Quote of the....

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."

~ Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch was the professor from Carnegie Mellon University who achieved worldwide fame a few months before his death to pancreatic cancer, for his heart-felt and inspiring "The Last Lecture" delivered live to more than 400 people. That recorded lecture has since been viewed more than 10million times on youtube and the book by the same title was on the #1 Best Selling List for a long while.

I read the book and there were a few things that definitely touched and/or inspired me; and if you had not read the book yet, I would strongly recommend it to you. So when I was typing out the title for this blog entry, I felt that this quote deserves more than being the quote of the week. I was playing around with the words "year", "lifetime".....

The quote is especially applicable to me when I was training for the marathon. I started 2009 with the aim to improve my 4:26 timing for the full marathon. I had my fitness base from the marathon in Dec/2008 and I wanted to build from there. So I started training and was hoping to run the Gold Coast Marathon in July/2009 - it was the same one I ran 10 years ago which landed me on crutches and I thought it'll be fitting if settle this "old score" 10 years later.

But I came down with serious bouts of illness in March/2009 and then again in April/2009 which kinda threw my fitness off whack. So I ended up running the Half Marathon in Gold Coast.

I refused to give up and went in search for the next marathon that I can run. I found one and started training for it. Then I sprained my ankle and was down for two whole weeks. I felt depressed but with friends' and loved ones' encouragement, I pressed on.

During the marathon training campaign, when I was tired from doing my long runs and felt like stopping, or when I was doing my fast workouts on the track and my heart was bursting and asking me to stop, when I was at the 36km mark of the marathon and there was a steep up-slope in front of me - I kept repeating this mantra to myself. This was one of the thoughts that I had whenever I felt like giving up.

And I am going to remember this quote for a long long time....Go watch the youtube video if you have not :)