Where Is My Breaking Point

Positive Punishment

First Time

The first time I attempted a Marathon I was 39 years old. I was that nervous, I snuck between two buildings in Melbourne with my running gear, race number on my shirt and sparked up a cigarette. When I finally found the start line, I could smell a smoke plume around me as I stood amongst real and dedicated athletes watching the final count down for the Melbourne Marathon start. It was to be the first time I’d ever ran (shuffled) 42.2km.

There Is No Easy

I’d found the pacers everyone told me about and I decided to stick with the 4hr30min crew. My tact was to take it easy because it was going to get hot and I was running into the unknown. I’d read about ‘the runners wall’ etc. and I wasn’t sure how I was going to react. Looking back, I wish I’d run my own race because the constant pace wore on my heavy legs that were slowly pounding the road one after another. I was continually watching for the paces, like watching the clock after a bad day at work. I probably needed to go into my own head for a while, like I did training at lunchtime.

The crowds, people and runners were distracting, and it’s been like that since leaving the military. I was not sure why I’d entered such a popular run for my first Marathon, especially knowing my introverted tendencies. I had an extremely long argument with myself and near the end I was pushing through pain I’d never experienced. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if it was pain or discomfort mixed with emotion, but my body was seizing up; my elbows, my knees and my hips. I felt what I thought was sweat coming down my face and realised I was crying. Not like a whimpering or balling, it was just uncontrollable tears and I had 7km to go. After around 15 minutes I started feeling my clunky rhythm again and I felt like I could actually get to the end and finish. I must admit that seeing my wife and son at the 40k mark helped like a gift. The gift was a frog in my throat for energy and a reminder to crawl out from the ‘blackhole’ in my mind…I had the pacers in my sights with a few kilometres to go.

As I hit the ramp of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, running like a soldier with a pack on my back and rifle in my hands I got emotional again. Maybe I was reverting to my training or maybe this was a habit when driven to complete a mission, I don’t know. I finished the run in 4hrs28min and the reception reminded me of when we exited the plane from Dili; I was happy to get to the end, but I was ushered to an area and later ushered out without any real acknowledgment, a pat on the back and a ‘happy bag’ in hand. I liked it because I’d just completed a task/mission whereby I couldn’t blame anyone else on how I went, I had faced my own demons and I did what I said I would do.

Where to Now?

I guess most other people would run a few Marathons to improve their time or maybe condition their body, but I couldn’t help but read more about crazy ultra-runners. My mind was becoming numb working in Council and I wanted to test myself. I told some colleagues what I wanted to do and they laughed at me. The response could not have been better from me telling them I wanted to run 100km along a beach, up into the Otway Ranges and back. It was the motivation I needed and I started to find the missing controlled anger again, the anger that gets things done, the purpose, drive and positive action to finish over all hurdles, such as negative and scared people, always talking about positive thinking, but fundamentally doing nothing….

The motivation I was looking for was all around me and I’d realised why I was so frustrated. Not because the positive thinkers were teaching me positivity, but more from the inactivity and dreamy state everyone seemed to be in. It was as if they’d read a really good book and were still thinking about it. I have never met so many people that had so much spare time, to be blatantly truthful. Why did they seem to think they were experts on worldly everything because they’d holidayed in a few places? They even told me what it was like to be in the Army even though they only knew the Army through watching movies. I just listned and thought "if you only knew what we had to do". Anyway, it motivated me to be me (an angry, self-motivated public servant that blamed no one for the hurt I was wanting to appose upon myself).

#Boxing #Cardio