I heard this old saying pass through my mind as I was drudging up Box hill Saturday morning. With only 500 meters to go, the thought struck me that maybe I should just walk the last bit; I have achieved my time and I have done better than expected and even if I walk now I’ll still have done well!
Obviously this thought had to be squashed and quickly. It’s thoughts like this that will sink you! It was then that my old U15 coach’s words came to mind: “It’s not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog!” I went to a small boys’ school of 300 boys and all 300 were in the boarding school, the school was an agricultural college so everything we ate in the school we produced ourselves by hand from planting to slaughtering the meat. (Oh how the organically minded would have loved us, we had no idea we were organic!!). We played rugby against schools of a 1000 boys and usually did well, but never really dominated in the younger years. The fact was we always went into these games knowing we were the under dogs and to be fair we were always smaller than most teams we played against. But this was all to change, 4 years of hard labor changed our minds and bodies and as we went into our final year of school we were the favorites we started to dominate, we became harder and could play harder, 4 years of lessons did this to us. In my final year, our team ended 5th in South-Africa.
Amazing how you can pull up past experiences to help you get through tougher times! Back to 05/03/2011 and I’m pulling myself up this hill! It made me realise I needed to push harder, dig deeper. It’s called digging deep, and that is exactly what I had to do! Long story short I made it all the way and what is more my amazing wife did so well aswell!
I watched this story or flick (movie) a week ago that really appealed to me. It’s called “True Grit’’ what a name! I loved the fact that there were real men in this film, staunch cowboys never say die kind of okes! But what was even better was that these guys stood for something and would not play second belief to their belief. They followed through and did not stop until the job was done, like I said last week, it cost them something, but at least it was worth something!
As this Blog is about motivation for me it’s always good to reflect on what motivated me through this week? Well honestly, it was the challenge, breaking away from everyday mundane things and drinking life as I know it! If I had the sea and waves I probably would not have taken up the sport, but this is where I am at this time in my life and while I’m here I will drink this thing called life and thank God for my health and my life partner that I am sharing it all with! The fact is that this adventure has only just begun!
Have a great week all and may God Bless the socks of you all!!
AD
No comments:
Post a Comment