Superhuman

It isn’t often that I judge a book by its cover, however it does happen from time to time and in the latest instance – as in most cases, I’m reminded as to why it’s important not to.

Being around professional athletes is always fun, whether you’re into sports or not. They tend to be in the top .001 percent of their “sport” and as much as you’d like to think they’re normal people just like you and I, they’re not. Normal people can’t jump 40 inches and dunk a basketball while rotating 360 degrees. Normal people don’t hit a 95 mph fastball, and they certainly don’t run a marathon in just over two hours or finish an Ironman distance triathlon under 8 hours.

So how does judging a book by its cover have anything to do with this? Over the last few weeks I had a chance to meet and talk with a few professional athletes as I made the trip to Ironman Arizona. Sure they look different, most of them talk different as they’re from all over the world. However, take 2 minutes to start a conversation with them and you’ll quickly learn they’re humble. I don’t mean humble relative to perhaps other pro athletes from major sports in the US… I mean humble! Perhaps even more so than a lot of age-group triathlete out there. While I don’t have an explanation for it, it’s certainly refreshing, - maybe we’re constantly fed information via the media that most aren’t this way. Who knows, I don’t.