The Voice of Victory or the Voice of Struggle; your choice

​I am reminded this morning that can certainly be the case; the size of our victory is going to be the size of our struggle.

I spent the last couple of days virtually watching the Badwater 135 running race. It's call the most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet. I don't know how one would verify that claim. But the race starts in Death Valley and travels 135 miles through 100 degree plus temperatures and includes 3 mountains totalling over 14,000 feet of climbing.

So I'm not going to be the one leading the protest of that claim.

For years, I've watched my friend Harvey Lewis run that race. And a couple of times WIN that race (he finished 4th this year). Harvey has found a way to make the extreme look easy when it comes to running. He's found a way to hide the struggle, even though we all know it's there - every step of the way.

But this year, I was fixated on Harvey's fiance' Kelly, who was running it for the very first time. Fair or not, over the last few years it's been easy to watch Harvey's running feats and call him superhuman. But watching Kelly prepare for this race, reading her thoughts leading up to the race, feeling some of the pressure she felt going into it - it felt like I was watching a mere human tackle Badwater.

And there is something powerful about watching fellow humans tackle the extreme.

Following the reports online, it was clear Kelly's race was a struggle from early on. She battled to make the cutoff times at many of the checkpoints. If you miss a cutoff time, you are officially a non-finisher.

She made one of those cutoffs by less than a minute.

When your struggle is cutting it that close every time - every time you have a choice to make. Stop or go? Every time, you get to decide: am I going to chase victory the size of my struggle, or am I going to let struggle have the final word?

Kelly finished the race a little over an hour ahead of the 48-hour time limit. She spent nearly two full days running through extreme heat which included 14,000 feet of climbing. But I've seen the pictures of her finish. You could tell - on that face was victory the size of the struggle.

And in my eyes - an amazing woman may have just turned into superwoman.

Very few of us reading this will be running Badwater anytime soon. But nearly all of us will be waking up to struggle. Some of us mighty struggles.

We are all up against cutoffs - we are all up against the question some days - am I going to be defined by victory the size of my struggle - or in the end, does struggle get to tell my story.

I am absolutely impressed by Kelly's physical capacity to pull off what she just pulled off. But more than that, the place from where I draw deep personal inspiration, is the number of times Kelly chose victory in the middle of a struggle begging her to quit.

Chances are we will all hear the haunting voice of struggle in one form or another today. Just know that somewhere in there is the voice of victory. It's not often as loud. Maybe it never is.

That is, unless we choose to hear it.

When we choose to hear it, the voice of victory is every bit as big as the voice of our struggle.

Your choice.

Well done Kelly. Enjoy your victory celebration. So well earned.