Three years ago my eldest son said to me:
“Dad, could you ever run a marathon?”
I replied: “No mate, now get to bed!”
And that, was that.
On a serious note, my reply triggered something in my mind. It was one of those moments between father and son, where you feel like you can answer his curiosity with a life lesson – like the end of a children’s book or a wise philosopher’s conclusion.
I replied with something along the lines of “if you set your mind to something and plan it within a timeframe, you can achieve anything you want” to which he naturally responded: “Go on then…”. His little blue eyes lit up and he knew he’d set the challenge, laid down the gauntlet to try and see what his dad was capable of – maybe even try and prove that I was doubting my own words.
I put my pizza slice down, picked up my phone and researched. I perused training programmes, tried to understand diet plans, mapped out training routes and became slightly carried away looking at running attire. Over that year, I prepared physically as much as I possibly could.
However, what I never prepared for, or even considered, was the psychological battle leading up to and during the marathon.
A large part of training or preparing yourself for anything challenging, is understanding your motivations and aligning them to your life. My son drove me, he drove my willingness to strive and help him understand what we are capable of as humans; we build our own walls and restrain ourselves with our own mental shackles.
The half marathon, although physically different to the CEO sleepout, walks hand-in-hand in terms of the mental capacity to push yourself to achieve something that may be out of your comfort zone or what you believe your abilities to be.
It’s not the first time, we’ve taken part in the CEO Sleepout, in fact you see how we got on last year here.
We have a big chance to make a difference all the time, not only to ourselves but to the people and environment around us.
We can choose to pirouette through life’s ballet but at what point do we pause to take a bow or help to change the costumes or set designs?
Watch the full clip of Founder, John Dyson and Managing Partner, John Mackey as they talk about the CEO Sleepout and why we do it.
Frazer John’s Big Change Weekend
Sunday 14th October – Manchester Half Marathon
Monday 15th October – CEO Sleepout
To sponsor our weekend and support The Big Change Manchester, click here to donate.
