1 . In late 2021, I began to have a little bit of a midlife crisis. When my father was 48 years old, he had a heart attack that nearly ended his life. As I _________ my mid-forties, I knew that I needed to make a change in my life. I wanted to do something _________ to prove to myself and everyone else around me that I wasn’t going to have the same fate.

As I was trying to determine what kind of _________ that I wanted to set, I found a _________ called The Rut. The Rut is a series of races that are _________ in Big Sky, Montana every September. There’s multiple distances, but the 28 Kilometer _________ is the most popular, as well as the most _________ of the entire series. This race is regularly listed in the top ten most difficult races in the world. It involves almost 8,000 feet of elevation (海拔)_________ . This was the type of race I was _________ .

I also did a detailed training __________ . Even if I was traveling for business, I would stick to it and never __________ a workout (训练). And then came race day.

That day, Big Sky Montana, was unseasonably __________ , almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The race is going almost entirely above tree line, which means that you just are __________ to the elements (恶劣天气) nearly the entire time. Many people __________ out of the race halfway. But I finished it. When I reached the finish line, I was greeted by my wife and children, also friends that had traveled with us to Big Sky that day. This was the biggest challenge I had made for myself, but I __________ it.

2 . Richard is a boy who is positive towards life. He is interested in doing sports and takes a(n) ___________ part in a lot of ___________ such as soccer, boxing, skiing and badminton. He is always against ___________ in sports and tries to avoid errors in matches. As a result, he is ___________ to be an excellent athlete and ___________ all kinds of sports. Doing gymnastics in the ___________ is his favorite. To build up ___________, he jogs in the stadium every day. In his mind, _________ makes him relaxed and ___________. Sweating during the jog gives him an enjoyable feeling. Besides, in order to have a slim shape, he keeps a ____________ diet.

Once he signed up for a marathon ____________ in his city. During the competition, he fell down on the track and his left leg was injured. The audience, as well as his captain, thought he would end in ____________. However, though under stress, he didn’t ____________ but ran as hard as he could to ____________ for his team. The spiritual strength he showed made him unique. Finally, not only did he become the champion and win the medal as well as the honor for his team, but also he won the ____________ of the citizens.

3 . Thirteen can be a challenging age. Not only did I have to adapt to my _______ body, I also had to deal with my parents’ divorce, a new family and the upsetting _______ from my country home to a crowded suburb.

Realizing how lonely I was in the new place, my father _______ an old horse for me. My Cowboy was undoubtedly the _______ horse in the world. He was pigeon-toed and knock-kneed. But I didn’t _______ his disadvantages. I loved him beyond all reasons.

Tortured by unkind _______ about Cowboy’s looks, I joined a riding club. I knew that my only chance to prove they were wrong was to _______ in timed-speed events. For the whole next month, I woke up early every morning and rode Cowboy five miles to the arena (竞技场). Day and night, Cowboy and I braved the elements to _______.

Our turn finally came. As I nudged Cowboy forward, he stumbled (绊倒), and almost fell, much to the delight of the other riders. I jammed my bat down on my head, stroked Cowboy’s big red neck and entered the arena. At the ________, we dashed toward the first barrel (桶), and with perfect precision ________ the second and moved on to the third. We tore around the final curve and shot for the finish line!

No ________ filled the air. The end of our ________ was met with surprised silence. With the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, I heard the announcer call our time. We won the championship in the run!

In fact, what we won was ________ a game. What I also learned was that no matter what the difficulty, we can be the ________ of our own destiny if we wanted something ________ to work for it.

4 . Many quarterbacks in the playoffs (季后赛) went through lots of adversity throughout their careers. Even in tough circumstance, Joe Burrow, a talented and determined quarterback, wasn’t_______.

Burrow moved around a lot as a child because of his father’s_______. They first moved to Fargo and eventually, his father_______a job at Ohio University, which brought Joe to Ohio. While it was hard for Joe to constantly make new friends every few years, he got through it by playing_______.

Burrow dreamed from _______of playing in the NFL, but his journey wasn’t easy. Despite getting recruited for football at Ohio State University, he _______got on the field, serving only as a backup for three years. Later, he made a decision. He left Ohio and_______to Louisiana State University so he could play more football. Unfortunately, when Burrow was only in his first season of playing in the NFL, he suffered a serious_______ injury that almost ended his entire football_______. Joe had to sit out the rest of that year and had a reconstructive________. The recovery was pretty________and it was tough for him to do anything by himself. However, Burrow just________getting it fixed and being ready for the game.

With great________, Joe Burrow went at his recovery and then broke the records and________all the major college football awards. Although facing many hard shipsand challenges, he continued to overcome every________to make NFL history.

5 . You might say I found marathoning, step by step. Or perhaps it found me. I was _____________ an athlete growing up. In fact, I have a hard time _____________ that term to myself even today.

It started when I joined a group of women in my neighborhood for a daily three-mile walk. At first it was _____________. But soon, my body adjusted and I wanted _____________. Before long, I was running 5 miles. Then I set a goal to run a half marathon. And I did complete the Covered Bridges Half Marathon. I thought, “Now what?” I started to _____________ a marathon.

It so happened that I _____________ a meeting one night and listened to the speaker and coach, Rick Muhr, and was so _____________ by his words. I told him that I had signed up for the Ocean State Marathon, just a week away, and that I really didn’t believe I could _____________. Rick locked eyes with me and said, “Trish, you’ve done enough training. You’ll finish!”

I never had someone _____________ me like that, let alone a real, live coach. He gave me the ________________ I needed. I set out to run my ________________ marathon and completed it in 4:25:00. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of nearly a decade of marathon and distance running.

Running a marathon isn’t for everybody. But it is for anybody, anybody who wants to ________________ the unreachable and to take that ________________ into the rest of their life. When you cross the finish line you may never have a ________________ picture of what you are made of and capable of accomplishing. Your ________________ of the world and, more importantly, of yourself will forever be changed!

6 . Being in the right place at the right time can mean the difference between life and death. A ____ named Zhu Keming despite the bad weather pulled six runners to ____ in a 100-kilometer cross-country race in China’s Gansu Province.

The day of the race started with mild weather. Zhu was ____ his flock (羊群) as usual. Then in the space of a few moments, everything ____. As the temperature dropped quickly and freezing rain and snow began to pound the land, Zhu took ____ in a small cave he’d been using for years to ____ emergency supplies.

It was from this point that Zhu ____ that one of the runners appeared disoriented (迷失方向的) and in pain. Zhu brought the man back to the cave to ____ him up. After lighting a fire, Zhu returned to the mountainside, ____ five additional runners to the cave. There’s little ____ that he finally saved their lives. ____ for the sudden change in the weather, most racers were wearing lightweight clothing that was no ____ for the coldness. The threat of hypothermia (体温过低) was all too real.

“I want to say how ____ I am to the man who saved me,” runner Zhang Xiaotao posted on Sina Weibo. “Without him, I would have been ____ there.” While Zhu is being praised as a hero in his homeland, the ____ shepherd doesn’t see the reason for all the fuss. He says he’s just an ordinary person who did a very ordinary thing.

7 . Twenty years ago, Eric Moussambani became a global star. He swam a 100-metre freestyle in the Sydney Olympic pool so _______ that it appeared he might drown.

Eric was the first swimmer from Equatorial Guinea to _______ in the Sydney Olympics, because of a programme designed to encourage sport _______ in poor regions. In the 100 meters, three swimmers from the programme competed with each other. The two other competitors were disqualified for false starts, leaving Eric to swim _______. He started well but in the second lap, his freestyle became a crawl. The 17,000 crowd in the Aquatic Centre _______ him home in 1’52”. On that day, Dutch swimmer Pieter set a world record of 47.84 seconds. Yet ‘Eric the Eel’ became the _______of the world.

Eric learned swimming from a fisherman. When he heard the country was _______ swimmers for the Olympics, he went along. There wasn’t even a _______. Eric can only train himself in an irregular-shaped hotel pool for one hour every day.

When Eric first saw the Olympic pool, he thought it was so _______that he could never finish one lap. “During my training in Sydney, I took the ________ to watch how other swimmers moved their feet.” He said. He also lacked ________until his first race. A coach from South Africa saw him wearing Bermuda shorts and gave him a swimming costume and goggles. And that swim ________ Eric’s life.

It made him a symbol for swimming in Equatorial Guinea, where there are now two ________ Olympic- size pools. Being a national swimming coach, Eric tells the young swimmers the ________ he took from his lonely swim in Sydney. “When you have goals, you have to ________ to achieve them.”

8 . On Oct. 11, hundreds of runners competed in a cross-country race in Minnesota. Melanie Bailey should have _________ the course earlier than she did. Her _________ came because she was carrying a _________ across the finish line.

As reported by a local newspaper, Bailey was more than two-thirds of the way through her _________ when a runner in front of her began crying in pain. She _________ to help her fellow runner, Danielle Lenoue. Bailey took her arm to see if she could walk forward with _________. She couldn’t. Bailey then _________ to let Lenoue climb onto her back and carried her all the way to the finish line, then another 300 feet to where Lenoue could get _________ attention.

Once there, Lenoue was _________ and later taken to a hospital, where she learned that she had serious injuries in one of her knees. She would have struggled with extreme __________ to make it to that aid checkpoint without Bailey’s help.

As for Bailey, she is more __________ about why her act is considered a big __________. “She was just crying. I couldn’t __________ her,” Bailey told the reporter. “I feel like I was just doing the right thing.”

Although the two young women were strangers before the __________, they’ve since become friends. Neither won the race, but the __________ of human kindness won the day.

9 . A video of Tommy Carroll skating near his home has been viewed millions of times around the globe, gaining him fame as a skateboarder. He can’t see, but he can pull off some of the most incredible _______ on his skateboard without showing any _______. “I think everybody should know that everything happens for a reason and that there’s always a way to _______ an obstacle if you really want it enough”. Carroll said in the video.

Carroll, was born with the retinal (视网膜) cancer and lost his _______when he was two years old. He _______ to skateboard at the age of ten and has been on the board ever since. In the video, he explains how he uses sound to _______, listening for what’s around him and gaining a sense of his surroundings through his ears.

“I am always constantly using the sound of my wheels to _______ if there’s anything in my way and get my sense of _______ ,” he says. Carroll used to get lots’ of doubts from ‘his classmates about his _______for mastering’ the sports. “There were people who ________ me. ” Carroll smiled, adding, “They considered it no way, taking it for granted that people like me, can’t skateboard. But I just ________ them. ”

Though courageous, Carroll learns to be ________. When he skateboards in the new location, he gradually ________ himself with the surroundings. After a number of rides he then starts trying tricks. “Falling is as ________ as the sport itself. ” he said, “I have proved peers ________.”

10 . Every August, teams with players about 10 years old play baseball across the US, with the aim to become Little League _______. In this year’s game, Isaiah Jarvis, a Little League batter (击球手),   _______ the pitcher (投球手), Kaiden Shelton, who threw a baseball that hit him in the head. The   _______ scene brought tears to the eyes of the crowd in the stadium.

On August 7^th, Kaiden Shelton, from Texas, _______ Isaiah Jarvis, from Oklahoma, at the plate. With two strikes against Isaiah, Kaiden _______ lost control of his pitch. The ball hit Isaiah in his helmet, sending him to the ground. The field staff immediately _______ him and found him to be OK. He decided to remain in the _______. Yet Kaiden, the pitcher, appeared to be _______.

Isaiah called a timeout upon seeing his _______ battling emotions. He calmly walked toward Kaiden and gave him a big hug, trying to ________ him. “Hey, you’re doing just great.” Kaiden later shared with NBC News. “These ________ words from him really helped me.”

A video of the moment was posted online and attracted more than 6.5 million views. Danny Graves, a sports announcer, said Isaiah’s ________ was the best thing he had ever seen in Little League baseball.

The Texas team won the game 9-4 to ________ to the Little League World Series. And Isaiah was also ________ to the game to celebrate its 75th anniversary. The pair told NBC News they think their newfound ________ will last beyond any tournament.