Teamwork

When I started in my quest to run a marathon 6 months ago, it was something that I decided I wanted to do, primarily to raise money for cancer charity, and given it is quite an undertaking I expected that I would end up doing this on my own.

I knew I was crazy enough to try it, but I didn’t think that anyone else would be as crazy.

How wrong I was.

Within days of deciding to do, it my best friend Dave said he would join me, and shortly after another friend Tarak joined in the daily training regime, running 5 & 10k starting at 6am, come rain, hail or snow.

Their support and encouragement has really helped me, there has been some friendly competition with each of us trying to be the first to run the longer distance, but mostly we have worked as a team pushing each other onwards, collectively achieving first 5k, then 10k and onwards until we have all run 30k together.

The camaraderie has made what was quite daunting task fun, and we have each encouraged one another when each of us encountered difficulty.

Today Tarak and I entered the Bonn Half Marathon in preparation for the Dusseldorf Marathon in two weeks time.

Here we are at the start before the race, confident in our preparation.

Tarak and I had different plans, my plan was to run the half marathon at my marathon pace and get a feel for running as part of formal race, Tarak wanted the same as me, but he wanted to push hard for the last 5k to feel what it would be like to be very tired towards the end.

For the first 16k we ran side by side, encouraging each other and then for the last 5k Tarak pushed on, upping the pace .

As I continued at my planned pace, I ran the last few kilometres in an easy style, looking to protect myself for the big race in two weeks time.

As I came up to the last 500m, I saw Tarak waiting for me, he wanted us to cross the line together in our first competitive race.

Here we are at then end, with our medals, content in our achievement, but looking forward to Dusseldorf when the two of us hope to cross the full Marathon finishing line together.

Gordon Tredgold

www.leadership-principles.com