By: Inés Blanco
Nowadays,
“running” is the latest trend. We can find parks crowded with people running
with the trendiest Nike shoes, a limited edition t-shirt of any marathon and
lots of electronic gadgets to know their pace, their heart rate, the amount of
calories they have burned... Those people who are willing to do everything to
be in fashion.
However, the ones who practice
athletics know what the reality of this sport is. It's having difficult goals
to achieve. It's crying with emotion when you realize that after much suffering
you have achieved what you wanted. It's also crying over the things you have
fought but haven't been able to achieve. It's having friends in each corner of
your country or even the world. It's being able to travel anywhere to compete.
It's living with a continuous feeling of love/hate to the different sessions.
It's training too much so you "leave aside" social life. It's having
a second family you can trust in. Definitely, it's a way of living.
I've been enjoying this
lifestyle since I was four years old. At that time, training was a game and I
just had a good time enjoying all the modalities that this sport offers:
jumping, throwing, running... I have a vague memory of the fun runs I did with
my brother where he was the one who got prizes because I wasn't old enough to
be in any category... But my mum always reminded me: "Step by step. Rewards
will come". In those days, as all you can imagine, the only thing that I
really wanted was having a medal in order to show it to my friends whenever
they came home. I just kept having fun while training, playing games and having
a good time.
I was getting older and
I was enjoying athletics even more every day. I kept taking it as a game that
made me happy. The workouts were almost the same, but I already realized the
aim they had: take the warm-up as competitions to see who can run more laps,
some team races with obstacles... However, I was impatient to do what the older
athletes did: gym, long runs, intervals...
That was my life until I
had to set my priorities and make decisions. It was the time to grow up as a
person and as an athlete. What started as a game ended up becoming what I go
around every day. Every morning I wake up thinking about the training I have to
do, about the suffering. Even so, I get to the track with a smile on my face
because I know that this is the correct way that will take me to where I want
to go, this is the way to achieve the goals I thought about at the beginning of
the season.
And so my days go by
until I get to that competition where I do my best. I fight every tenth against
the clock to be able to fall self-satisfied in the finish line because I've
achieved the goals for which I suffered every single day. Failure is also an
option, although it's the best way to know that I do what I love. The reason
why I know so it's because my only thoughts when that happens are going back to
training to avoid failure again.
Athletics is something
more than running, it is feeling that every stride you take brings you closer
to what you want. It is wearing those Nike running shoes, that limited edition
t-shirt and all that electronic gadgets to go to that park full of people
running just thinking: “step by step, rewards will come...”. Athletes don't
just run, we run because we are pursuing our dream.
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