Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Passion

Passion doesn't come in moments; it's always there and it never goes away. Passion is what has made this year so important for me, and what made Portugal such an experience. And passion is what is going to make it so hard for me to leave TDR in July.
When I first started running with TDR my goal was to make the most of ten months of training with them, improve a lot, and be able to perform for the cross-country and track season when I got back to Spooner. Of course I wanted to be able to keep up with the other runners and to feel like I belonged, but I never really thought it was a possibility. Over the last few months that's changed. I've gotten so caught up in the passion of the other athletes, of the coaches, and the passion I've gained, that I don't even want to imagine what it's going to be like to train without TDR again.
It's not honest to say that passion is the only reason I love TDR- it's not. I love how professional it is, that there's a website with a real slogan, that we're sponsored by Nike, that we warm up for an hour before starting the rest of the training, that we have to send training logs to our coach every week, that we train in the dunes on Sundays, and on the track Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could go on forever about everything that I love about TDR, and it doesn't all have to do with passion. Still, passion is a huge part of it, because it's what makes everything else possible. No one can train as much and as hard as the athletes from TDR do, or coach as much as the coaches do without passion.
At the end of the two weeks in Portugal we all sat down and talked about how we thought it went, what we'd learned, and what could have gone better. When the discussion was over, the coach from the other team asked which people from the youth team thought that they could make the step over to the other team within the next year. In that moment it hit me so hard how lucky I've been. The coaches all have the same goal as the athletes: to train runners who will eventually be strong enough and fast enough to run with the other team. But I don't fall under that category. We all know that I'll be leaving in July and then I'll be done with TDR, but the coaches still coach me like everyone else, give me just as much attention, and train me with just as much passion as they do all of the other athletes. I don't know how Milja found TDR or why the coaches let me start training with them. I don't really understand how it all began, but I know it's going to be incredibly hard to let it end.
The thing is, it's just starting now. Right now, I'm starting to run faster, to be able to train harder, and to feel like I belong. In Portugal, the practices weren't about not being left behind anymore. They were about running the right times for myself and focusing on real goals. Getting left behind didn't happen very often- I ran with the rest of the team, not behind them. Now, almost every practice goes better than the practice I had before, and over two months (less than two months) I have to leave. I love running more than I ever have before.

I'm doing my best to hold on to the "Portugal feeling." I don't ever want to forget what the days were like there; training, eating fresh bread on the balcony, napping every afternoon, training again. I'm not going to forget what it's like to be taken so seriously, to run up a hill and feel like you could do it ten more times, and to run on the track with so many strong athletes.
More than anything I hope that after I leave I can hold onto the passion I've gotten through this year: through all the races, all the practices, all the long coversations about running, the other athletes, the coaches, and through Portugal.

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