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4 Life lessons from cross-country running
With legs like lead and my lungs burning I got to the end and collapsed in a heap on the front lawn.
Gazing up at the two eagle towers, I fought to catch my breath.
Stonyhurst College is an imposing building. It nestles at the foot of Longridge Fell in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire.
It boasts an even more impressive alumni of which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one. He used the school and fell as the setting for his classic tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I’d arrived at the school aged 13 and had taken apart in my first cross-country training session. Over the coming weeks I got much fitter and went on to be a decent athlete.
As I look back, I realised I there’s a lot I learned about life.
It’s all about pacing
At some point in the first term my Mum was talking to my coach, Mr Paul Warrilow and asking how I was doing. “He’s doing great,” he said. “He needs to learn to find his own pace though and stop trying to compete with the older lads who are faster.”
In that line lies a lesson it’s taken me many years to learn. Stop trying to run at somebody else’s pace. As Baz Lurhman said in his classic 1999 song ‘Sunscreen’,
