I'm Not Stopping Today

Georgia: 6.30am, Sunday at the Sandy Point Half

 

This is Georgia. She is eleven years old (today) and she is………….. a RUNNER!!!

I met Georgia about six months ago when she started coming along to our Friday Running Club. She told me yesterday, “I sucked at running and wanted to get fitter so I could run long.”

When any new kids join up my only hope is that they enjoy what we do and that they keep coming back. I wasn’t sure at the start if Georgia was enjoying herself. It all seemed like hard work and she was struggling to keep on the jog for any great stretch of time. I think sometimes that can be hard to deal with when you see others flying around the oval. In her own words she found it ‘really hard and didn’t want to be there,’ but she kept coming back.

Runners of all ages and abilities make the same mistake. We compare ourselves to other runners who go faster or further or both. Real improvement and enjoyment begins the moment the runner starts to focus on themselves more, and not worry about others so much. It’s ok to look to others for inspiration but we should never look at others and then devalue what we are doing ourselves.  Georgia might have done that in the early days but it didn’t last long. Other runners will now be looking at her for inspiration.

I’ve heard people say, “yeah but it’s not that fast really”, after they have achieved a personal best time over a particular distance. It may not be fast compared to Usain Bolt but a PB is the absolute fastest the runner has ever, ever gone in their whole life. That is something to be celebrated even if it’s a ten minute km. I’ve even heard great runners who have won events or placed in their age group say things like there wasn’t many in the field or the really fast guys weren’t there today. The point of it however should always be, did you give it your all? Did you work hard? Georgia does both.

In nearly every training run and definitely in every event the demon in the mind asks the question. “Right at this moment, are you strong enough?”  If you answer in the affirmative then you will run well. Georgia always beats the demon. If you beat the demon, you win. *Beware though: the demon might just ask the question more than once in a run.

On Sunday Georgia ran the Sandy Point 5km. She lined up by herself in a field of 500+. Probably 490 of them older than her and bigger than her. About half an hour before the race she told me she felt nervous and excited but when she lined up for the gun, at that moment, it was all nerves. It must have been a daunting task.

The first 3km Georgia felt good but in the fourth km she was heading into new territory. She’d done more than 3km in a session before but always with a few breaks. This time she was running head on into pain, no stopping. You could understand her walking a bit, taking a break and recharging but she did not walk one step in the whole event.

She said. “I really started getting tired in the last km but I sprinted at the end. I was so happy, so tired and so relieved”

I didn’t see Georgia after the event and wondered how she had gone. Walking across the oval at school on Monday morning I spotted her. She had one arm in the air pumping her fist.

“I did it! I did it!

She sure did. What a champion.

I reckon there’s a moment when people who are new to running, start asking questions. Am I enjoying this? Will I ever be good at this? Why am I doing this?

Running is challenging. Not everyone sticks at it. If it was easy everyone would run marathons or 5km events or ultras etc…

There have been kids who have come to Running Club once or twice and then given it away. Some have come for months and then disappeared. Georgia could have easily been one of those. But she still turns up every week. That’s the key.

There was one defining moment when it clicked for me that this girl is a runner. We were jogging around the course at school, some of it was uphill and up a flight of stairs. The task was to keep moving round the course for twenty minutes. If you needed to walk then you walk with purpose and pick a point ahead where you will start running again. Georgia had been a runner/walker but on this day it changed. I ran alongside her and gave her the spiel about it’s ok to walk, just get going again………..

Georgia looked at me and said,

“I’m not stopping today.”

She hasn’t stopped since.