Make the impossible possible — a personal story (part 2)
Mountains, parachuting, rock climbing and travelling; Epilepsy and Dyslexia — a story of experiences and challenges I overcame.
Continuing on from the first part of my story, up until now I have scaled mountains in both the UK and Russia — despite having epilepsy and dyslexia. But from here things took a different path, with different challenges to overcome.
When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening anymore. — Florence Griffith Joyner, Three-Time Gold Olympian
Now in my mid-20s, I had recovered from the expedition to Kamchatka with happy memories to last a lifetime. I was hungry for my next challenge, I wanted something new, fresh, relaxing and different from all that I have done. I settled on running!
During my school days, we were pushed into doing cross-country running over a 3-mile course once a week no matter the weather; I was in my early teens, very slow and absolutely hated it. However, I wanted to see if I can overcome this.
I decided to aim for the London marathon, 26.2 miles with 10’s of thousands of runners. Usually, you had to enter yourself into a ballot but I took to raising money for Epilepsy Action a charity that had places available. I immediately organised to see a sports trainer and sports therapist weekly, and I decided on a date 2 years into the future. It was set with no looking back.
The road to the start line
After 2 years of training running up to 6 times a week with 15–18 mile runs at the weekend along the country roads in every type of British weather conceivable, I was ready. I travelled down to London to stay with a friend who also was to do the marathon with me. In the morning I had a fixed routine and was ready to go good and early but, my friend was not! He said we have plenty of time to get to the start line. We arrived just before the gun was to go off right at the back with the slowest group with runners in batman, robin, pooh bear and superman costumes. My golden charity place to be right at the front and my expected time were both shattered.
Finishing with grace
Bang! The gun went off, we started, I was nervous but determined. I knew I had to pull a rabbit out of the hat to finish in good time. I started weaving in and out of the runners to get ahead. I got from the 8-hour group right into the 4-hour group by the halfway point. I ran with my last breath to the finish line with my heart pounding — I was not going to fail after 2 years of training. The final 3 miles made my legs feel like solid concrete, the crowd shouting to push us all along. I staggered over the finish line and completed it in just over 3h 45min, amazing!
My body felt utterly broken, I could hardly walk after completing what I never thought would be possible. While laying on my back on the hard tarmac road catching my breath from completing the race, I thought back to my school days as a teenager when 3 miles was all I could do; achallenge that was seen as impossible was made possible through sheer determination and complete stubbornness.
We have more power than will; and it is often by way of excuse to ourselves that we fancy things are impossible. — Francois Duc De la Rochefoucauld
Your mind is a powerful thing, even when your body is telling you it is impossible, just making that next step and then the next one and the next one and so on will get you to the end. You will fail, you will fall but never give up for giving up you surrender to your fear.
Challenge met, recovery setting in
Marathon was complete, however by far not the biggest run of my life, that is to be in part 4. First off in Part 3 I will take you through a challenge to conquer my next impossible.
If you have any questions/comments on my experiences or wish to know more about something specific, add a comment. It will be a pleasure to respond — I will be posting other articles as often as I can.
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