"No one is born great," said Percy Cerutty the legendary running coach from Australia.  "He may be born to become great.  Destiny and fate have a miraculous way of working things out to bring tremendous results."

1.  Great things happen when people work together.

Human beings are social animals who do their best work when they work in conjunction with others.  And so it was with David Warady.  Even though he was preparing for a unique event, he ran a lot of his training with other runners.  He began the race accompanied by a group of his closest friends.  Then all across the country, his wife Kelly, was ever at his side, serving, supporting and encouraging.  Later he was joined by friends who ran with him in Utah, Colorado, New Jersey and New York.

2.  We seldom realize how a small contribution of our time or excess wealth can make a positive change in someone else's life and our own.

After the race was over, Warady reminisced about his great adventure and said, "You know the party you threw for me and the fact that all my friends came, bringing their good wishes, their gag gifts and money, did more to help me win this race than you might think.  When I struggled across the deserts of California, pushed myself through the hills of Kansas and dragged myself across Pennsylvania, I thought of my friends, their gifts and their support and without even realizing it, I'd have run another ten miles.  Thinking about my friends helped me through a lot of difficult times."

Runners who made contributions to Warady's race identified on a deeper level with Warady's success.  I noticed that runners who were struggling, became rededicated, while those who were dedicated, gained new visions of their own potential excellence.

3.  Your competitors are your allies.

In one of our chats, Warady told me about how he, Tom Rogozinski, Richard Westbrook and sometimes, other competitors ran together sharing the pain and helping each other in subtle ways to finish the most difficult days.  Although they were competing, each runner realized that they were in the same ordeal together and that by sharing the hard times, they not only improved their competitor's chances of finishing, but their own chances as well.

One of my early coaches told me, "Don't despise your competitors, or wish them bad luck, because in the race, your competitors are your best friends, and without them there would be no point in racing." He explained that the words "competitor" and "companion" are derived from the same root word and that competitors and companions share something.  "By sharing something," he said, "each individual is empowered to achieve more than he was capable of achieving alone."

We are taught to believe there is only one reason to run a race and that is to win, but my coach pointed out there was another, and a better reason for racing, and that was, "to find out how fast you can run and to experience the excellence that is within you."

When my coach first explained this concept to me, I thought the idea was rubbish.  "My competitors are only there to keep me from winning," I thought.  "Any misery that might befall them will be to my advantage, and the best result will be that they don't even start the race."

It took me a long time to learn that my competitors weren't holding me back, on the contrary they were advancing me beyond the accomplishments I could have achieved on my own.  It was only when I reached a stage where I began looking back over my career that I began to understand this fact.  I now realize that my best races, my best performances, the races I savor in my mind, were the races I shared with runners of similar ability.  I won some of these races and lost others, but in each of these races, I ran with abandon, carried along and then spurred to greater heights by the companionship of my competitors.

4.  The satisfaction of completing a difficult task is worth more than any trophy waiting at the finish line.

A Denver radio announcer interviewing David Warady asked, "Why are you doing this, spending $10,000 and more than two months of your life to run across the country? What do you expect to gain from it? There must be a prize purse or something like that."

"No," replied Warady, "There's nothing but a handshake and a plastic trophy."

Warady knew there was a lot more at stake than a "handshake and a plastic trophy," but how could he explain that to someone who has not experienced the challenge.  How could he recount the ordeal of dragging himself from his bed each morning at 3:30? How could he describe the sharp twinge of pain as his tender feet first touched the floor and the aching in his joints when they were forced to support his weight? How could anyone, who has not experienced it, understand the mental torture of limping to the starting line, knowing his task for today, like his task for yesterday and his task for tomorrow and next week will be to prod, push and drag his broken body through another 50 miles of 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity? How could Warady explain what it is like for a man who considers himself to be a runner and a racer, to start so many days slowly jogging, because his body is too painful and stiff, to start the day running.  And finally how could he explain the satisfactions derived from finishing each day, bone tired, but still running, running in spite of ankles the size of cantaloupes and in spite of crimson blisters like leeches clinging to his feet? 
 Only a person who has experienced this or a similar trial can begin to appreciate the self knowledge, confidence and satisfaction that surviving such a test affords.  We lead such pampered lives, with so many social supports that we are only occasionally able to experience the power and strength the creator has put in us.  By choosing and completing his monumental task, Warady took the opportunity to experience the excellence that the creator built in him.

5.  Winning the race isn't where the real satisfaction is, the real satisfaction is in the preparing for and the running of the race.  Winning usually marks the end of a satisfying experience.

Warady wrote to me about how when he got to New York everyone asked, "Aren't you elated now knowing that you have won the race?"

"Of course I wanted to win," said Warady, "but I don't feel any different now than I did before.  It seems so strange to have supposedly won an historic event (according to the people I've come in contact with) yet I feel no elation or euphoria with the accomplishment.  I don't feel the least bit different than the day I started the event nine weeks ago."

Warady added, "Anyway, the one thing I'm very proud of is that you put together an awesome training and racing plan and that I followed it to near perfection.  After stage 30, I can't think of one mistake I made.  Now that, I am completely elated about and proud of!"

Warady's lack of elation about winning resulted from his new realization that he didn't win the race on the last day, but rather that he won the race with all the footsteps he had run on all the days of the race.  The day he ran into New York City was just the final day of 64 days, but that final day was no more, and no less important than any of the other days.

We live in an "ends" oriented society, we are trained to see success as something that waits on the finish line, but Warady had just graduated from a 64 day crash course in "process" orientation.  Warady had become a different person through this experience and his new found perception of reality no longer meshed with society's view.  Warady now realized that his final day's run had little to do with the victory he achieved, that each of the 63 days that preceded it were equally important and that each day could have marked the end of his race.  Looking through fresh eyes, Warady saw that the key to his success was the fact that he had an "awesome racing plan" and that he "followed it to near perfection," each and every day, and that his victory was the natural outcome of sticking to this plan, and doing the right things every day.

Warady now realizes that it actually took all the tens of thousands of miles he ran in training and all the thousands of miles he ran in races, over his 14 year running career, to bring him to Central Park in first place.  I doubt he could have won that same race, under similar circumstances, and against the same competition only one year earlier.  I say this because I know Warady learned some crucial lessons about multi-day racing only in the last six months before this race.  Without that knowledge, he would not have been prepared to win.

6.  Timing is critical to our success.

The length and date of each race in your life is somewhat arbitrary, and usually out of your control, and yet it is often just the placement of the finish line, or the date of the race that separates the winners from the losers.  In Warady's case, if the race had ended in California, or Indiana or some other state, or had started in 1991 or 1993 the results might have been different.  Once we grasp this concept, and we realize that each race is only a small part of a very long running career, and that our daily training is as much a part of our racing as the races themselves, we begin to understand that "we never lose, but sometimes the race is too short, or its run on the wrong day."

The 1992 Olympics provided a wealth of opportunities to speculate on how different the medal distribution might have been had this Olympics been run at some other time in history.  Consider Kenyan Moses Kiptanui, the World Champion in 1991, he was unable to make the Olympic Team in 1992.  Barely two weeks after his teammates swept the medals in the Olympic steeplechase, Kiptanui demolished the world's record for that event, shaving an incredible three seconds from the previous mark.

Noureddine Morceli was the world's champion at 1500 meters in 1991, but finished a distant seventh in the Olympics.  Only one month later Morceli shattered the world's record running 3:28.86 for 1500 meters.  (That's the equivalent of running 3:45.9 for a mile.)

Carl Lewis was certainly one of the greatest sprinters in history, and provided another vivid example.  Lewis was virtually unbeatable in 1991 when he won the World's Championships and set a world's record in the 100 meter dash.  But in 1992 Carl got off to a slow start and failed to make the Olympic team in that event.

The list of potential examples is endless, but the key to remember is that timing is everything when you are attempting personal records and other ultimate tasks.  The winner of the Olympics is not always the best athlete in the world, but is usually one of the best athletes in the world, who is best prepared to win on that particular day.  If the race were run a day earlier or even a day later, the results might have been different.

Human beings are not machines, they can't be programmed to perform perfectly upon demand.  There's a little luck in every peak performance.