A lesson in COURAGE

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR INNER VOICE

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I was 16 years old. I was so excited, as a budding teen athlete, to receive the callup from Athletics Australia to race against some of Australia’s greatest track athletes: Lee Naylor, Tamsyn Lewis and Cathy Freeman. This was the first time I would line up against these ‘big guns’ and I was beyond ecstatic. I hadn’t broken 54 seconds over 400 metres at this point, so these ladies were due to beat me by more than 20 metres.

We started warming up; I was jittery with excitement. I followed them around, jogging a little too close to Cathy for her comfort, stretching side by side with Tamsyn and doing sprints with her, too. I was enamoured with my heroes. Into the call room we went, had our names and numbers marked off and took our seats.