| Runners and Coaches: |
| Portions of this quote started off the 1998 USATF Level III Endurance Seminar in Orlando, FL last December. The ramifications are too obvious for all distance runners. Although the meaning gets richer with each re-reading, all athletes and coaches can draw a certain measure of understanding every time they search these words. Hopefully, many who apply these thoughts to their running careers will gain a better understanding of commitment. |
| Ask yourself how many fellow athletes and coaches you know are truly committed to developing themselves to the fullest extent they can. Imagine yourself in the fullest depths of commitment to a goal or a purpose. Allow yourself to imagine how satisfying it would be to realize your full potential through just determining that a running goal you have chosen is worthy of full and inescapable commitment. If Murray's comments are true, then that determination made by a runner may be all it takes to reach new levels of performance. |
| I believe the athletes I coach have unlimited potential. I see a need for all of us in the profession to do the best we can to unlock the limitless improvement that exists inside each athlete with whom we work. Many of us do the best we can through technical improvement in biomechanics or exercise physiology, but all of us have also seen, at all levels of experience, the unexpected explosion of ability in a nondescript athlete who sees the fire of commitment to a goal. All of the technical running skills imaginable are but a minor fraction of the full power of the mind committed beyond question to a goal. |
| The power of full commitment is extreme. I believe the athlete who pursues this path will be able to grasp success not only in competition, but later in the full transference to life and mature goals. To this end, all of us as coaches must develop a personal understanding of exactly how important this message is, to the runners entrusted to us now, and to the members of society they will become. |
| To commit is to see that the path and product of that effort is worthwhile. It must be more worthwhile than the distractions that are prevalent in organized society today, but the cumulative effect of all those distractions from commitment and excellence are almost too much for the athletes of today to handle. Any help a coach can provide to reinforce the idea that commitment provides opportunity for immense satisfaction will be valuable. For that, and the moments when commitment to a goal seems to lag behind the distractions in a runner's life, we hope you can use this quote: |
| "Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elemental truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: |
| Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. " |
W.H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition
Full Quote courtesy of Mr. John Blake, Sandy, UT USA |