Thank you for visiting www.Lane8.org.
I’m completely exhausted and will try to finish Saturday’s post from the United States. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Meanwhile there are four other posts from today if you’d like to take a surf:
Author: jeff noel
Retired Disney Institute Keynote Speaker and Prolific Blogger. Five daily, differently-themed personal blogs (about life's 5 big choices) on five interconnected sites.
Forgot to Mention This….
Over at www.jeffnoel.com are many more photos from Lahti, Finland, the World championships, and the Ski Jump arena.
If you are ready, click here to go see more.
Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂
Welcome to Lane 8
Welcome to Lane 8. Hope you had a GREAT experience at the 2009 Master’s World Championships, in Lahti Finland.
I believe, “If your goal isn’t impossible, you’re not reaching high enough”.
My name is jeff noel, I’m an American from Orlando, Florida. My wife and I have been married for 26 years and we have a nine-year old son.
Our son has three teddy bears (exactly the same). He told me I had permission to bring the one with the torn ear.
My impossible goal is to make it to Lane 8. You know, the worst lane and the one the slowest runner gets.
My son asked me, “Dad, you want the worst lane, and you would even feel great about finishing last”?
“That’s right, son, even if I’m last, I would feel great”!, I respond back, smiling.
After a short pause, I add, “Lane 8 in the finals, at the World Championships. Although you are last, you’d still be in the top eight in the entire world”.
That would be impossible for an ordinary person like me.
Understand? Good. Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂
Read Lane 8 Like A Book
Lane 8 is a fun story to write. Fun because it’s for our son. He’ll be nine in a few days. There are only a few who actually know this. Now more will.
If you were to spend an hour reading back through this blog, you’d start to see how impossible it was for me to be here in Finland.
The temptation to postpone, rationalize, or even to quit, is beyond my normal threshold for these types of life’s challenges.
Yet, I write this from Lahti, Finland – home to the 2009 Master’s Track & Field World Championships.
Reading back through the posts, and looking at where I was ten years ago, I hope our son will realize a few things about life:
- This is not a story about athletic achievement, it’s about setting “life’s bar” high
- This is not my story, it’s our story
- Nothing is impossible
- There are no short cuts in life
- Life is painfully hard
- Life is gloriously wonderful
- Live your life with purpose, and on purpose
- Do not worry what others think
- Have fun along the way
- Love others and be loved by others
Thanks for following Lane 8. I totally understand virtually all of you will never have time to read from here to the beginning, or from the beginning to here.
But if you ever want to read a “book” to be inspired, this may be a diamond in the rough.
Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂
Gold Medal?
Yes. Gold medal effort. That’s all I can ask of myself, “Did I do my best”?
Yes, I did.
“Will you do your very best”?
These two crazy dreamers (below) claim, “If your goal isn’t impossible, you’re not reaching high enough”.
Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂