THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH...

...The 2010 Winter Olympics, of course...

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Lindsay Vonn is My Hero. She, in spite of not being fully recovered from a recent skiing accident, won the Women's Downhill event. And when she found out she'd won, she finally got to show the emotion she'd kept bottled up inside in the days leading up to her victory. She found her skiing coach, and cried, and cried, and cried. She'd been under all sorts of terrible pressure, and just look what she did. She Won. Truly Amazing. I was overcome with emotion watching her. Of course, every athlete there has different ways of Letting It Out, but she laid her soul bare for all to see. How captivating that was. It was a private moment that became a public moment due to all the microphones and cameras near her; part of me was thinking, "how obtrusive" and part of me thought, "this is really intense, isn't it?"

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Lindsay, thank you for sharing your emotions with us all. The entire world, in its quest to become Politically Correct, just seems kinda shallow. Maintain your cool. Don't let 'em see you sweat. Don't indulge in anything that even Looks like it could be offensive somewhere on down the line. It was refreshing and cathartic somehow for me to witness this little gal, who held nothing, absolutely nothing back during her race and at the finish line. I've watched the speed skaters, the choreographed skating events, the luge races, the snowboard events (the half-pipe and downhill racing), everything except Curling. Where is the Curling? Was it, or will it be as exciting as the rest of this Olympiad? And what about Shaun White on that Snowboard? Truly, truly remarkable. The kid is crazy like a gnarly fox, but most of all, he is goooood. What he did in the half-pipe was as close to actually flying as a human can get without airplane wings. Just great stuff, Shaun.

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Back when I used to run, I knew that I had the heart of an Olympian trapped inside the body of a couch potato. I could not run fast. Running was all I could do; I was too uncoordinated for organized sports. My best-ever time for a mile was 6:58. My biggest surprise was a time of 1:49:28 for a half-marathon in 1993. That was, pound for pound, the best race I ever ran. I improved by 9 minutes from the year before. It felt like I'd literally zoomed across the finish line. As I slowed down, I found it difficult to breathe; I actually had to run another quarter-mile before stopping. I later read that excessive adrenalin can constrict breathing, so I guess I had to burn some of that off.

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The 1994 Portland Marathon was another such experience. At the 7am race start, it was already 70 degrees, so I knew we were in for a hot one. I held up pretty well until about the 17-mile mark; dehydration set in, and my body quit running; it just quit...well, thinking about that Finisher's Medal awaiting me, I alternated walking with a slow jog; it was probably 95 degrees by then (approximately 11:30am), but as I neared the finish line, something happened. All of a sudden, vroom, vroom, zoom...I blasted the last couple of miles and finished in a total sprint, and laid down a marathon personal best of 4:13:29. As I crossed the finish line, a Marathon Volunteer hung the medal around my neck and put one of those space-blankets around me and walked me into the finisher's area. My sight totally freaked out for a brief instant; all I could see were a big yellow dots in a black background. After about 30 seconds, my vision returned and I felt all warm inside; proud of what I'd done. I couldn't shed tears; I was so dehydrated at the finish.

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I still have all 11 of my Marathon Finisher medals. That's a part of my life that's over now, but I not only remember, I Fondly Remember. I laid it all out that day; gave all I had. So I think I understand, at least a bit, what these Olympic Athletes go through. They're all amazing to watch. I guess we all have roles in our lives, and evidently as the years pass, those roles change. But these Olympic events touched a place deep within where I remember what it was like to compete. Great fun, great thrills, and a lot of pain, too. Would I want to go thru that again? In a heartbeat. That's probably the attitude that keeps these Olympians coming back for more. It's in their blood. It's something they need to do. I Really Do Understand That.

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Lindsey Vonn competed again today; this time around it was the Womens' slalom. She crashed. That shows how fickle competition is, but that's how life is in general. A slip-up here, a misstep there, sets the stage for how things turn out. I'll just hope I'm not awarded a Finisher's Medal for "life" anytime soon. "Runner's World" magazine was at the Portland Marathon in 1994; from an overhead walkway, the photographer snapped a picture of us runners trudging along; I was in that picture. That's my 15 minutes of fame, I guess.