As a young man, I loved long-distance running. I raced in the 5 kilometers, 2 mile, and the mile. I was dedicated and competitive. However, I had one competitor that I could never beat. He was my age and from a high school nearby, so I raced against him several times a year. Year after year I would lose to him. My freshmen and sophomore year I trained rigorously for the mile. He slaughtered me every time we raced. My junior year I tried again. I lost to him five times that season. My senior year I trained several months prior to the beginning of the season trying to shave seconds off my time. I improved drastically. I excitedly raced him again, but only experienced more heartache. He could not be beat. I remember asking his teammates how he got so good. They would respond, “It is natural talent. He doesn’t train very hard.” I remember being horribly discouraged that all my hard efforts seemed to be meaningless. I had to battled very strong feelings of simply giving up and accepting the fact that he was more talented.
The last race of my senior year, I got up the courage and told myself to try one more time. I had to believe in my dream. At this point, I had lost to him 14 separate times. Never once had I been close to beating him. I gave that race everything I had. To my amazement, I had the closest race of my entire life. I beat him by fractions of a second. I learned more about ambition, courage, and dedication in that one moment than I have ever experienced in my life.
When I think of tenacity I think of the quote given by Winston Churchill,"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
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