Welcome to PBX

The Place Where Being the Best is Second Best to Being Your Best

When you get off your plane in Portland, Oregon and make your way to baggage claim you’ll inevitably pass a sign that proclaims it or a person saying it. Welcome to PDX. Never fails to make me feel a little better. Doesn’t matter if I’m overtired and cranky from traveling or refreshed and excited to be back home. Welcome to PDX makes me feel a little better. It was on one of these jaunts from my arrival gate to the conveyor belt that would have my bag after a trip to Boston that I thought about a place called PBX.

Yup. P.B.X. The land where your best can be found. The town where your best lives. The place where giving everything means everything. The place where being the best is not as important as being your best. PBX.

I wondered if this place could exist beyond my imagination. I felt like it kinda sorta did during the T&F meet I had just come from. For close to 45 minutes… heat after heat of the Men’s Mile had the crowd rocking and rolling. The announcer had notified the everyone in attendance that last years edition of the meet had set a record of sorts. A record that I had never heard of before. You see, last years Valentine Invitational at Boston University saw 26 different runners break 4 for the mile. It was the most Sub 4’s coming from a single meet ever. The announcer asked the crowd and more importantly the runners if this years edition of the meet could break that record.

This was something I could get behind. Normally, the first heat or the last heat is the fastest heat. The crowd tends to get most excited for that “fastest” race. That’s where they will usually see the quickest times and those fastest times usually coincide with the loudest cheers and the most attention given from the crowd. But what the announcer was asking from the crowd and the field was something different. Could we cheer everyone trying to break a barrier instead of a few people trying to break each other? Could we celebrate the battle against the clock instead of the fight amongst competitors? Could these very same competitors compete WITH each other instead of against each other. Could we cheer on all these runners and not just the runners up front?

The answer was a resounding yes!

The crowd was in a frenzy as one, then two, then eleven broke 4 minutes for the mile in heat one. Could the runners in the other heats do it? Could they do something better than they ever had before? And could the crowd watching support these second and third and fourth heats like they did the first and fastest heat? Could the crowd be their best… better than they’ve ever been before? The answers were yes and yes and yes and yes!

More heats. More Sub 4’s. More cheering. And that cheering only became more frenzied as Sub 4 #19 crossed the line. Then twenty, then twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six runners broke the barrier… Sub 4! Then a twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth runner broke through. The record broke with another barrier broken. These athletes were feeding off the crowd and the crowd was feeding off the announcer and the announcer was feeding off the athletes. Personal best after personal best after personal best. Race after race after race. Sub 4. Sub 4. Sub 4. Not a person left the stands for 10 straight races. The athletes that had finished racing stuck around to cheer on their fellow competitors in later heats. Everyone was cheering for everyone. There was a communal joy here.

In this environment anything seemed possible. So, how many could we get under 4 when even the impossible seemed possible?

52.

Yes. 52. Not a typo. 52 runners under 4 minutes for the mile. 52 Sub 4’s from one meet. The record was smashed. Doubled. It was one of the most exciting 45 minutes of sport I’ve ever been a part of . Almost every runner that broke 4 that day set a PB, a personal best. How? How did this happen? Well, they ran their best trying to run their best. It wasn’t about who beat who. It wasn’t about finishing ahead of this person or that person. It was about collectively working together in the hopes of individually achieving something extraordinary. And when you get enough people together trying to do something better than they’ve ever done before… well, magic tends to happen.

For a little under an hour we were no longer in Boston. We were in a place I call PBX. And when I landed back in PDX I wondered if this mythical place called PBX could be a place that we all have access to. Could PBX really be somewhere… anywhere… everywhere? What if we gave the same energy to the athletes in Heat #9 as the athletes in Heat #1? Isn’t that what it’s all about anyway? Don’t you take a starting line trying to give your best effort? And isn’t that all you can ask of yourself or another athlete? Try your best and maybe… maybe… maybe you do this thing better than you’ve ever done it before. Maybe that means you get a place on the podium or a medal but more often those best efforts end with nothing more than the knowledge that you gave your best. And sometimes with no spot on the award stand that athlete walks away from the track with a new personal best. A new best time. A new best throw. A new best jump. Don’t those performances demand our respect and attention? They do.

Welcome to PBX. This is where I want to watch T&F. PBX. This is where I want to cheer on XC runners. PBX. This is the place where I want to celebrate road racers and trail race competitors. PBX is where everyone makes everyone better by trying to be their best.

There is room on the starting line for everyone here in PBX. PBX is where we acknowledge that the best performances are not based on how quickly you get from the start to the finish line but instead by what you do between those starting and finish lines. PBX is where we celebrate personal bests and not just the best person.

It may take a new way of thinking… after all, the better your competitors do the better your chances are at you being your best. So, you may need to cheer on those you are racing against with. You may need to work with and not against those you share that starting line with. You may need to celebrate the people that finish in front of you because their efforts inspired your efforts and helped pull you closer to your best. You may need to thank the people that finished behind you because their efforts motivated you and pushed you closer to your best.

Sounds like a whole bunch of runners acting like the best version of themselves. In fact, it sounds like the best way to achieve a personal best is to act like your own best person. Hmmm… PBX is about running but maybe PBX is not about running too.

Okay, I’ve got to wrap this up because tonight is the Nike Jesuit Twilight Relays here in Beaverton, Oregon. And you know what we’re doing? We’re calling out every PB that gets set in every race and field event competition. We’re going to keep a running tab of every PB set by every kid. Can we set 100 PB’s tonight? 200? 500? Doesn’t matter if you finish 1st or 101st. If you do your best we’re celebrating it. You deserve to be celebrated. You deserve to be cheered.

Because when you try your best you are at your best.

And in PBX that makes all of us better.