10 Feats of Human Excellence

As I walked home from class tonight at 8 o'clock with my 50-lb. backpack in the 17 degree weather, I started to feel sorry for myself... Then I got to thinking about people climbing mountains somehow, which spurred a whole cornucopia of thought, (good word, huh? I've been dying to throw it in there) and because I like making lists, this just seemed like a good idea.

Here's my top 10 amazing human feats in sports history:

10. 2008- Danica Patrick becomes the first woman to win a major closed course auto race. And she's from Roscoe, Illinois, about 20 minutes from my hometown. You go girl!

9. Michael Phelps, 2008 Olympics... Need I say more? (Nevermind the marijuana controversy... you can read about that elsewhere.)

8. 1936- Jesse Owens, an African American track and field athlete, wins four gold medals in the Summer Olympics hosted in Berlin Germany... in front of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. 

7. 1980 Olympics- A miracle on ice: The US Olympic Hockey Team pulls off an impossible victory over the Russians.

6. Travis Pastrana lands the first double back-flip in motocross history during the 2006 X-Games. I'm almost more impressed by the fact that his mother was watching...

5. For more than 25 years, Dick Hoyt has pushed, pulled and carried his son, Rick, who can neither walk nor talk, through countless marathons and triathalons. This is a seriously inspirational story.

4. 1947- Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American Major League baseball player since the league had been segregated in 1889.  

3. 2005- Lance Armstrong wins his record-breaking seventh consecutive Tour de France. Oh, did I mention he survived a massive bout of cancer?

2. Ancient Greece- Pheidippides, a Greek messenger boy, makes the greatest run of all time (or at least the most legendary) from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had lost the Battle of Marathon...or was it to from Marathon to Sparta to ask the Spartans for help? Either way, (legend, myth, or honest-to-goodness truth) it's a great story to tell. 

1. In April 2003, 27-year-old Aron Ralston is pinned under an 800-lb. boulder in a remote area of the Utah Canyons, and makes the decision to cut his own arm off with a dull pocket knife to save himself. Pardon my french, but that's pretty bad-ass if you ask me.  

Anyone want to add on to this list?