70,000 Miles

Need some motivation?  Go ahead and buy this poster from Run Fan Shop.

The accompanying description on the website reads:

Everyone who makes an Olympic teams works really hard but we’d argue that no one worked harder than Brian Sell in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials (held in the fall of 2007). After letting a large early lead slip away in the final stages of the 2004 Trials, Sell buckled down and averaged 140-mile weeks for four straight years leading up his next shot at making the team. All that strength paid off with a third place finish and a trip to Beijing. Famous for his humble beginnings, this poster highlights Sell’s progression from a mediocre high school runner to a 2:10 marathoner.

While Brian Sell now lives in Lancaster, he has close ties to EARC. A few of us ran with Sell when he attended Saint Francis, and cheered as he progressed through his professional running career with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. Many of his former teammates traveled to New York City to watch him earn a spot on the 2008 Olympic marathon team. What an amazing performance...and mustache.

And all it took was grit, determination, unrelenting focus, and 140-mile weeks.