Dear Athlete
Welcome to the Silver Anniversary of the Platte River Fitness Series and the launch of the 2026 racing season! Twenty-five years ago, a group of caring, concerned citizens wanted to encourage people to get moving to improve the health of our entire community. To be fair, the “series” part was a bit of an accident. I didn’t want people to train for a single event and then head back to the couch for the rest of the year. I wanted a cultural shift that encouraged people to make fitness part of their life and being an athlete part of their identity. Two of the original three events remain, our spring Tri-Nebraska Triathlon (known as the James O’Rourke Memorial Triathlon for its first 10 years) and winter’s Jingle Bell 5K. We started with three, had as many as twenty-nine, and now find our sweet spot to be fifteen to eighteen events in a year. We are also blessed to have a waiting list of organizations ready to host a new race.
The sustainability of the PRFS is scaffolded by individual athletes who dare to be brave and try, organizations and charities who see hosting a race as mutually beneficial to a growing fitness culture and their causes, sponsors who make a financial or in-kind commitment year after year for the betterment of the community, and volunteers who make it all possible. Even local television and newspaper coverage, especially in those formative years, gets credit for helping us grow. I made plans to do this work for a couple of years. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined I would raise my kids to adulthood, become a grandmother and still be doing this work twenty-five years later.
I want to start the 2026 season with a reminder. It is the core foundation of the PRFS. You are an athlete, full stop. Your story is an athlete’s story. Many of us are enjoying the Olympics right now, and we love the special segments that tell a snippet of a competitor’s athletic journey. Becoming an Olympian or winning the Super Bowl are not the pre-requisites to take that journey. If you dare, if you try, if you believe, if you sacrifice, and if you encourage others, you are on the epic journey of an athlete as well. If you run a mile or a marathon, it is the heart with which you do it that makes you an athlete. It is one thing to develop your natural gifts. It is another to be willing to work to develop and improve yourself with many fewer of those gifts.
It isn’t enough for me to believe you are an athlete, and oh, I very much do believe in you. It matters that you bring that identity deep into your bones, your muscles, your heart. It matters that you internalize it as part of who you are. Why does it matter? It matters because the way you see yourself affects your behavior. Health, flourishing, vibrancy, longevity are the results of a lifetime of choices and behaviors. Athletes are a particular breed, living both an embodied life and a philosophical one. Runners, in particular I think, are modern day philosophers. Being an athlete provides context for actions and behaviors that otherwise seem trivial and meaningless. It is within the context of being an athlete that swimming, riding a bike and then running makes sense. Running six miles without being chased by a lion is nonsensical…unless you are an athlete. Running six miles dedicated to someone else is a prayer. And it makes sense without concern for the outcome. The only destination is our own self-improvement and our own joy in the accomplishment of overcoming self-defeating behaviors and our own self-doubt.
It wasn’t until I started seeing myself as a runner so many years ago that I started to rethink my behaviors. Athletes have to eat right, sleep well, and move in abundance. Athletes move forward, they make progress, they strive for a wider aperture with which to view the world. Athletes also learn to accept struggle, difficulty and challenge. Those are necessary to the full human experience. Essential. Athletes know how to grow from them. Athletes come in all shapes, all sizes, all ages and all abilities. What is common to them is a steadiness and sturdiness that leads to more consistent, healthy choices and decisions. I contend that the struggle in a contest is the greatest gift given to any athlete. Swag bags and medals can’t even compare. We create ourselves in the face of struggle. We learn about ourselves in the “hard” of it all. We become resilient.
It wasn’t until 2018 with the publication of the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear that I could back up my mandate with a little bit of science. It is a phenomenal book, by the way. Clear refers to something called “identity-based habits.” Remember, the PRFS was in the business of helping people create healthier lives, and healthier lives are born of healthier habits. According to Clear, “The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits.” Our fitness family builds identity-based habits that are transformative.
There is space for change and adaptation in our identities as athletes. The performance change can go two ways. When we see ourselves as an athlete, think like an athlete, behave like an athlete, we can actually get faster even as we age. Jackie Musgrave from the Sandhills is a lifelong athlete which means that improvement with aging is very hard won. Jackie just crushed her personal best in the marathon in her 50’s. It is possible to get better. There is also the reality of decline. We get older and slower. That change simply requires a modification to our identity. I will never set a new PR in anything, but rather than “retire” as an athlete, I change my metric. If I can’t go faster or if I can’t go longer, I can accumulate more miles each week, get stronger in the weight room, savor each run more and grow in the wisdom each run brings. I can even become a beginner again, at something new, creating more opportunities to get better at something that enhances my running, but doesn’t replace it. When you see yourself as an athlete, there is always a new place to go if you are open and adapt. I can’t run on consecutive days anymore if I want to run until I die. I can’t run twice a day. My average pace is about double what it was in my prime. Yes, it’s hard on my ego sometimes, but living in service of my ego isn’t the way to go for me. I am twice as slow now as I look at age 70 on the horizon, but I am still an athlete. Athletes focus on the possible, the impossible, the potential of something. I might be able to set a PR for a power walk or make my running pace today just a wee bit faster than two days ago. I have never had the weekly mileage I have now, even when I was at my most competitive.
Everyone who decides that today is the day, this race is the one, these people are my kind of people (and if you’ve not met the family of the PRFS, they most definitely are the best kind of people), do so fully embracing your true identity. You can show up in old gray sweatpants (it’s been done), controlling your bedhead with a headband, with sleepy, un-mascaraed eyes, or a five o’clock shadow four days old. Come with muddy old shoes (been done many times) and a little bulge over your waistband. You will be beautiful in our eyes. What matters is showing up. Showing up helps the cause or charity that hosts the race for sure. It helps incentivize the sponsors. It builds a community that is creating connection and a sense of belonging, two things the expert tell us that are in short supply and essential for our physical and mental health. That might not have been a thing twenty-five years ago. It is definitely a thing now. Most of all, dear athlete, show up for yourself. When you do, you show up better for everyone around you, especially those you love and can’t live without and those who cannot live without you.