The Trials of Miles; Miles of Trials

This month's Windsor Sports cover photo (by Trevor Booth) was taken outside Loaring Physiotherapy & Health Center--a place that helped rehab Daniele DeFranceschi back on the road of hard training after an unfortunate bike crash earlier this year.  Pages 24-26 of this 'hot off the press' issue cover this month's feature story.  I encourage all, especially those who dare to dream big, to read this story by Dan Grant of Windsor Sports.  You can download the entire issue HERE

Below is a prelude to the story by the magazine's editor:

Climbing the mountain

This month’s cover subject inspires one and all to chase the impossible dream.

What moves someone to take up the challenge of achieving something that most his age would say is mere folly? What moves them to essentially put a budding professional career on hold, all in the pursuit of chasing a dream only realized by an infinitely small percentage of the global population over the past 113 years? Well, if you’re Windsor’s Daniele DeFranceschi, it’s simple: you do so because the opportunity is there! And if you didn’t grab that opportunity and pursue it for all its worth, you’d find yourself always
wondering, what if?

 

I have analyzed several of Daniele's power data files from various training sessions. The numbers are impressive.  However, I can say that Daniele's most powerful asset does not appear on a graph, nor can it be read from an ANT+ Sport device, nor geeked with WKO+ software.  His desire to chase his dreams, and will to succeed, is his most powerful asset--and it is of a power that few possess.

This month's Windsor Sports issue also has an excellent story (pages 21-22) about cross-county running powerhouse Massey Mustangs High School in Windsor.  Massey's dominance at OFSAA allows me to reminisce about my experience swimming with the Kennedy Clipper High School Swimming Team.  During those years swimming for the Clippers, we sailed to victory and became one of the winningest high school sporting teams in the history of Ontario Collegiate Sport.  We never lost a team title.  Never a loss at the local, regional, or provincial level. 

I learned a lot from Coach David Pells.  We all did.  The hard way.  Lots and lots of 'pearls of wisdom'.  He taught us all the value of hard work.  He taught us all the importance of working together as a team.  "You are all a bunch of cogs from the same wheel" he would often say.  "Each cog is equally important".  All a bunch a cogs.  Hard working cogs.  Smart working cogs.  Consistently hard/smart working cogs.  The on-going process of the Daily Grind created the collective end product of a finely tuned swimming machine--a machine passionately designed to achieve one primary goal: the pursuit of team excellence.

My sister Charlotte won 25 OFSAA medals in swimming. 24 of them were gold.  Her first medal was silver in colour.  When she was in grade 9 at her first OFSAA competition, she lost the 100m breastroke by 1/100th of a second.  That defeat helped mold a champion attitude for years to come.  She never lost again while wearing a Clipper bathing cap.  Everyone on the team had that same champion attitude..even the equally important cogs that lacked the talent to qualify for OFSAA in an individual event.  Everyone was considered equally instrumental to the team's success.

Now don't get me wrong.  It was never all about winning or losing.  It was always all about the process of putting forth a consistently hard/smart effort--working hard to best position ourselves to achieve success through the maximization of harvesting our collective potential. 

What was our secret?  We worked bloody hard--hard enough that there were practices that saw us looking at each other to see if lactic acid was oozing out of our ears.  Our coach, "Mr. Pells" always placed a garbage can at the corner of the pool if you felt inclined to cough your brains out of your mouth.  We worked hard enough--that we went into races confident that we would still beat any other high school swimming team in the province...on an off day.  We never lost. 

Countless "Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials" in a 20 yard pool with no lane ropes that was often way too warm or way too cold.  We were convinced that Mr. Pells intentionally and systematically lowered and raised the pool thermostat (the water temperature often fluctuated between a low 61 to a high of 94) in an effort to 'harden' us over time.  But this fluctuation was likely due to the fact that our pool was simply falling apart after years of use...years of 'blood, toil, tears, and sweat' taking place in the 'dungeon'.  We swam in arguably the worst facility of any other swim team in the province--in the same pool that my father and grandfather shredded to pieces with their powerful front crawl strokes many years before us--and we all prided ourselves that our 'dungeon' carved us into modern day hardened warriors.

So what was our secret?  The same secret that Massey XC has used to achieve great success every time they toe the line.  The same secret why Speed River Track & Field Club is now the strongest distance running club in Canada.  The same secret why the PTC is going to continue to be among the best development triathlon squads in the country. The same secret that 61 year-old Margaret Wojtowicz used to help her became an Ironman this past weekend in Florida.  And the same secret why many of the giants of our time become giants.

So what is The Secret?  Author John L. Parker Jr. in Once a Runner provides what I believe to be a very good answer to this priceless question:

What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trials of Miles; Miles of Trials.