Voices That Carry

It's a Bank Holiday Monday today and that means no work. The clouds are allowing the sun a bit of room but just a bit to not make it totally a cotton wool sky. Traveling light today with just my watch and iPod. Keeping the music a tad lower to let my mind slip in and out of the miles and not let the music determine all of my pace.
This is a more relaxed run of 4 miles around very familiar roads. Traffic is light and my mind drifts to thinking about people. I recall an editoral in one of the runner's mags about how when at the London Marathon Expo the Editor was offering the mag at a discount to folks. He was struck by the many who refused the offer by saying, "I'm not an athlete".
There was a time when I didn't consider myself an athlete. Well, to be honest, for a very LONG time I didn't consider myself an athlete. Ya see, my concept of an athlete was one of those speed demons and gangly legged men and women I had wached on the sports shows on Sunday afternoon TV as a kid. They were the ones on the Olympics who were pushing themselves toward perfection. I didn't look like them, have the same drive as they, or attained anywhere near the same level of achievement, or even have the outward conscious desire to. My mind told me I wasn't an athlete.
But all of that changed. Sometime during those first few months of running back in 2004 I became an athlete. I no longer listened to those voices in my mind saying how I didn't match up to the perceived image of an athlete. I began setting goals, training for races, and pushing myself further to reach even newer goals. Now I say to those who question if I fit the definition; a person trained in exercises requiring physical strength, skill, stamia, speed, Yes, I AM an athlete.
Those kids on the Marathon courses that want to high 5 us runners coming by see us as athletes, no matter what our speed. They want to be a part of what we are doing, they want for an instant to feel what we are feeling. Their cheers are the voices we carry along with us. We have our own voices within that push, scream, cry, encourage us to the finish line. When we finish we have that subtle voice that tells us, well done, now lets go do it again real soon.