First published 2 March 2020 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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Nigel picked up where the last episode stopped, with something he'd said about JustGiving pages. Neither of us could quite remember where he'd been going with it (we'd recorded that one three or four weeks before), but he got there. He's losing weight again, 13 pounds gone and 27 to go, and no, he isn't doing a JustGiving page for it. His point was that once a big crowd knows your goal, you don't want to let them down. Write it down just for yourself and you end up on the Monday morning diet. I'll start next Monday.
That took me back to the Edinburgh marathon in 2013. I was running for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in one of their vests, and around 15 or 16 miles in my head went. I was slowing almost to a walk. A guy in the same vest came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and said "Remember what you're doing this for." That was all it took. All I know about him is that his name was Ken, because it was written on his vest. Nigel thought I was going to say the elephants and rhinos had overtaken me.
Nigel does fire walks for clients, and he does two kinds. One has lots of cheering and noise. The other is silent. He stands with his back to the fire, breathing with the person in front of him, then steps to the left. All you hear is the crunch of the coals under their toes. Nobody makes a sound until their feet hit the water at the end. He does it that way because when things go wrong at work there's no London Marathon crowd. It's just you, maybe in the office, maybe about to walk into an appointment.
It's the same difference I've found between street marathons and running cross-country through the night with hardly a soul about. You have to be your own cheering squad. On the third morning of my first ultra (a four-day event) I woke up to rain lashing on the tent. I didn't even want to walk to the food tent for breakfast, and I was about to run 30 miles. My waterproof coat was soaked within a mile or two.
Nigel had his own version, out in a field with his dog Alfie and mud to the top of his wellies. And he brought in Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday. Inch by inch it's a cinch, yard by yard it's hard. I mentioned a guy who'd run loads of ultras and warned me, three or four weeks before mine, about the emotions that would come up. Then the buzzer went, so that's for next week.
What stuck
- Tell people about the goal. It's harder to quietly let it slide when they know.
- Get clear on why you're doing it before the hard bit. "Remember what you're doing this for" got me past mile 16.
- Most days there's no crowd. Practise being your own cheering squad.
- Ask someone who's done it what's normal at each stage, so it doesn't floor you when it turns up.
But if you have a big enough why, the how will show up.
Nigel Risner
Whilst I'm doing this for me, I'm not only doing this for me, which gives me an even greater reason to succeed and to complete it.
Neil Martin
