I have been thinking a lot about the words personal best.

I never thought I would meet an Olympic athlete, living way out in the boonies as I do, but sometimes life hands you interesting little surprises, eh.

We first met Clara about a year ago. The guys were up in the sugar bush near the top of the mountain tapping our trees because maple syrup season was beginning, and she came loping through the bush on her snowshoes.

The operative word here would be loping.

Anyone who snowshoes will tell you it takes enormous energy to travel any distance in them, especially on rotten spring snow in hilly terrain. Most folks take it at an easy walk. Paul remembers being covered in sweat just from walking from tree to tree and marvelling that she was motoring along and not breaking a sweat at all.

Yowzah.

Later on she and her husband came to visit the sugar house and watch us make maple syrup. That's when we found out that she'd bought a place not far from where we live. We also found out that she'd won two bronze medals in long distance cycling for Canada at the Atlanta Olympics.

Yowzah.

She dropped by for a quick chat late in the summer and mentioned that she was going to pursue a long held dream and see if she could make it onto the Canadian Olympic speed skating team. I didn't say anything, but I wondered to myself how a 29-year-old, no matter how fit, could learn a new sport in a few months and push herself into world class levels.

To my amazement, she not only made the team, but placed tenth in the 1,000 meters at Salt Lake City, earning her a place in the 5,000 meter race. The look on her face when she crossed the line and saw her time, just a whisker shy of the old Olympic record, spelled out to me the joy that can be found in the words "personal best."

On Saturday Clara pushed herself to the point of collapse and won the bronze in the 5,000 meter speed skating, becoming only the fourth athlete ever to medal in both the summer and winter Olympics. If she hadn't decided to take a chance, to go for her personal best whatever that might turn out to be, she never would have come to this extraordinary achievement.

As goofy as this sounds, one of the joys of watching these Olympics for me was to see the various athletes come up to the microphone beaming because they had reached a personal best. For most of them this didn't mean a trip to the medals podium. What it did mean was that when they put themselves on the line, they reached in and found more than they had ever found before.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't like to try new things unless I'm pretty sure I will succeed at them. My father always said second place was merely "first loser", and third place was "second loser".

The whole concept of "personal best" was not something I grew up with, and that's too bad because I realize now how much not having those words in my vocabulary has boxed me in.

You know, I don't think it would hurt to enlarge my vocabulary with those two words.

--Marn