look six months pregnant though, i.e., no signs of a pot belly.