Day 53/365: Goggins

In 2021 I undertook perhaps my toughest ever running challenge - the David Goggins 4 x 4 x 48. Four kilometres every four hours for forty-eight hours. The original challenge is supposed to be four miles instead of kilometres, however, I wasn't such a strong runner at that stage to be able to do that. Nevertheless, it was the toughest challenge I have ever undertaken mentally and physically. 

Getting up in the middle of the night to go on a four kilometre run, when the sweat from your last run still hasn't dried is a serious undertaking. Unfortunately, I have not done a similar challenge since - that is until May when I try to undertake that 50km race I've already mentioned. 

But this isn't about that race, this is about the inspiration... Mr. David Goggins. Ever since first hearing about him back in 2020/21, I was enamoured by him. His mindset, his ability to keep going even when the odds are stacked against him (that is an understatement for someone who has ran 240 mile races on broken feet, suffered rhabdomyolysis, and much more). For the past few years I haven't followed him as much as I used to, but the last couple of days I've listened to his most recent podcasts on the Joe Rogan podcast (his and Courtney Dauwalter, another ultramarathon runner) which have truly re-inspired me. 

On the way back from work I listened to him talk about "front-loading" your life. How we never know what is around the corner, be it illness or injury or ultimately death. So we've got to do and achieve as much as possible with this one body and this one chance at this thing called life. I felt inspired to do and achieve more. I realised I've been too "lax" these last couple of years. I've come up with too many excuses, "I work too much" "I don't have enough money" "My priorities are different" but it was all nonsense. I just needed to put in the work. 

It's only recently I've started to see the result of some of that work over the past year. It's been a year since I first returned to parkrun and a four year hiatus from that world. A year of consistency in, I've ran a 10k race, a half marathon, logged hundreds of kilometres, done numerous parkruns in different locations. I'm now at the lowest weight I have been that I've recorded in the last two years minimum, but likely in the last three or four years overall. I'm more ambitious, as seen by my ultra sign up. In large part thanks to Goggins. 

So, thanks David Goggins for everything. We're not done yet.