I ran the Bolder Boulder on Monday.

I share this news with a degree of humility. Many of the people who know me have taken a great deal more care of themselves physically than I have over the years. For many of them, running a 10K race would be no big thing.

For me though, this was – as my trainer Patrick reminded me at the start line – ‘a big day’.

A big day.

Over a year ago I committed to having me be in better shape at the age of 50 than I was at 25. That is occurring. And I still have a year to go…

Here’s a picture of me with Patrick just before we began our race.

I want to acknowledge Patrick Searock (patrick@fitnessrealized.com). I googled ‘personal trainer in Loveland CO’ back in April 2011 and up he came.

(I took that option because I knew that being accountable and having experts with me – as opposed to buying a gym membership – would work best for me).

Patrick is now a true friend of mine, a warm, spiritual, funny, wonderful presence in my life and a master at his work. Honestly. I honor those trainers who take committed, pliant, youthful athletes out of college and get them ready for the Olympics. But I can’t believe their job is any harder than Patrick’s in engaging with a fearful and fearfully out of shape middle-aged guy with too may air miles and too many hotel ‘in room dining’ meals under his belt. His is the work of transformation. Such that by the time I had ‘breasted the tape’ in Folsom Stadium on Monday, 77 minutes after I had set off at 30^th and Walnut, I was already mentally signing up for the 5K charity run in Loveland this coming Saturday. I am now, really, on my way.

Patrick has balanced his immense knowledge of how to motivate and mold a person into being in shape with a huge amount of patience. He worked around my travel schedule. He was there for me when I fell out of a tree and ****ed my coccyx.  He was there for me when I was sidelined by my surgery in January this year. He believed in me when I could barely run one complete lap of our local sports field. Most of all – like all the great coaches – he utterly failed to buy in to my own stories of limitation (“I’m 49 you know!”).

And it is that which I am taking an even more profound level into my own coaching and consulting. Because I know what it is like to say ‘I can’t…’ as if it is the most true and irrefutable description of reality one can muster. And I know what it is to have those same words be proven to be a lie.

I can’t.

I can.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•