What does 'winning' mean to you?

Getting up each day and giving it all I have. I am no new-ager who loves everything and all is a-ok as long as you lace up the shoes, but rather am rapt with the idea that simply getting up and doing something, anything, is winning.

Each day I break my own personal consecutive days streak for living and that is a victory to me.

Winning is living each day without any regrets. I win every time I add in an extra hill at the end of a training run, or every time I skip my run to take my kids out to breakfast for some "daddy time". This past weekend I won by spending the entire afternoon building a paper mache penguin with my son for his class project. This morning I won because I got up and rode my bike hard before work.

Living is winning!

I win when I run 35 miles from my home and my wife drives down to pick me up....
I win - since I'm 44 and still running.
I can't loose.
I don't race anymore.
I enjoy every minute I'm out on the road running.
I win since I have learned to ENJOY running. To stop worrying about the time, distance, speed, style, form, etc. Now I just run, and if I get hungry along the way, I stop and eat, drink, and keep on running. Something that I never did in the past. I win since I have learned to mix in some walking in my runs therefore allowing me to cover greater distances. Distances that I could not even imagine possible when I was younger.

This is not a story of victory. I mean, I win battles, but not the war.
Running is a challenge I choose. I like to challenge myself, and I enjoy the satisfaction of meeting those challenges.
Diabetes is not a challenge I chose to face. It's something that I have to deal with to survive. Given a choice, I would stop being diabetic in a heart beat.
Another thing I have to say is that the more I live the more I see that everyone has things they have to deal with.
My oldest brother ran cross country as a freshman in high school. He was just two years older than me, and he didn't mind my tagging along, so I did some running with him while I was in jr. high. I ran the mile, unremarkably, on the jr. high track team.
My brother had decided to go out for football when I became a cross country runner my first year in high school. I wasn't good or bad, about fourth on a team that wasn't very competitive.
My sophomore year started out the same way. That was back in the 70s, when everyone talked about mileage. Our coach consistently had us running 10 miles most days at the start of training. That was okay with me, for a while.
Some time during the beginning of the season it seemed to get harder.
I gradually went from running along with the fastest guys to dropping out of sight of the slowest. I would seem to wake up on a run and realize I was just trudging along, barely moving, and I'd wonder, without any panic, "What's wrong with me?" I mostly thought that I was lacking something, strength, will power, athletic ability...
I also spaced out during the day. I once walked into the wrong classroom. I was supposed to be in that classroom later that day. It was the wrong period. What's wrong with me?
These things didn't hit all at once. And they all came on gradually.
It's easy to look back and ask, "Wasn't it obvious?" It wasn't really obvious at first.
I got lost a couple of times on long runs. I went up the wrong road.
A fast runner on the team, talking to the others in front of me, referred to me as "wuss-boy." Everyone else went silent. They didn't like what he was saying, but they weren't going to contradict it.
I was shocked. That was when I started to think there was something really wrong with me. I knew I wasn't a world class runner, but I knew I wasn't "wuss-boy."
Also happening at this time, I was having to urinate frequently.
Eventually I had to go between each class. I had to get up during the night.
And I was thirsty. Few people in the world ever know the kind of thirst a diabetic does. Add to that running 10 miles a day, and your thirst goes to incredible extremes, like feeling like you've walked across the Sahara.
I would go to the bathroom, urinate, take a vase off the window sill, rinse it out and fill it with water from the tap, drink it down, and fill it up again, drink again, and fill it up again. I know that water is the best thing for your thirst. At those times, with my instincts driving me, nothing satisfied my thirst like water. Water to me was like heroin must be to an addict.
My mother was worried about my weight loss, but knew I was running a lot. One day she said, "You look tired, Jerry. Are you all right?"
I said, "No, I don't think so. I really don't feel right."
The next day I saw my doctor. Within five minutes he told my mother and I, "I don't like to say this before the tests come back, but there really isn't much doubt that he has diabetes."
I didn't know what it was, but my mom was very upset. I was just glad to know what was wrong with me. As things were explained to me, I became somewhat worried about it, but I was still relieved to have some explanation.
Running cross country had been bringing my blood sugar down for a while every day. The running helped me with my blood sugar, but it may have delayed the realization that I needed help.
I spent 10 days in the hospital, stabilizing my blood sugar and learning to give myself injections and test my urine for glucose. (There were no home blood tests then.) When I got out, I got to go back on the XC team. I think we had one or two more meets, which were uneventful. I think the kid who called me "wuss-boy" regretted it after he found out that I was suffering in silence with a chronic, incurable disease, but he never apologized. I don't know what he could say, anyway.
Anyway, I'm still a diabetic, but also still a runner. I've run 36 marathons and 2 50K runs. And of course hundreds of other races and the thousands of training miles necessary. I've been an insulin-dependent diabetic for over 32 years, and a runner for a little longer.
Every day is a challenge met. Every day I win.