I clicked the link (点击链接), sign un here. This wouldn’t be my first half marathon (马拉松赛跑); I had run a flat half when I was thirty-eight. But that was eleven years ago. Now, it was November 2022, and I’d had a shoulder injury before, and I was turning fifty. So, as awful as running 13.1 miles seemed, I was going to do it.

I signed up for a women’s training group, a group of strangers with whom I would spend a few months preparing for the race, and then I was directed to sign up for the actual race. I imagined a course somewhere beautiful in Florida. Or perhaps in sunny California, I was shocked when the race website opened, and I was greeted with the words, “Zion at night, half marathon in the darkness.” In Zion? At night? Oh, no.

I looked at the website. Was it to late to quit? Actually, I had just signed up for a coaching group that was meant to “encourage me through running”. Giving up before I even started seemed like a terribly shameful thing to do. I looked through the photos of the race.

I lost all my confidence. Runners wearing headlights and running shoes filled the computer screen. I couldn’t do this, I thought. I hadn’t run on paths in Delaware. I hadn’t run on paths or up hills. I clicked onto the next photo and looked at the happy runners advancing alongside a frightening cliff (峭壁). I was also afraid of heights.

A text came through my phone. It was Nicole, our training group’s brave leader, a woman who has run hundred-mile marathons. This is what happens when you run a race with someone who has strong willpower. “Sign up for the 4 am start time,” she wrote.

As I filled in my name and address, I tried to think about how likely I was to get injured during training. Realistically, that was my best way to get out of this race. I filled out the form and started worrying. About everything.

But Nicole encouraged me, saying that she was with me in spirit on every run.

On the day of the race, we drove to Zion at 4 am.

From an early age, Patti Wilson was told that she was an epileptic (癫痫患者). However, she was a lively and enthusiastic girl, looking at her illness as simply “an inconvenience”. She never focused on what she had lost, but on what she had left. One day, Patti said to her father, who was a morning jogger, “Daddy, I’d really love to run with you every day, but I’m afraid I’ll have an epileptic fit.”

Her father told her, “Don’t worry, my girl. I know how to handle it! Let’s start running then!”

It was a wonderful experience for the father and daughter to run together every day. After a few weeks, the ambitious girl told her father, “Daddy, What I’d really love to do is to break the world’s long-distance running record for women.” The father checked the Guinness Book of World Records and found that the farthest any woman had run was 80miles.

That year, she completed her run to San Francisco, which is a distance of 400 miles. She was wearing a T-shirt, reading, “I Love Epileptics”. Her father ran every mile at her side, and her mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything went wrong. But nothing happened at all while she was running.

As a senior high school student, Patti announced that she was determined to run from her hometown up to the White House, which is a distance of more than 3000 miles away. Her classmates got behind her. They built a giant poster that read, “Run, Patti, Run!” This has since become her motto and the title of a book she later has written.

On her second marathon in Portland, she had her foot injured.

Half a year later, Patti ran in Washington and finally shook the hand of the President.

3 . Compassion has not been a traditional characteristic of sport. With its UK roots in 19th-century British public schools and universities, modern sport developed as way of creating strong military leaders, training them to develop adaptability defined in those times by iron will and biting the bullet. Fear and harsh criticism were crucial to toughening up players and soldiers alike. The “tough guy” narrative was strengthened by 20th-century media stereotypes and Hollywood’s heroes and became rooted into sport and society.

I’ve heard countless stories like the popular culture I found when I joined the Olympic rowing team in the mid-1990s. We were expected to suffer after mistakes or losses to show that we truly cared, and everyone believed coaches needed to be severe and unforgiving to get results. These approaches still exist. But an alternative approach with compassion at its center addresses aims of performance and wellbeing for those with greater ambitions.

This isn’t some soft option which plays down hard work, as supporters of the earlier traditional sporting mindset might criticize. Research across branches of psychology — behavioral, sports, positive — shows how compassion creates the strongest foundation for adaptability and sustained performance under pressure whether in sport, the military, healthcare or business. Rather than activating our threat system which began to help us survive way back, compassion helps us to feel safe and protected, leaving us free to learn, connect with others and start exploring what we’re capable of.

The continuous need to improve performance has led top coaches to appreciate that high performance requires levels of support to match the level of challenge. When you provide that, players start thriving while striving to achieve more. Rooted in compassion, a different coach-athlete relationship thus develops.

The dictionary definition of compassion includes the recognition of another’s suffering and the desire and support to relieve it. Compassion has been shown to decrease fear of failure and increase the likelihood of trying again when failure does happen. But how many talented athletes experience that depth of support in moments of crisis and failure?

4 . As athletes get stronger and faster, the pace of play continues to increase. The burden of making sure games are played according to the rules and that the officiating (裁判) is accurate is now being taken out of human hands and falling more and more into the lap of technology. It’s called the video replay.

The National Football League is expanding its replay system this upcoming season to include pass interference (传球干扰). Major League Baseball now relies on it for safe-or-out and home run calls. If you’ve been watching the FIFA World Cup, you may have noticed that the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) played a key role in almost every game. And in the Kentucky Derby, a horse was disqualified for knocking another horse. No one knew why until a video replay confirmed the call and controversy was avoided.

However, many purists—those who want people to follow rules carefully and do things in the traditional way—especially in soccer, argue it’s not the way the game was invented, and that the video replay is tainting the sport. But don’t you want to see the proper application of the rules throughout the games? I know I do. Yes, it can slow the game down, but I feel it is worth it. If technological advancements allow fans watching from home to spot mistakes instantly, those same views need to be available to the officiating crews. Another example occurred in the most recent National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New Orleans Saints. When obvious pass interference was committed by the Los Angeles Rams player Nickell Robey-Coleman, with just 109 seconds to play, no flag was raised on the field. It weakened the New Orleans Saints spirits. The Los Angeles Rams won a 26-23 overtime victory. The no-call deeply angered the public. The video replay showed the referees had just missed one of the most apparent pass interference calls.

There are no easy answers regarding replay technology and whether it is a curse (魔咒). But for me, keeping the officiating honest and on task is the right step in limiting controversy.

When I was four, my seven-year-old brother received a baseball mitt (手套) for his birthday. Every night, as we went to sleep, I’d listen to him throwing a ball into the mitt over and over to soften the leather. I wanted a mitt so much that I almost cried. But, back then, girls didn’t play sports; they played with dolls.

Fast-forward twenty-six years. Now a thirty-year-old mother of three happened to see a notice in my local paper: “Women’s Slow-Pitch Softball League opens soon. Anyone interested, sign up at the recreation center.” I cut it out and set it on the kitchen counter. Could I ? After all these years? Was it even possible to think about playing baseball, a game I’d never actually played but had dreamed of playing my entire life? And I’d certainly watched enough Chicago Cubs games to know how the game was played.

I looked at that notice on my counter every day. I thought of a thousand reasons why I couldn’t play. But the idea of playing baseball stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away. Finally, I got up my courage and signed up at the recreation center. On the way home, I bought myself a mitt.

On Monday, heart pounding, I walked through the park filled with women of all ages practicing. It took me a while to find my team. They were all high-school girls, seventeen and eighteen years old!

The coach was not at all happy to see me. He had put together top athletes for his team, and he didn’t want some old lady messing things up.

That first day, he had me run bases. What that meant was I’d stand near home plate(本垒板)while one of the girls batted, and then I’d run as hard as I could to first base, trying to get there before they threw me out. I did this over and over and over. I never got a chance to bat or play the field. I just ran bases all night. The next morning, I could barely stand.

I was still feeling pain when I showed up to play the next week.

Having seen my determination, the coach changed his attitude toward me.

During the summer before Patty entered fifth grade, she decided to try a new sport. Swim training was nearly over and Patty was the fastest swimmer in her age group. She had always been the best. The neighborhood was offering a one-week tennis training course. Patty and her friend Darla got permission from their parents to join.

On Saturday morning, Darla’s mom took the girls to a store and bought them each a good, used tennis racket. “If you girls stick to tennis, then we’ll talk about a new racket. These will do for now.” The girls were excited about their new purchases. On Monday morning, at 7:00 a.m., Patty’s mom woke her up. “It’s time for tennis!” Patty covered her face. “Mom, it’s too early!” She made great effort to get out of bed and down to the breakfast table. Patty finished breakfast and ran to Darla’s house, then they walked to the court.

Mrs. Cane, the tennis coach, lined everyone up and started with the basics. After that, Mrs. Cane tirelessly taught them to practice their forehand and backhand. By the end of the week, Patty had made impressive progress. Mrs. Cane commented that Patty had lots of potential. Darla, on the other hand, was struggling. The other teenagers were having a tough time of it, too. Patty was the only one who seemed to get somewhere.

Since then, Darla had always been out in the August heat, practicing her serves or hitting the ball. Patty wasn’t really interested. She felt she was such a “natural” for tennis that she really didn’t need to practice. By the end of the summer, Darla began to get the hang of it. She joined a neighborhood junior tennis team. There would be matches every Thursday. Patty wanted to join as well, but she didn’t want to miss her favorite TV show. She told herself that she would join it when she got some free time. If Darla had fun, she would join the team in the spring.

The week before school started, Mrs. Cane held another training course.

Patty couldn’t stop thinking of her poor performance on the way home.