Motivation and Encouragement

Just realised I got a comment from no less than Mr Brown. Mr Brown's article in the Today paper is one of those articles that the Mrs and me look forward to reading every week. I don't know how he discovered my blog - I haven't expect anybody to read it becos how do you search or find a blog out of the millions out there. Other than the famous ones reported about in the papers, I have not been able to search for other local blog. I tried searching using key words but usually end up with irrelevant results or worse no results. Anyway, Mr Brown if you reading this - thanks for the encouragement.

Even though I now consider myself a seasoned runner, his few words of encouragement gave me new motivation to push on because truth be told - I often feel like stopping - why am I pushing myself so hard - to run faster and further with each run - when life is so unpredictable and one can die anytime. Look at all those recent deaths after running cases - most of them are so fit and young yet they just drop dead like that. Why not just eat drink and be merry - for who knows what tomorrow bring?

Everybody need a reality check now and then. Sometime after doing things our own way, one need someone to pull you back a bit - to say "whoa, wait a minute! are you going too fast for your own good". Also sometime when you feeling lousy, you need someone next to you to push you on. And not surprisingly, all my encouragement and motivation have always come from people older than me but most surprisingly from strangers like Mr Brown.

One time I was running at East Coast Park. A guy ran past me and in order not to loose out, I caught up with him. However, his blistering pace soon killed me and I slowed down considerably. He must have been aware of me like all runners are aware of each other and also slowed down and waited for me. We got to talking. Turn out he was slightly over 50 years and had ran more than 10 full marathon. That time I was training for the 2004 Dec marathon and was not confident at all that I can complete it never having run such a long distance before. He gave a lot of tips and advices and I really appreciated that becose to do so he had to slow down his pace to match mine.

Just as a harsh word can spoil one day, a word of encouragement can uplift and turn a lousy day (or lousy run) into a wonderful day.