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 . 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.

7 . My father grew up in Chicago and loved the local team Cubs (小熊队) his whole life. I loved my dad, so the Cubs _________ me too. When I went back home after school or work, I always watched the Cubs with him. Two decades after my father’s _________, every time I watch the Cubs on television, I think of him and _________ with him in my head about their game.

Perhaps baseball is too _________ a thing for father and son to connect over. A ball game might seem, frankly, sort of _________ compared with family and career concerns. But that is _________ what makes it ideal for forming relationships. We had nothing to _________ as we watched them play, except for the _________ of enjoying the games together as father and son, which was much greater than it would have been, if either of us had _________ without the other. The Cubs were the “place” where we met to enjoy being __________.

Lots of sports fans have similar __________. Sportswriters find that 42 percent of sports fans were “very __________” with their family life, compared with less than a quarter of nonfans.

If your __________ with family are a little cold, you might be __________ too much usefulness in your activities. Maybe the solution is to develop a taste for baseball, or maybe instead for opera or __________.

8 . It was an overwhelming Friday afternoon. There were hundreds of students, who _________ to cheer their favorite team up.

I have always loved running, but my_________to compete for a long-distance race was terrible for me. I was_________to compete in a four-hundred-meter race, yes, it was indeed _________. When the competition finally began. I found my nervous self _________. I ran with my strength, but still did not make_________to the top three. My teammates, whom I have expected to comfort me_________to doubt my ability to compete in the next event. They never wanted me to be in the next track game. This belief motivated me to_________more.

I wanted to prove myself._________I decided to work more on my endurance(耐力)skills. As soon as I noticed my time__________were getting better. I signed up for the next track game. This time I not only __________to be one of the top three competitors, but also earned a medal for my team.

Nothing was more__________ than the medal I won at that moment. I was appreciated by the members of my team, who__________rejected my wish to compete on that game. I learned that whatever one puts their__________to do, that person will__________be the best at what he is aiming for.

9 . 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.

10 . Sophie signed up for the baseball game. She knew she could ________ Gramps to help her. After all, Gramps had been a professional player. ________, training with Gramps turned out to be hard work. For the rest of the time before the match, Gramps ________ her all about the game. If Sophie ever had ________ about being good enough to play, she looked at Gramps and those doubts ________ disappeared.

However, when Sophie stepped up to the game for the first time, Gramps was ________ to be seen. There was no time to do anything but go ahead. Slam! She swung the bat, and the ball was in the air ________ she even realized she had hit it. First base, second base, and then she ________ into third in a trail of dust. Her team jumped to their feet in ________. Now, Gramps was standing right behind the bench, ________ louder than anyone else.

“Where did you go?” asked Sophie, rushing up to him after the game. “I looked everywhere for you. I needed you!” “You only ________ you needed me,” said Gramps. “The ________ is, when you are in the game, you’re always on your own. Now you know you can do it, with or without me.” Sophie nodded. “You’re ________. I can do it on my own.” Then she smiled, “Any more ________ I need to learn?” “When it comes to baseball,” said Gramps, “You never ________ learning.”