Set to 70 - Living at 54

Last weekend, when temperatures dipped well below zero, I found myself facing an unexpected problem at home.

Early Saturday morning, February 7th, as I was getting ready to head into school, I noticed our heater making a noise I hadn’t heard before. The heat was still working, but something didn’t sound right. I took the cover off and quickly realized the issue seemed to be with the inducer motor. When I applied a little upward pressure, the noise either stopped or at least quieted down. Since the heat was still running, I decided I’d take a closer look once I got home.

When I returned later that day, the house was still warm. I removed the motor to inspect it, but everything appeared normal. It spun freely and didn’t show obvious damage. I put it back together, confident I had solved the issue.

Unfortunately, that’s when the real problem started. The motor would start, but the furnace wouldn’t ignite.

By that point, it was 12:45 on a Saturday afternoon. I headed to our local parts store, only to find they didn’t carry that brand, and every other parts store had already closed at noon.

That night, we managed to get by using space heaters in the bedrooms to keep everyone relatively warm, but the rest of the house quickly became cold. When I woke up Sunday morning, the thermostat read 54 degrees, even though it was set to 70. One more long, cold night passed before I was able to get the part Monday morning and finally restore the heat.

I was grateful not just that the heat was fixed, but that I had a dad who taught me how to problem solve, troubleshoot, and not panic when things don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

That thermostat reading on Sunday morning stuck with me because it reminded me how similar this situation is to athletics and especially to track and field. For this analogy, the thermostat setting represents your training, while the actual temperature reflects how you race or perform. As an athlete, I can think back on seasons where my training indicated one level of fitness, yet my performances didn’t match it. As a coach, this is one of the hardest things to help athletes work through.

We all hit ruts from time to time. But it’s those stretches where you can’t seem to climb out, when every race feels like a reminder of where you aren’t rather than where you want to be, that test you the most. In today’s world, those moments are even harder on athletes. When I ran in high school at Cherokee, if you wanted to know what someone else in the state was doing, you waited for the Star Ledger to print North Jersey results. Now, if meet results aren’t posted within minutes of a race ending, frustration sets in. Add in Instagram, Twitter, and Strava, and it becomes incredibly easy for athletes to fall into comparison mode.

That comparison can be dangerous. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” a quote often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, captures it well, but the idea goes even deeper. Scripture warns us against measuring ourselves against others, calling it unwise (2 Corinthians 10:12), and reminds us that our value isn’t found in comparison but in how we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13 to 14). When athletes focus too much on others’ performances, they lose sight of their own thermostat setting, the work they’ve put in, the progress they’re making, and the race they need to run that day.

The true goal of racing should be to give the best version of you that you can on that particular day. Sometimes that leads to winning, but often it doesn’t, and that’s okay. The real joy of this sport comes from competing, from being pushed, and from pushing others in return. Track and field isn’t about you versus them; it’s about how the collective effort of a race can bring out something in you that you didn’t even know was there. In many ways, your competitors help you just as much as you help them, and that shared pursuit is what makes this sport so powerful.

Life, like athletics, moves in seasons. Sometimes you’re on the mountaintop. Sometimes you’re in the valley. Other times, you’re somewhere in between. What matters most is continuing to show up and choosing growth in the face of adversity. Track and field is not life or death, and it certainly shouldn’t be the one thing that defines who you are, but it can teach us powerful lessons about patience, resilience, and persistence if we let it.

In the end, the thermostat didn’t lie; it just reminded me that systems need time, attention, and trust to work the way they’re designed. The same is true in track and field and in life. Training doesn’t always show up on race day the way we expect, and effort doesn’t always bring immediate results. But consistency matters. Showing up matters. Trusting the process, especially when it’s uncomfortable, matters. If you stay committed, keep learning, and continue to respond the right way when things don’t go as planned, the results will eventually come. And when they do, they’ll be built on far more than just a good race or a fast time. They’ll be built on resilience.