Writtent on June 1st:

My wife’s uncle is running the Comrades Marathon today. For the first time. He’s in his late 60’s. It’s the 90th Comrades. Over 20 thousand people started running from Durban, South Africa, at 5.30 a.m. They’re running, walking and staggering nearly 90 km to Pietermaritzburg. They’re also climbing from sea level to around 900 meters, mostly in the first 40 km. That’s nearly as high as Table Mountain.

For first-timers like him, this is going to be the furthest they ever tried to run. They’ve never run further than 50 or 60 km at a time. That’s how training works. They’re going to be taking the bodies and minds somewhere totally new. They have no idea what’s going to happen. Except it’s probably going to hurt. A lot.

Whatever you think of running, you have to admit the Comrades is amazing. A huge astounding crazy dream. And people don’t just do it once. They come back. They come back over and over. Even after failing — over and over again. In thousands.

It’s a truly Great Thing. A great challenge that says, “if you can do this, there’s nothing you can’t do!”

And you know what? We all do Great Things. For some it’s just getting out of bed. Supporting your family. Getting rid of crime in our community. Making it beautiful and a place to be proud of. Making a city where people don’t have to sleep outside in the rain.

Just about now, the top athletes are finishing, 6 or 7 hours after they started. Everyone else will be slogging in over the long afternoon. My wife’s uncle is just trying to beat the cut-off at 5.30 p.m. A journey of a hundred thousand steps in 12 hours. Incredible. Thousands of people do it every year. A Great Thing.

Most Comrades runners are not top athletes. They’re ordinary people. Except, really, there’s no such a thing as an ordinary person. And they’ve learned the secret recipe for doing a Great Thing. You know the ingredients already: focus, consistency and love.

Focus: you have to believe and keep that goal in mind.

Consistency: you have to keep showing up, doing the boring, hard work, every day.

Love: you can’t do it alone. Not one of those runners, and not one of us, are doing it alone. It’s impossible for me to succeed without your love, your faith, your trust. And it’s the same for you.

And with love, consistency and focus, you and I can really do anything. Any Great Thing.

But we will fail. Or be weak. Or make mistakes. Often. More than we succeed. But with your love and faith, with the discipline I’ve learned from being consistent, and a clear focus, I can come back from failure. In the words of Samuel Beckett “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

PS: My wife’s uncle finished the Comrades in 11 hours and 57 minutes — 3 minutes before the cutoff