Cheering for the Daves

Several years ago I was running in a 5k on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and I fell to the back of the pack and started keeping pace with a man much older than I was, who had some kind of knee brace on. He explained to me that this was the first time he had been in a road race since recovering from an injury and he was hopeful he could make it through the race.

As we were running down the boardwalk, friends and family of mine were on different ramps leading up to the boardwalk to cheer me on as they saw me and yelled, “Go Dave, go!”

This guy turned to me and said with this big smile on his face, “These people are cheering for me and they don’t even know me!”

It occurred to me we hadn’t exchanged names, and at that point, I decided not to burst his bubble and tell them they were actually cheering for me. I guess there are two takeaways from that situation that I think are still relevant to me today.

Number one is when somebody is experiencing motivation like that, there’s no reason to take that away from them. There’s no reason to take away the wind in their sails!

Secondly, if people are cheering for one Dave, they are truly cheering for all of the Dave’s there are around.