Dedication, and Learning to Lose

by Steve McGill

Ted Walters, one of my high school friends, was a teammate of mine on the track team my senior year. He too was a senior. It was his first year running track, but he was immediately really good. A natural, as they say. He ran the 800 meters, and ran like a 2:05 in his first race, with very little training. Our coach, Mr. Keely, felt confident that Ted could eventually run under 2:00, and maybe in the 1:55 range by the conference championship meet. I felt so too, because even though Ted was new, Mr. Keely was a great coach, and had transformed several pretty good runners in my grade into potential conference champions, including myself. But what I failed to realize — or accept — was that there was a major barrier separating Ted from reaching his potential: he was lazy. He was not dedicated to the sport at all. 

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One day early in the outdoor season, he and I were talking during class — I think we had a study hall that day — and I noticed that he was wearing a small cast that extended from his hand to his forearm. When I asked him what had happened, he smirked and said he had told Mr. Keeley that he had sprained his wrist playing basketball. But the truth, he said grinning, was that he hadn’t hurt his wrist at all. He was just pretending so that he wouldn’t have to go to track practice. He was proud of himself for the cleverness of his trick, and because he was pulling one over on Mr. Keely. I just laughed. Ted was known for being lazy — in his classes, in his other sports, so there was no reason to expect anything different in track. 

But I did find myself thinking about my own journey in track, and how far I had come. Just a year ago, I had begun feeling extreme fatigue during workouts and in races, and the fatigue carried into and through the summer, until, finally, in October of my senior year, I had a blood test done, and was diagnosed with aplastic anemia — a rare blood disease characterized by bone marrow failure. I was treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with a rare, experimental treatment that had a 40% success rate. Because my case was severe, and had been discovered so late, I wasn’t expected to survive. But the treatment worked. Not only did I survive, but my blood counts returned to normal within three months. I was able to return to the track team and to complete the most challenging workouts Mr. Keely could devise. For me, running, and hurdling in particular, was a precious gift. Every workout was a celebration of life, an expression of joy at the very fact that I was alive, that my body was allowing me to do what I loved. So even though I wasn’t angry with Ted for wasting his talent, I did feel disconnected from him, like we lived in two separate worlds. And I also felt disappointed that he was letting down Mr. Keely, who believed in him and was putting so much energy into his success.

Ted, apparently, was feeling the same way. The next thing he said was, “You know what sucks? That someone like you, who is so dedicated, who works so hard, gets sick and misses so much time, while someone like me who’s never been sick finds ways to get out of practice.” 

I appreciated him saying that, and I appreciated him being so honest, but, oddly perhaps, I didn’t agree with his point about me being dedicated. I loved hurdling. There’s no need to be dedicated or determined or disciplined when you love what you do. I loved being outside, on the track, standing in front of a lane of hurdles, preparing to attack them. I loved the intellectual challenge of figuring out new ways of stepping over the barriers more quickly and more efficiently. I loved the thrill that surged through my body when I was sprinting between the hurdles and feeling the rhythm of my body in motion, feeling like I was one with the hurdles, like an effortless dancer. The memory of the joyous feeling of running over hurdles was a memory that helped me maintain my desire to live when I was sick and dying. Ted hadn’t known the bottom like I had known the bottom, so of course he couldn’t appreciate what a gift it was to be young and healthy and free to run as far and as fast as his heart and lungs and legs would take him.  

***

But I won a lot in high school. I didn’t lose any races my senior year until the summer. In college, I lost often, even though I was at a DIII school. I quickly learned that anybody who competes at the varsity level in college was all-American or all-state or all-conference or all-something in high school. I may have one or two races throughout my collegiate career, and both of those were dual meets against schools not known for their hurdlers. But in any weekend meet where a double-digit amount of schools showed up, I was just trying to make it past the first round. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. I ran my personal best while finishing last in the conference championships my sophomore year. 

Now that I was losing on a regular basis, I found that I did not enjoy track as much, although I remained dedicated to improving and doing all I could to move up on the food chain. I devoted myself to learning every aspect of technique, to training six days a week (even in the off-season), and to improving my strength in the weight room. In the fall I often trained by myself and lifted with one of my friends from my dorm. I put together my own workouts and created my own hurdle workouts. Gradually, clearing the 42-inch barriers became easier, and I felt much more comfortable and confident in my abilities to negotiate them without making contact with them. I often experimented during hurdle workouts, trying to figure out how deeply to lean, how to time the action of the trail leg moving to the front, etc. 

With all that work, I went from being the fourth-best hurdler on our team to being the best hurdler on our team, and had gained the respect and admiration of my teammates who took note of how hard I worked. But still, I was getting my ass kicked in meets, and I found myself doubting if all the hard work was worth it. I had entered college with dreams of one day qualifying for the Olympic Trials, but by the end of sophomore year it had become clear to me that I wasn’t even close to qualifying for DIII Nationals. I spent a lot of time doubting myself and doubting my purpose and doubting the reason for my existence, all of which led me to be a very unhappy person who was difficult to live with. 

Eventually, through a lot of inward reflection, I came to understand that I couldn’t judge myself as a person by how I performed on the track. I learned to let go of the self-loathing and to just focus on getting better, and accepting that my talent and hard work would take me as far as it would take me. I read an article where my favorite athlete, Julius Erving of the Philadelphia 76ers, was talking about the thrill of playing basketball. He compared it to a race, saying, When you’re in a race, and whether you’re a little bit ahead or a little bit behind or whatever, nothing beats that feeling when you’re in the race. Not the medals you receive afterwards, not other people’s congratulations, not finding out what your time was. Inspired by Erving’s remarks, I recognized that, in spite of all the losses I had suffered in my collegiate career, I still loved hurdling. I still loved the feeling of sprinting over hurdles at full speed. So I decided to focus on that feeling, and to let the rest take care of itself. That way, I was able to reconnect with the joy that I derived from hurdling from my high school days, but now with a new awareness that the feeling was all that had ever mattered to begin with. 

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