I had so much fun watching everyone get to the top of Horse yesterday! You guys ran great, and even though some of you looked a bit tired at the top, you all looked happy.
Parents of our runners, and other students at Monta Vista, might not know that running Horse is one of the rites of passage for a Monta Vista cross-country runner. Horse is a 495-foot climb over .93 miles in the Fremont Older Open Space. It’s hard, objectively difficult to run in a straight shot or even with a couple walking breaks, no way around that. I remember running it with one a freshman, Akshara Majjiga, her first time up—and she was running with coach so I would not let her stop. We were talking a bit but after a while, Akshara got quiet for a while, and then she asked a little sadly, “how far does this go?” Everyone who has ever run Horse has the little voice in their head suggest, “There is no end to this thing, is there?”
The thing is—we can do hard things. Running up Horse isn’t just about finishing a hill, it’s about how we face the task. Do we see the workout, the climb as a challenge we can rise to? Getting to the top of a 495-foot climb may not feel like winning a race, but it shows you can meet difficulty head-on. Thousands of people wouldn’t even try to run that run—you did. That mindset, the ability to view hard things as challenges rather than threats, is what really matters. Well done, team!
I am proud of the team we have.
“Research consistently shows that tougher individuals are able to perceive stressful situations as challenges instead of threats. A challenge is something that’s difficult, but manageable. A threat is something we’re just trying to survive, to get through. This difference in appraisals isn’t because of an unshakable confidence or because tougher individuals downplay the difficulty. Rather, those who can see situations as a challenge developed the ability to assess the situation and their ability to cope with it.”
—Steve Magness
