At the end of December 2011, I was obese, I smoked, I didn’t exercise, I ate all the wrong things, I laughed at people running, I used all the usual excuses under the sun (e.g. “you have to die of something, may as well enjoy it while you can”) and deep down, I was unhappy, incredibly negative, and pretty sure I wasn’t going to have a particularly long or healthy life.
A Lucky Break
It was a series of events, a mixture of some personal development work, a growing unease within myself, and a fateful conversation with a personal trainer, that led to me finally saying “enough is enough!”
I don’t remember the exact date, but it was in January 2012, and I was sat on a bus reading Napoleon Hill’s “Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons”. I realised that if life was going to change, then I would have to make the decision to change, take control of my life for once.
That evening I wrote a long email to the personal trainer (Britt of Walkabout Wellness), and to cut a long story short, I basically said I wanted to become fit and healthy enough that I was able to complete a marathon (a distance of 42.195km)
18 months, 6 hours, 47 minutes
It took about 18 months to get to the start line of the Perth Marathon; 6 months establishing a foundation of fitness, 6 months becoming a runner, and then 6 months training for the marathon.
I started out by getting up at 5am, then walking around a 1.6km block. It took around 20 minutes.
What followed next was a series of habit changes; noting what I ate, doing regular exercise, drinking plenty of water and achieving 10,000 steps per day minimum.
Eventually I found the courage to enter a 10km fun run, and completed that (without walking once) in about an hour and 20 minutes.
Then the big one, the marathon… a long arduous training plan, facing all my personal demons along the way, uncovering physical and mental resources I never knew I had. Creating a sort of personal development and meditation practice around my long runs.
In fact, it is very true to say that training for a marathon IS one of the best personal development programs you can enrol in!
Then the day itself – 6 hours and 47 minutes out on the course, over 400 minutes between start line and finish line. But that was the point, I finished.
Finish Lines Are Start Lines
Instead of being at the end of the “no more mr fat guy” get fit project, I actually discovered I was at a new start line, a new chapter of my life.
Because through running I gained a sense of calm, an inner confidence, a sense of well-being, energy, zest for life, a positive mindset, the ability to see things through to the end and discovered what genuine passion felt like.
And while I have found that these things can be applied to practically anything and improve your experience of those things, I’ve also gained absolute clarity on a number of things that have bubbled away for years.
Things I’ve known all along really, but needed the right environment and foundation to come to the fore.
To live a life based on and inspired by passion. To do things I love to do, to embrace life itself and basically to encourage others to do the same.
That is when I started looking around for a way to demonstrate, without any doubt, that you can make a decision, change your thinking, and literally change your life.
A process that ultimately led to the creation of “Hearts Across Australia”
Leave A Response