Inspiration

On Friday night I attended RunSpark. This was a charity event organised by fellow parkrun run director and author Ira Rainey billed as:

A charity evening of motivational and inspiring running related talks, sparking the belief that you are much more capable than you even realise.

Now if we set aside the fact that I can take levels of incapability to previously unseen heights then I already pretty much believe I can do anything I set my mind to even if this does often end in glorious failure. Why else would I have set my sights on completing an Iron distance triathlon?

Well the main reason for this is a book I bought on a whim at the start of 2013. This book precipitated both my foray into Triathlon and the creation of this blog. The book in question is Andy Holgate’s “Can’t Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run” within the pages of this hallowed tome he describes his change in lifestyle and journey to becoming an Ironman. A spark was lit deep inside and the challenge was on.

Now part of the perversity in my character is that I am a proper stubborn git and when I decide to do something it is very difficult to divert my path. I am also pretty risk adverse so rather than just jumping in I tend to try to plan and prepare things to the nth degree. The path to my iron distance triathlon (the Outlaw) is now entering its final stages with just under 6 months left until race day. This has taken 2 years so far and 7 sprint distance, 3 Olympic distance and 1 half iron distance races to get to the stage where I believe I can contemplate the distances involved – 2.4 mile Swim, 112 Mile bike and a cheeky marathon run to finish.

Part of my general lifestyle change is my devotion to parkrun, this is my favourite part of the week and I find it massively inspiring to see such a wide range of people out attempting to beat their own goals whether that is a new PB or to beat a certain time but most of all enjoying the journey to get to their personal goals. I was one of a team of pacemakers at Pomphrey Hill on Saturday and between us we helped to get 30 out of 135 runners to achieve course PBs.

This blog is a bit more rambly even more than usual, which I blame on being high as a kite on a combination of lemsip and night nurse sat at home with the flu. The point is that I hope my tales have inspired people in the way that other peoples have inspired mine. I strongly suspect that the only thing I am likely to have inspired is sleep.

Anyways back to RunSpark. It really was a very inspiring evening, Ira’s talk of how a borderline alcoholic with an alcohol problem changed his life showed how ordinary people can achieve anything that they want. Shona Thomson showing what can be achieved with a little determination running marathons on every continent including Antartica and also a marathon at the North pole. James Adams showing how to push through some of the lowest moments and that distance is just a number in his story of running 3200 miles from Los Angeles to New York although I strongly suspect that he’ll be remembered as the guy who soiled himself.

A special mention has to be made of Alice Young the representative of Macmillan Cancer Support. For all the tales of derring do and pushing back the boundaries of what is possible, her brief introduction to the evening describing what Macmillan does and how cancer had personally affected her was deeply moving and inspiring in its own way. There must have been a lot of dust in the air as more than one eye was watering. Over £3600 was raised by the event which is testament to the efforts of Ira and an idea he had over breakfast only a few weeks earlier.

My story sort of goes full circle as during the raffle I won a signed copy of the book that started it all.

So with my big race approaching I am seriously considering using it to raise some money for charity. This is not something that I have really considered in the past. For the record I am seriously against the concept of using sponsorship to gain entry to an event, why should people pay for me to do something?

Now I rarely do anything in the normal way so I’m looking at some alternatives to the usual sponsorship idea. Any ideas gratefully received…