'What I Find More Interesting Is What is Still to Come...'
Anadi and I walked through the village this morning and suddenly we were aware of a little girl - I would say she was about 7 or 8 years old - running beside us in an exaggerated manner… ‘Hello…’ I said, ‘have you seen us running’? ‘Yes, I have’, she said. ‘We’re not running today I said we’re going for a walk…’
‘Are you going to the beach’? She asked, ‘we are - and then we’re going up to the top of pigeon island‘, ‘oh man’ she replied… and then said, using her hands to emphasize what she was describing… ‘I have been high high up, and I have swum deep deep down into the ocean’. ‘Have you?’ I said. ‘Yes, and I swam with a shark…’ ‘Wow’ I said, she looked at me for a moment, smiled at us both, and then suddenly waved ‘byeee’ and scampered off….
We continued on our walk to Pigeon island… walking rather than running, chatting about the little girl connecting with us and sharing herself…
Not long before we had been raising our morning cuppa to our friend 5000 miles away ‘Happy Birthday Kev’, we’d said… I believe he will have heard us, or felt us.
Connections between us are always there, we see new ones as we journey and always celebrate the friends we have made before.
We are one, it cannot be any other way… iI is fun that we now have the technology to heighten this; but we are all, always in touch anyway…
Saturday morning was gaining in momentum in Gros Islet; the lady across the road was laying out her plantains. The fresh fish man with a gathering of people around him was leaning into his box of fishy shininess; boys were already lounging on the bank smoking dope and Jason, the man who makes figures out of wire, wandered by looking a little forlorn and alone…
‘I don’t want to go running…’ I had suddenly announced; ‘My legs are so tired… What does a new plan of walking to the top of Pigeon Island and having brunch in the restaurant on the beach sound like to you…?’
‘That sounds a very good plan to me…’ Anadi laughed, and so that was it… running had been abandoned...
This week I have run more miles in one week than in many months; and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, body said ‘no’.
I felt it in my being…
On reflection I know that I have felt like this in the past, and run anyway because it was on my plan!
I sabotaged one of my best possible chances for a faster marathon best time than I have, this way…
It was three weeks before the New York marathon. I was flying in training!
I was unexpectedly invited to run an international race in Nuremberg. I went and had a fabulous weekend. I ran really well too and because I was placed and received a prize, I got to shake the hand of Emil Zatopek…
Zatopek is widely considered to be one of the greatest runners of all time; he once won the 5000 metre, 10000 metre and the marathon race, all in the same Olympic games!
He was an inspiration to me then for his spirit and his philosophies and humanitarian essence as well as his awesome running; and so to meet him and shake his hand was very special.
So the extra race was no problem in itself… The next weekend I was racing internationally again over 10k, and rather than accommodate the unexpected travel and competition by easing back, I turned out another 90 mile week… This was despite a feeling of tiredness that was different to normal ‘training hard’ tiredness….
And I never quite recovered… I went to New York slightly ‘off’.
I knew this and hoped I would still magically run okay, but within the first mile I knew my race legs weren’t ‘there’.
I ran a creditable 2.41 and was part of the GB team finishing 2nd or 3rd (I’ve forgotten which!)
But… I didn’t run the race that I had felt the promise of a few weeks earlier and, the maddest thing was that I had known deep down all that was required was to back off…
And so now I change plans with ease, but also with an eye on the goal.
There is a difference between not doing something when we know that the best course is to ‘Just do it’, to not doing something because we know that doing it would be going against our inner wisdom…
There are many many things which Emil Zatopek said that have inspired me…
But now, with a different approach in the core of my being, as well as having been ‘a runner’ for so many years; these are words that resonate with how I am living…
‘What has passed is already finished with,
What I find more interesting now is what is still to come…'