Page 37 - Flathead Living // Spring 2015

spring motivation
CHASING
GREATNESS
Elite athletes are hidden among us. They have day jobs and bills and homework. But they also have something that makes them a little different, something that pulls them out of bed at 4 a.m., that pushes them to embrace pain, something inside them that never rests. Let’s find out what it is.
AKENA MORLEY IS A WORLD CHAMPION. THE REST OF US? NOT SO
much. We aren’t all built to hoist trophies. But when spring comes, we start circling 5K races on our calendar and filling our mountain bike tires with air. We head for the trails and take to the streets.
We aren’t Makena Morley, but we can be the person we want to be – the one who finally achieves that elusive fitness goal, the one who discovers that working out can be fun or even a passion, the one who finishes a 5K, in the middle of the pack but slightly faster than last year, and walks away flashing a gold-medal smile.
To be that person, we don’t need to transform into Makena Morley, or Ben Parsons, or Emily von Jentzen, or Scott Gaiser, or Rose Grant. We don’t have to win an international running title, or swim the length of Flathead Lake, or rise to the upper echelon of Ironman Triathlon competitors, or climb the national rankings of professional mountain biking and ski mountaineering.
No, we don’t have to be elite athletes, but it couldn’t hurt to learn from them. As we embark on our personal roads to fitness, their stories might give us that extra nudge of
motivation we need to shave a few seconds off our personal bests or a few pounds off our winter frames.
And who knows? With a few more nudges, some of us could become them. After all, during the workday they look a lot like us: a high school principal, a for- mer bank teller turned full-time mother, a firefighter, an attorney, a student.
It’s what they do when the workday ends that separates them from the pack.
BY MYERS REECE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MANDY MOHLER
M
SPRING 2015 | FLATHEAD LIVING 35