Speed and Direction

To move quickly, we must know where we’re going.

Swiftness requires grace, which requires understanding, understanding requires purpose, and purpose requires direction.

In high school, at cross-country and Nordic skiing competitions, we would walk or glide the course as a team, or sometimes, with all of the visiting teams and competitors together. After these walk-throughs, we would prepare by warming up on confusing or technical parts of the trail, and accustom our legs to speed by sprinting along short flat sections.

We did this not only to prepare, but also to familiarize and relate, because without a plan or an idea there’d be no confidence, no assuredness, and our races would be doomed from the start. We’d never know which hills to save for, which parts to book it, and where we could squeeze out every last second. Continue reading “Speed and Direction”