So about two weekends ago - should've been 29th August 2015, finals for the IAAF World Athletics Championships 2015 were held in Beijing, China. From church on a lazy Sunday afternoon and channel flipping, I bumped into the broadcast of the finals on Idhaa ya Taifa - KBC. Since there was already a lot of buzz on how Kenya was kicking donkey in the championships and was well on its way to topping the medals table I figured why not indulge. The adrenaline when you're cheering for #TeamKenya is crazy, at some point I almost fell off the seat with excitement during the men's 1500m final.
Two races caught my attention and left me pondering on how they relate to how we live life. The men's 1500m final and the men's 4*400 Meters Relay final. The 1500m was won by Kenya's Asbel Kiprop while the 4*400m relay was won by #TeamAmerica.
Asbel Kiprop was the defending champion and obvious favorite to take gold in the 1500m but when the race started, he was comfortably running behind the pack seemingly unworried. I on the other hand, was wondering what the fish he was doing & was frantically interceding he styles up and picks up pace if at all he is serious about bringing home that gold medal. So Kiprop like a boss, kept a moderate pace at the back not worried about the rest of the runners who were busy overtaking each other at various points. 1st lap came and went, 2nd lap, 3rd lap and voila in the last lap when the bell rang, Kiprop started picking up pace. I was however skeptical . How in heaven's name will he manage to outrun all these other guys in front of him with only a few meters of the race left? When he increased his pace and kept running past the rest, I almost fell of the seat cheering for him. I'm sure in his mind, he could hear all the cheers from millions of Kenyans back home and there was no way he was going to let that gold just potea like that. For the last few meters, he sprinted beyond the pack & comfortably crossed the finishing line first. When he crossed that line, I heaved a huge sigh of relief - whoooosah. The rest of the guys must have been wondering what happened, "haiya si ni wewe tuliacha huko nyuma, kwani kumeendaje?"
For the 4*400m relay, the last lap was what interested me. As U.S.A's LaShawn Merritt and Trinidad's Machel Cedenio kept fighting for the lead at a comfortable pace, out of the blues Jamaica's Javon Francis bolted to the front. Francis used up so much strength to get ahead of Merritt & Cedenio that in the last crucial meters he had completely lost steam and started to fade. This was obviously something to celebrate for Merritt as he was able to capitalize on the blunder and easily took the gold while Cedenio took Silver. Francis almost picked the Bronze for Jamaica but Great Britain's Martin Rooney beat him to it. Francis' surge wasted his energy at a very crucial point...it might have even cost him the medal.
I love looking at life as a journey/race/marathon, whatever you want to call it but I believe as human beings we are constantly on the move. For this post though, forget about the journey aspect of life and let's focus on life in terms of a race. Life is never static, it's always dynamic and very unpredictable thus at some point you may be doing a 100m sprint, at other times you may be doing a 4*400m relay, 10, 000m etc {you get the drift yeah...moving on}. Just as in a race where there are different participants, life in general has different participants who come in form of your family/colleagues/friends/acquaintances et al. Staying with the race analogy, the race track usually has different lanes & as human beings we have our different lanes {though I hear some peeps don't do lanes coz they are too ordinary; wanacheza league ya flight path}. I'm sure by now you get the drift of where I am going with this, if not stick around and let me walk you through.
I cannot over emphasize the need to stay focused on your goal as you race through life. I'm pretty sure when the 1500m race started, that gold medal was all Kiprop was thinking of. No matter how fast the rest ran or whether they overtook him, Kiprop knew he had to stay on course and reach that finish line first. What are your goals in life? I can bet you know several other people with the same kinda goals as you - getting that corner office, building a multinational empire, "wifing" a super cool homemaker, buying that dream home/car etc - but no matter what remember to stay focused on getting to that finish line first. It doesn't matter whether the rest are running faster than you or hitting milestones before you do, STAY FOCUSED. I'm gonna admit that the temptation to look around at others is so real at times I have to pinch myself to stay on my lane and not lose sight of my goals. Thing with taking your eyes off the mark, you get distracted and by the time you re-focus you have lost valuable time.