“Never forget that no matter how much it hurts, how dark it gets or how far you fall – you are never out of the fight.” – Marcus Luttrell, Ex-Navy SEAL.
As an amateur athlete, I love competing in marathons. I am a mediocre runner at best and have never expected myself to carve a career out of it. Naturally then, many people ask me why do I do it ? Why do I put my body through the pain of running 42.2 Kilometers, and sometimes beyond? It’s because of the invaluable life lessons you learn, while preparing and running marathons. In this post, I will discuss the most important secret of success behind greats of human history, which I have learnt by running marathons, so that you can know about this secret without having to run a marathon yourself.
Running a marathon is never an easy task. Apart from the mental and physical toil that comes with running for 42.2 Kilometers, it takes months of hard work and discipline, to prepare your body so that it doesn’t break down while running for such long distances.
However, the lessons that you learn during this process, makes the pain and sacrifices worthwhile. Out of the many such lessons, I discovered the most important lesson for achieving success during my first ever endurance race.
..and so, I sign up for a 74K race with less than 5 weeks to prepare
It was January of 2021. I was going through a tough phase in my life, where I felt that I had let myself down. Therefore, I felt as I had things to prove to myself, so that I could redeem myself in front of my eyes. Co incidentally, Yogesh, a college friend of mine, informed me about an upcoming grueling 74 Kilometers race through the Himalayas. As some one who has always looked forward to taking on new challenges, I felt that this was my opportunity to prove myself in front of my eyes.
Even though I had never run for more than 30 Kilometers before, I knew that if I could complete this race, which was less than 5 weeks away, I shall never doubt my mental toughness, come what may! And so I signed up for the ultra marathon. Little did I know, what lay ahead of me.
Come race day, I see myself lining up against these proper looking athletes, from different parts of India. They all looked battle ready, with their chiseled physiques, proper equipment and nutrition to assist them during the race. On the other hand, all I had was a water bottle and a few dates. I felt as unprepared as someone could possibly be.
Soon the race started and as expected, I found myself at the backend of the pack. However, I focus on maintaining a steady pace. At the end of 1 hour mark, I was alone surrounded by the gorgeous views of the Himalayas, with the next person no where in sight.
The adversity strikes…
As I raced ahead, the climb started becoming steeper and steeper. And soon, at around the 21 Kilometers mark, my left foot went completely numb with pain, due to the huge stress induced by the steep climb, on my ankles. With 53 Kilometers still to go and an unresponsive left foot, my chances of finishing this race, which had meant so much to me, nose dived even further. I was all by myself !
However, giving up was not an option for me. I took a sip of water, and started walking slowly. I told myself, “May be I get timed out of this race, but I won’t quit this race in between.” And so recollecting myself, I started limping ahead. Being deep in pain, I re evaluated my strategy. I decide to just focus on surviving the next 10 minutes and take it from there.
Gradually, the 33 Kilometers mark arrived. I had barely managed to clear the cut off time, but I was still in contention. The tougher part of the race route was still waiting for me and I had no idea from where would I get that extra energy to conquer it, as my body was already running on reserve fuel. While I was hobbling ahead, I started becoming despondent, due to the ever increasing physical and mental fatigue.
It is always darkest before dawn
Just when I was at my nadir, a magical thing happened. I saw that the ultra fit runners had started limping too. Even though I am not a sadist, but seeing those athletes, who I thought were beyond my league, struggle brought a fresh spark of life within me.
I said to myself, “If such fit people are struggling, then the finish line can’t be that far. If you are struggling, they are struggling too. You just need to be patient and focus on the next few minutes at a time. If you persist long enough, you will reach your goal.”
As it turned out, I completed the race in 11 hours 20 minutes, well before the cut-off time and was one of the crazy few people who completed an ultra with less than 5 weeks of training.
The biggest secret of success we can learn from greats of human history
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan, basketball legend
The people who have had the most impact on human history, are often the ones, who were the most resilient. They stumbled again and again, before they finally struck gold. Take for example, Abraham Lincoln, who failed in almost every business and election that he contested, before assuming office as the 16th president of United States of America, where he took the momentous decision of abolishing black slavery from his country.
To conclude, the biggest secret of success I learnt by running marathons is resilience. So if you feel that you are falling behind in life, that your peers are outpacing you in terms of success, remember that if you put in consistent work towards your goal and if you remain in the game long enough, you will eventually succeed. May be that’s why American author, Napolean Hill in his magnum opus Think and Grow Rich, stated, “Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50.”
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