Mile Record! by Fernando Leyva-Montiel

I believe that negative thinking should not be the cause of bringing your thoughts and your mindset even in the hardest or saddest moments.

I believe that track is a very important sport, especially in the 1600 meters or the mile (which is 4 laps), because this event requires both a very quick jog but yet again you need to have insurance, and need to be able to pace yourself to be able to get the same time per lap and try to get 1, to be able to do this and try to get a record takes a lot of practice and training especially when the record is 3 minute and a 34 second mile world record. 15 minutes before my race started I recently noticed that my time had ranked 4 in the district which was decent time compared to the other competitors which their times were scaled from a 4:40 to a 5:08 while I was running a 5:16 knowing this struck a million of negative thoughts throughout my head thinking that I wasn't good enough and that I was not capable of getting in the top 6.

At this point every part of my body was showing how negative I was thinking and how it showed that I was telling myself that I was not able to do good in this next event, especially through my face showing doubt and fear. It wasn't until my dad saw me when he knew had to do something about it before my race had even started. As he called me over I ran towards him with a slouchy back and a sloppy running form showing many people that I wasn't confident in myself giving the image to other people that I wasn't going to be able to do what I have done for the past few races in this race. First thing he did when I arrived with him was slapping me on the back making be extend it so that I would keep my back straight. The first thing that he asked me was what I was thinking. I responded the question by saying that I was fine evading the question. As I looked at his eyes we both knew that I was not fine and that there was obviously something going on through my mind making a negative wall that was stopping me from going

better than what I could go at. He started to tell me that this was my race that I would be able to own it and to start telling myself that I am able to do this, that this was going to be a piece of cake, and that everything was going to be fine. Within 10 minutes until the race I was already feeling more confident and started to trust myself.


“BBAAMMM!” The gun struck as all 8 boys started to get ahead of the line, as I wasn't able to push myself to the front of the group making get me marked at 3 to last place. Unfortunately it was a struggle to catch up since i had to sprint to the front of the group making me feel more tired per second.”ding, ding, ding¨ it was the last lap as everyone started to pick up the pace starting to finish unfortunately I kept the same place during the whole time which made me stay in 5 place finishing with my head almost down disappointed that we were all clumped in a group and that 4 place finished a couple of milla seconds ahead of me made me feel angry. As soon as the lady came over to tell us our time, she told me that got a 5:10! With this news I saw that my mentality was affected by my positive thoughts . Seeing the effects of my thoughts I noticed that negative ones should never affect your performance.