1 . In the sport of track and field, athletes compete not only with ore another but against themselves. And with each race they ____ to achieve a new personal best.

For one Nebraska ____ running in what would likely be his final cross country outing before graduating from high school, his personal best ____ not to be about marking the fastest time but displaying the biggest ____.

Last Thursday, Bellevue East senior Brandon Schutt knew if his ____ was good enough that day, he still had the ____ to qualify for the upcoming state meet. Another runner Blake Cerveny was from Omaha Burke High School. Aiming to beat his own personal ____，after a fast start, he continued to ____ himself hard .

With less than 400 meters to ____ , Cerveny’s legs cramped up and failed him. ____ to finish, Cerveny rose from the ground and continued on, only to ____ again alter another 150 meters.

____ his coach asked Cerveny if he wanted to ____. He didn’t. Before Cerveny’s dad could reach his son , another runner—Brandon Schutt —was at his side to ____a helping hand . His first ____ to get Cerveny up failed, but like Cerveny, he too ____ to quit. With a second try, Cerveny was on his feet. The two ____ the final 75 meters of the course. "Brandon is an excellent person," Bellevue East's head track coach Rachel Carraher told KETV-7. “He is really kind and a great leader on the team.”

In today's ____ world in which the emphasis in athletics is ____ put on breaking records, it was ____ to see that for an athlete like Brandon Schutt, the value of true sportsmanship still had legs.

2 . British Cycling had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had ________ nearly one hundred years of mediocrity(平庸). In fact, their________   had been so poor that one of the top bike companies in Europe ________ to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the British people using their bikes.

What made Brailsford different from previous coaches was his________ of searching for a tiny improvement in everything they do. The whole principle came from the idea that if you________   everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, improve it by 1 percent and you will get a________ increase when you put them all together.

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small________. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more________. They asked riders to wear electrically heated over-shorts to ________ ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to ________how each athlete responded to a particular workout.

But they didn’t stop there.They________ to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked areas. They hired a(n)________ to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the ________ of catching a cold. They even painted the ________ of the team truck white, which helped them ________little bits of dust that would normally slip by ________ but could affect the performance of the________tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements were ________, the results came faster than anyone could have ________. Just five years after Brailsford took over, they________ the road and track cycling events in all the important Games.

3 . I am a girl, but I was born to be a rebel (叛逆者). I like games that can be ________. Some of the sports I like, even boys won’t play!

Wrestling (摔跤) is _______ seen as a sport for men, but I _______ to see if I could do it.

Every Saturday morning, I got out of bed early to go and watch my brother ________. From morning to night, I would sit watching the ________ have all the fun. Since then, wrestling has been part of my _______.

For three years, I ________ all the boys and became the best player in the team. My _______ memory of wrestling is when a boy walked off ________ because he’d lost to a girl.

My last ________ was at this year’s Girls’ State Wrestling Championships.

I was so ________. I was sure I would win. My heart was beating hard when the match started. I could see _______but my competitor. ________, when the final whistle (口哨) blew, I had _______ by four points. The cameras and lights all turned _______me: I was the new wrestling champion. I felt so happy. But after a few minutes of enjoying being a champion, ________ began to run through my knee. _________I hurt my knee, my _______ of being a national champion ended. Even so, I won’t_________ and still want to wrestle next year when I go to college. I have learned that you can do anything you want if you stay positive and put your ________ into it.

4 . Not two months after my initial 5K, a friend invited me to run a half marathon. This wasn't a small three-mile_________I needed to face. Could I really run for more than 13 miles? I began to_________. I worried I would_________myself in front of my relatives coming to cheer me on. But here was my chance. So I_________and started training under the guidance of professional coaches. I didn't give up though I learned running six or seven miles was no_________.

The beginning few miles that day passed_________as I took in the sights and enjoyed the event atmosphere. At mile 5, my friend began to_________. I didn't. At mile 8, my legs started to_________because of my previous injury,     but I kept going. At mile 11, I was_________because I was still full of energy. Feeling great, I looked over to my friend that walked just now, joking, "Do you just want to run the whole marathon?" Of course, the comment earned me many__________from those around us, but it proved something to me, I'd__________much more than I thought possible.

Now having been a__________for more than three years, with several SKs and four half marathons__________. I have more evens planned for this year and the__________of a full marathon in the near future. I've run through cities, parks, and beaches. I've run in rain and snow. I've run through operations and__________. I kept going though I've wanted to__________a hundred times. I got more than I ever__________.

And now I know: I can do things that seem__________. I can always keep moving forward no matter what's going on around me or__________me, no matter who is or isn't at my side. I can run through anything as long as I push past my__________.