Have you ever had THAT moment?

The moment that causes you to think:

“maybe, just maybe, ANYTHING is possible.”

My long athletic coaching career, my current elite mindset coaching business, and all the success I have experienced were all sparked by one single moment in my life during my junior year of high school track. An accidental moment that unlocked everything.

I was designated as a 400m runner on the Lake Stevens High School Track & Field team, an event that our team had many talented athletes in. Being one of the four guys on our 4x400m relay was a highly coveted badge of honor. At that time I was pretty much 8th on the depth chart, depending on the week, and running 55 to 56 seconds each time I competed.

In my mind, I wasn’t particularly talented, but I had hope I could improve. My thoughts were that maybe someday I could crack into the 53’s. “53 seconds for 400m would be awesome!”

A little over halfway through the season we were at the Marysville-Pilchuck Relays. A relay meet stretches your team's talent, as most events are relay races that require 4 teammates each. Since the coaches had to strategize entries to maximize our points for all relays, I somehow ended up on the varsity 4x400m team that day.

As the second leg, the race started and I waited at the starting line for my teammate to complete his full 400m lap and hand me the baton. I received the baton in first place and took off running, with the Snohomish High School runner right next to me.

As we were sprinting I caught a good look at the Snohomish runner beside me. He might have been three inches shorter, but he was thick. Like one huge fire-hardened piece of thick steel. He had huge biceps, massive shoulders, and a neck as big as his head. His face was bright red with effort, his wide eyes steely and laser-focused forward, his teeth were grit tight and I swear there was actually drool flowing from his open lips. His image is etched into my brain even today.

To say he was intimidating is an understatement. He was downright scary.

As we approached the 200m mark side by side, one of his Snohomish teammates on the infield lowered his body, stretched his head toward the track and screamed with all his heart:

“GET HIM IRONMAN!!!!”

To which “Ironman” responded with a barbaric YAWP from deep inside!

“AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!”

I’m not embarrassed to say that I was truly scared for my life. In response, I did what anyone being chased by a lion or a hoard of angry Vikings would do…I hit the accelerator. I didn’t think, I just ran!

I got away from Ironman and handed off the baton still in first place. Mission accomplished. Still alive!

Then as I walked toward the stands one of the team managers looked at me, held up a stopwatch, and said “51.5”.

Honestly, I was a little low on oxygen, so I immediately looked around to see who she was talking to. It certainly wasn’t me. But there was nobody around me. I was just a 55 second 400m runner with dreams of maybe running a 53-second race someday. So it couldn’t be me.

“51.5” she said again, looking directly at me. I pointed to myself with a questioning look, and she nodded “yes.”

Now I don’t know if the full impact of this hit me at that exact moment. It was too long ago. If it didn’t hit me immediately, it wasn’t long after. And that thought was this:

“I’ve been running 55’s for 400m. I have believed that maybe, just maybe if I worked really hard and ran the perfect race, someday I might be able to run in the 53’s. And here, in one race, out of nowhere I have just run 51.5. Which means my beliefs were completely wrong. Which also means, what other beliefs do I have that are completely wrong, but I’m living up to them because I believe them?”

While I didn’t in that moment know I wanted to be a coach, I did in that moment realize I needed to question every belief, learn to refrain from setting “limits”, and I wanted to help other people question every belief and live limitless as well.

Which is what I have done since. For more than 20-years as a cross country and track coach I have practiced belief and helped athletes believe in the “impossible”. I started a collegiate program at a school that had no chance of winning, and won a National Championship. I took over a program at an NCAA I school that was in really bad shape, and turned it into a powerhouse. Along the way I have had so many athletes run times they never believed they could run, achieve things they never dreamed of achieving, and hopefully opened their minds in the same way my “accidental” drastic improvement opened mine.