Health & Injuries.
As my heart pounds from the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I stop and tell myself, "Dude, it’s just running." I try to trivialize what I’m about to do to take some of the pressure off myself. "You’re not feeding starving children, you’re not curing cancer, you’re literally moving around in circles," I repeat in my head. The plus side of this technique is that it works well for me. The negative is that when I do perform well, it takes time for the meaning of what I’ve accomplished to settle in.
Last night when I crossed the finish line of the men's 800-meter final in second, I grimaced, shrugged my shoulders, and then came to a stop. I went over to shake the hand of the winner, Mohammed Aman, congratulated the other competitors on a great race, and then looked for a bottle of water. My immediate thought was, “I am a very parched loser.”
Some of these negative feelings melted away when a representative from Team USA wrapped me in the American flag. I was suddenly filled with a huge sense of national pride. True, I wasn't changing the world in a huge philanthropic way, but I knew how many people back in the States were watching this race, and I knew they would feel inspired seeing me wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. If even one person got up off their couch and went for a jog after witnessing my performance, then wasn't my effort causing some good? Still, I couldn’t quite get past the fact that to win this medal I’d acted with a selfish, single-minded determination for the better part of two decades.
I shook my head to try to clear these thoughts and really enjoy the moment.
I had just covered two laps at an average pace of 51 seconds per lap, but this third and ultimate trip around would take close to half an hour. Every two steps there were photographers and fans who wanted the medalists to stop for pictures. I saw my family up in the stands, my mom with tears streaming down her face, and blew them a kiss. The stadium is set up in a way that makes it impossible for the athletes to get up into the stands, so as badly as I wanted to go embrace them all, it wasn't possible. Somehow, at the 200-meter mark my coaches and agents had snuck down to the track side, and I was able to hug them, thank them, and shoot a couple pictures.
When we had finally finished our victory lap we were sent through the media zone for interviews, and then escorted to an IAAF press conference. All of the medalists at these world championships will be tested for performance-enhancing drugs so we had DCO (doping control officers) following us through the entire process.
After the press conference I entered the doping control area and saw my teammate, Duane Solomon, for the first time. I walked over and gave him a hug. He finished sixth, a position I know all too well at the world level. I told him that I wasn't sure I could have medaled without him setting the fast pace, and I meant it. He told me he was so happy that America had won a medal, and I could tell he meant that.
Fifteen minutes and 90 milliliters of urine later, I was a free man. I rushed outside to try to find my coaches and my family. Instead, I was greeted by hundreds of fans screaming and asking for photos or an autograph. I obliged them as best I could, but was, thankfully, escorted to a car and taken to the warm-up track.
Almost two hours had elapsed since the finish of the race. The warm-up track was no longer lit, and there were almost no people left there. I walked a slow lap around it, in the dark night, contemplating whether I should run a cooldown. There was something so peaceful about that moment. After thousands of miles and years of hard work I had finally won my medal, and here I was totally alone casually walking on my favorite surface. I decided not to ruin the moment with a half-assed cooldown, but to instead find the bus that would take me back to the hotel.
It just so happened that my coaches were already on the bus waiting for me. We hugged and laughed and relived the race. My family was waiting for us at the hotel when we got back.
As we dined on cheeseburgers and champagne, I looked around the table at the people who had helped me most in getting to this point and realized something: this medal doesn't represent my selfish single-mindedness, it represents the selflessness of so many people who have been a part of my life. From my sister running laps with me around the house when we were kids to my mom and dad driving me to and from cross country practice; from Coach Sam who has shown me nothing but selfless love and support from the very first day I met him; to Coach Mark Rowland, who has sacrificed so much of his time and energy to get me here—this medal belongs as much to all of these people as it does to me.
