July 21, 2006

unBONKED

Stage Sixteen was awful. "He no longer has a chance to win the Tour de France," all the sportscasters said of Floyd Landis. And he agreed.

"I couldn't do it. I was struggling. I wasn't good. There was only a certain speed I could do and it was slow. I cannot think about winning the yellow jersey now, but I'll keep fighting. It's not over yet." Floyd Landis, Team Phonak. American.

Floyd Landis, the rider Outside Magazine annointed as "the next Lance Armstrong," had crashed physically. Unable to make his legs move, he had dropped from 10 seconds ahead to more than 8 minutes behind. Crawling his way to the finish line, Floyd Landis had "Bonked."

When you have dropped all the marbles, you can accept reality, lie down and quit, or you can pick them up again, put your head down and race on.

Landis chose to race on.

Yesterday, July 20, 2006, Stage Seventeen was all Landis. "This is the greatest single day of riding in the history of the Tour de France." "It's impossible to do something like this on your own. But Floyd Landis has done it anyway." "He has taken the Tour de France and redefined it." Those were just a few of the superlatives thrown his way during and after his ride.

Breaking away on the first climb, Landis moved a minute ahead of the race leaders, then two minutes ahead, then, finally SIX MINUTES AHEAD! It was totally unheard of, unexpected, and impossible. "No one can ride this fast, this well, for 124.6 miles, all alone out front. No one!"

"The most improbable paragraph in the more than 100 years of Tour de France history." "Oh, Baby!" "I've never ever seen anything like it. Never!"

Sweat still dripping from his nose, Landis told the OLN interviewer, "If you saw yesterday, well, I came here to win the tour and I'm not done fighting yet. Whatever I have to do, I'll do it."

"Bonking" happens when you're dehydrated, overheated, stressed, depleted, and when your accumulative fatigue overwhelms your life.

But it doesn't need to overwhelm your dreams. Yesterday Floyd Landis showed us all that "You can come back!" You can choose to make today's failure the prelude to tomorrow's success.

"This one thing I do," wrote the apostle Paul (a victorious Christian leader who had "Bonked" terribly) "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13,14

Dick Duerksen
Assistant Vice President
Mission Development
Florida Hospital