Well you say impossible. But all I hear is I’m possible.” -Ted Lasso
Distance running is on fire right now. Yesterday the running community watched stunned as Kelvin Kiptum smashed the world record, running an astonishing 2:00:35 for 26.2 miles. Then a few minutes later we saw Sifan Hassan win her second marathon in a time of 2:13:44, which up until a few weeks ago, would have also been a new world record. As I jumped up and down in excitement, I looked at my girls and said, You will see the 2 hour barrier broken sometime in your lifetime. They didn’t really get it, but I hoped they would remember this moment. Humans can do incredible things.
Eluid Kipchoge’s mantra is No human is limited. We saw that yesterday. We saw that earlier this year when Courntey Dauwalter ran 3 100 miles races in less than 3 months. We saw that when Scott Jurek hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, from south to north, in 46 days. We see it time and time again in these incredible feats of endurance and speed. The crazy 100 mile events have now been replaced by the even crazier 200 mile events. And people are doing it. They are pushing past boundaries to find new ones and realizing the human spirit is hard to break. What limits us is our mind and when we decide those limits are no longer serving us, we toss them aside in order to make way for a new possibility.
My love for endurance sports stems from this very notion of breaking barriers. When we set out to do the impossible, we learn all that is possible. The first time I tried to break 3 hours in the marathon I ran 3:00:08 and as much as those few seconds hurt me, the belief that it instilled in me was much greater. Two years later and I still have a picture of me crossing that finish line on my bathroom mirror. That was the moment I really started to believe that we are so much more capable than what we allow ourselves to think. In that moment, yes I fell short of my goal, but I had allowed myself to dream bigger than ever before. And in doing so, I broke my own barrier.
So yes, Ted. I am possible. I am possible of things I do not yet know, but will soon discover. And then I will reach for a new impossible.