HEY!

Tonight we raced the 800 and I placed....drumroll....drumroll....FOURTH. Indeed, it has been the Games of fourths. Does 444 have any cultural significance in China? I think it means "you will live a long and prosperous life, grasshopper." Tonight, post-race, I'm sitting on the second floor of the USA building (the only place you can get wireless internet around this joint), playing Guess the Flavor of the Jelly Belly with a couple of teammates. Dr. Pepper really does taste like Dr. Pepper.

Over the past few days I had visualized the race over and over again. I sat in my room and made notes and drew out schemes of what might happen and how I could respond. I rested. I ate my perfect athlete diet. I stretched. I revved up my mind and prepared to put it all out there to make it possible to be on the podium. At the same time, I let one sliver of my mind prepare for the fact that I might not medal on the track in Beijing. One tiny sliver of self protection.

Looking at the start list, I knew that I would have to run a very lucky and tactical race to beat the three ladies who medaled tonight. I had plan A, B, and C in mind of how this could happen and as we had three racers from the U.S. in the event, we had talked about what our strategy would be. When the gun went off, immediately nothing went according to plan. The first lap was superbly slow as neither our Chinese rival nor any of us decided to take it out fast. This left all 8 of us in a big heap of confusion...wait a minute, what is going on? Ultimately at about 300 meters to go one racer went out hard for the sprint, the rest of us reacted and...well...I knew that if we were going to do nothing but sprint, then I would get fourth.

Even to myself, I'm surprisingly relaxed tonight. I feel a sense of peace and kind of picturing my life as deep ocean. Within this scheme, this even is really just a ripple of life events that creates some unsteady waters but doesn't disturb the depth of the ocean. Life is so big, and now I'm going to eat Jelly Bellies. I'm still reserving chocolate cake until the 17th.

In other news, I have decided that I am going to run the Marathon on Wednesday. I had been reserving this decision until after I had finished track as this environment really does require a one-thing-at-a-time focus. When weighing the options, it seems pretty obvious that in doing the Marathon, I have nothing to lose. I didn't prioritize it in training, but, anything can happen...and...it's going to quite a capstone to race it with my teammates. I love my sport, so let's make it an ode to wheelchair racing.... in Beijing.

:) ,
cheri