A picture worth a thousand miles.

A Picture Worth a Thousand Miles. 

I often think about celebrating. 

The feeling of accomplishment, a better drug then anything you will ever find. 

This picture is from 2011 and is the moment Brent Vaughn, one of my closest and best friends crossed the finish line at USA Cross Country Champs. It was one of the best races of his life, and one of his biggest victories. You can read the fabulous article by Daniel Petty from the Denver Post by clicking the link here: 

http://www.denverpost.com/2011/02/05/brent-vaughn-wins-2011-u-s-cross-country-championships/ 

 In my head this image is what I think of when I think about success. In general the photos of runners crossing the finish line celebrating the effort and feeling the surge of glory that comes with it often come to mind.    

For Brent as it is for most runners or really athletes in general, crossing the line after a successful effort, there is a tremendous amount of hard work, faith, luck, love and relationship that went into it.

And its that story, that leads to these pictures that I want to talk about.

We are about to embark on our 2017 Track and Field journey. We will write our own stories and create our own successes. For a select group of you, this will coincide with a walk across Red Rocks and a celebration of a hard earned and wonderful Dakota Ridge High School Diploma.

This year, we need celebrations. I am not talking about over the top, gratuitous celebrating like you see from athletes after one brief moment on the football field or basketball court. No I am talking about classy, fist pumping, possibly hug inducing, smile ridden acts of celebration. You see, you should get excited about a huge Personal Best that you just accomplished. If you are working hard and writing your own story of success, it just feels good to let that emotion out.  Fun, diligent, purpose driven hard work creates success. You might not win all the time. But individually you might have pushed yourself beyond what you had previously done and that is worth celebrating.

Our 2017 Track and Field season is one in which we are hoping to take a step forward as a program. That "step forward" begins with the culture and mission of the team. That step forward is directly tied to the intention driven action of writing stories of success. That intention driven action starts by the simple action of showing up at practice. Show up to work hard at whatever it is the coaches have for you that day. The second action is being a great teammate. Encouraging, forgiving, showing kindness, taking an interest in the story of your teammates. It's these actions that lead to great culture and lead to great missions, and thus lead to great pictures of celebrations.

I was part of Brent Vaughn's story that lead to his 2011 Cross Country victory and eventually to his 2012 Olympic Trials 10,000m 7th place finish in 27:55. It's been years since I was able to run. But the memories of training with Brent are some of my most precious. I was never as fast as Brent and certainly I was on my own mission, but being part of the miles that lead to that picture, make his picture of celebration extraordinarily meaningful to me. We are not always going to be the one in first place. However, there is an incredible amount of pride that can be gleaned from the success of those you spent time working hard with. You see it is ultimately the relationships we have with each other that make the story, the picture of celebration, so compelling and rich for us. The time spent training and talking about dreams, intentions, struggles, failures and successes create a bond with each other that gives meaning to the journey and meaning to the celebration.