Inspiration

There are many sources of inspiration I've received since I've started running etc. There was a guy who finished ahead of me in my first 10K, yet he has only one leg. There's a guy on the Runners World Forum who pushes his wheelchair bound son around marathons (they've done over 100 races). There was a volunteer at the last race I did who talked to Fran (my wife!) at length about running and triathlon, even though he'd had an accident of some kind he still went to run-club every week so he could help others (I don't think I could bear to see another run).

I've been coming up with more and more excuses as to why I couldn't enter a long triathlon, foremost amoungst these are:

1. I'm too old
2. I'm too busy

The guy who runs the run club I attend, Tom I think he's called is also an Ironman triathlete apparently.

"OK, so he has time to organise a run-club, but he could use that as a warm-up run for some proper training I suppose" this is my excuse why he has time to train for Ironman events and I don't.

Then, I went to this great free time trial which is run in Leeds and in other cities - Hyde Park Time Trial and he's bloody organising that too! And to top it all he took my name and date of birth at the end and informs me that he's one day older than me!!! How dare he! The event was brilliant, completely free, fantastic atmosphere, well organised and the results are up on line the same day! He must put at least 4-5 hours a week into that too. So that scuppers both of those excuses...

Here's a big shout out to all the people who give their time to organising, marshalling, training and supporting others in sporting events. I salute you all!

Then there's the inspiration of the elite athletes, the Olympics providing the ultimate for anyone training for an athletic event. In particular, the British cyclists were amazing, the professionalism and dedication were observably world-class. Hopefully they and our other Olympians will inspire further exploits in 2012.