Confucius said, “The superior man seeks room for improvement or occassion to blame in himself…”
The Analects, 15:20

When you’re obsessed, you’ll see ways to relate almost anything back to the object of your obsession. Running is present in most of the things I see throughout the day. So while I was doing my homework for a Chinese Philosophy class, I came across this quote and thought it tied in pretty well with my racing experiences.

On Saturday I participated in the John Covert Classic track meet at Lehigh. I ran the 3k for the first time ever, and ended up with a much better time than I expected- 9:52. The time doesn’t matter as much to me, though, as the performance I had.

For the first time since cross country, I ran a gutsy race. I started by going out faster than I wanted to- perhaps even faster than was prudent. It’s easy to hold a fast pace for the first few laps- adrenaline takes care of that- but I managed to keep it going through most of the race.

I did, of course, have weak moments that need to be fixed for future races. I hope never to leave a race without self-criticisms, for it’s then that I know I’ve grown complacent.