okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Some inspiration from Billy Mills

Billy Mills spoke at Haskell today, and I had a chance to attend his presentation. Mills had a lot of interesting things to say. He covered everything from his up bringing to his training to his Olympic medal winning race to budgeting for sports at Haskell.

One of the stories he told was about a summer when he was in high school. He had a summer job in Valentine, NE, working construction. He was working 12 hour days. He was living in a junked car that a nearby farmer had offered as a place to sleep. He was bathing in a stream. And, he was putting in 45 minutes a day of running.

That's the kind of story that provides a good reminder of how cushy most of us have it.

Here's a video of Mill's Olympic 10K race...always inspiring to watch:

Mills' life story inspires. He's a great speaker. If you get a chance to hear him speak, take it.

Back to okansas.blogspot.com.

posted by Michael | 8:22 PM

Comments:

Here's a news story about Mills that is worth a read:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/oct/26/dreamcatcher/?sports

# posted by

Michael : 8:41 PM

Billy Mills´finish in the gold medal winning 10.000 m race in Tokyo is one of my earliest memories of sports on TV. I guess this was the only really significant result Billy Mills did - at least outside the US?

Ron Clarke was the favourite to beat but he never had the kick, but later he went on to set a couple of incredible solo run world records (for those days) in the following years - at least one of them in Stockholm where I saw him run a couple of times.

# posted by

Leif : 10:05 AM

At the same 1964 Olympics, Bob Schul won the 5000. Before that the US just didn't score in the long distances. Those results in the 5 and 10 perked up the U.S. long distance running scene.

# posted by

mean gene : 4:36 PM

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