this month's cover

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry to have been out of touch – lots and lots of work in the day job, and then we kicked off the year with a family circuit of the over-hyped swine flu (comes out of nowhere, knocks you flat, then vanishes without warning – maybe they should have called it surprise flu…)

I realized today that many of us start a new year (or even more portentous) a new decade with big plans and resolutions only to see many fall by the wayside. This should in no way be discouraging. Life and work are full of unexpected twists and turns. (Imagine how dull it would be if we knew what was going to happen.) It’s how we respond that matters.

You may remember I wrote recently with much pride about finishing an ultra giving my surefire tips for success with minimal training. I was lucky – about the only thing that didn’t go my way was some salty watermelon (it almost went the wrong way).

For Christmas, my generous and lovely wife (perhaps unwisely?) bought me a subscription to “Ultrarunning” a mag for the hardcore crazies full of 50k, 50 mile, 100 miles and more race reports.  One of the articles (those mavericks, they take pride in keeping content offline) gave advice to newbies, and the most important point was something (and most likely many things) will go wrong, it’s how you respond that determines how you finish.  Various body parts will fail, you’ll get nauseous, your gear will fall apart, your support crew will get lost…  Like everything else in life, you choose if you get pissed off, and become captive to the negative reaction, or accept it and move on, deciding how best to move forward with the newly understood reality.

On a lovely morning run at  Windy Hill this morning, I finally caught up with the audio edition of Economist Christmas special and was struck by this quote on the human condition: “Ms Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy. Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor is it hopeless. Instead, it is up to us.”  In other words, it is imperative that we keep trying to get better yet we should never expect to reach a destination of perfection.  So write down those resolutions, give it an honest effort and don’t beat yourself up if life gets in the way.  Now, back to work.  Big launch day tomorrow.