Wednesday 13 May 2020

On the Run... The Pink Floyd

Live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me… Waters

Well, they say nothing lasts forever. And in our current rapidly changing world, the shelf-life of anything or anyone for that matter must be dramatically reduced. 

At this time, we’ve been instructed to be ‘Resilient’. It’s a word that’s being used a lot at the moment as our very existence is being threatened. Yet, when it comes to being ‘Resilient’ it’s not so easy as it sounds. Being able to stick at things without a definitive timespan is enough to fry many a brain and will do over the next few months for many.

‘Resilience’ is more of an inherent quality perhaps and also lacks a quantifiable scale. I mean, just how 'Resilient' are you? Looking back at my childhood, I was encouraged to ‘stick at things’ and most of the time did. That's where my ‘Resilience’ was borne. However, with my own children it’s harder to keep them on task due to the huge amount of choice, outside influence and digital white noise, certainly with my little ones anyway. Perhaps then, ‘Resilience’ grows with age in a kinda ‘Fuzzy Logic Way’, where we learn to endure higher degrees of hardship and discomfort learning to tough things out as we grow.

Maybe that way of learning helped me prepare to run further and further distances and also overcome serious illness. It's a test of character that right now that millions of people in the UK, let alone all over the world, are being subjected to where they will find their ‘Limit of Human Endurance’ as they face up to a silent killer that can strike anyone, anywhere at any time regardless of age, sex or creed. Having the determination to see this crisis out, will be the biggest challenge of our lifetime.

How we perceive that challenge and how we see our own existence post Covid-19 is the key. Not getting caught up in the moment is where I've succeeded in the past and I always try and see the positives in any situation. Let’s face it, the end of Covid-19 isn’t really the end, it’s just the start of a new beginning. 

And it will come to an end, just not today or tomorrow but one day.

Going forwards, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. It’s probably going to get a lot harder, who knows - but be prepared. Being able to see an end and adjust to a new way of living and working will define us all, you and me included.

So 'Live for today and Live tomorrow', that’s what I doing…

1,052 Marathons, 255 Ultras, 15 Marathon des Sables, 9 Guinness World Records