Monday, August 7, 2023

Random Thought

I was watching a documentary about Mark Cavendish on Netflix last night - fantastic documentary about a professional cyclist who was a winning machine, lost his edge, had to rebuild himself from the ground up, and when ended up winning again (sorry, spoiler alert). Anyway - when he finally does win again after this 5-year process of rebuilding himself, he gets off his bike, sits down on the street and weeps.

My thought is this: one of the greatest feelings in the world is crying from a place of joy. I can remember two instances of this in my own life. One was when I was in elementary school. I was playing baseball and I wasn't very good. I hit a homerun in a game and got back to the bench and I was so happy I started crying. To this day, I have no idea why I remember that.

The second one was when I finished my second marathon. It was a moment I had thought about many times in the preceding year. For that marathon I had a time goal and had put SO much work into it. Running twice a day at times, logging huge mileage weeks, doing the ice baths, doing the long 15-18 miles training runs...just a lot of effort...and then I achieved the goal I had set out to achieve. I crossed the finish line and was walking out of the chute and was so happy (and relieved) that I started crying. That feels so good!

Like I said, random thought.

The "Thief" on the Cross

Two other criminals were also led away to be executed with him.  So when they came to the place that is called “The Skull,” they crucified...