Time Trial

5km: 16:41. So the time trial went well. But that extra two seconds would have really given me a buzz. Two seconds. Running into the stadium at the World Championships. The crowd erupts. Your legs nearly buckling as you stagger forward from the concrete onto the track. The final lap of the track. Sly glances sideways to check that it is actually happening. 200m. 150m. Counting down the lines on the track. The final 100m. The line approaching. Your chest bursting in the final three strides, but the line. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And then. Relief, joy, your family in the crowd, crying and laughing, the early mornings and dark nights finally worth it. That overwhelming feeling of complete satisfaction. But is that really how it is? I don't know. How does that feel? Is it possible to imagine?

I have imagined it so many times, dreamt about it for so long. Every year, a championship comes round. Every year, I watch intently. I haven't made it. Not even close. Not even fairly close. But every year, I start again. Fighting for that extra two seconds. Chipping away. If I could go on forever, I could maybe get there. One day. But forever is something I don't have. It would take a near-miracle to even get there. But until that miracle is buried – deep beneath, well probably old age and that crazy notion that there may someday be something else to think about, we start again.

Another day, another year, another two seconds....

The Path Ahead

Two days until hand in.

12 weeks and three days until we're on board a flight to Sydney.

A whole lifetime until I get close to achieving what I would like to achieve....it seems.

It's a strange feeling, not bad. But not really good. I suppose nervous is more like it. Scared is too strong and excited too ambitious. No, nervous. Maybe nervous excited.

There is so much that lies ahead. So many opportunities that could arise, its a fantastic place to be in. But that fantastic place has dangerous craters called wasted time, wasted talent, many wrong turns, and poor decisions, and there's no direction to guide you through.

It's not just me. There's two of us here and it only needs one of us to fall in one of those craters for that feeling of lost dreams to rise to the surface...again.

It's a strange feeling. Not bad because you haven't wasted your first twenty six years of life watching the world do incredible things, but not really good, because there is still so much you have watched and not done yourself.

Everytime you watch, you learn. Your outlook on life and what you want to achieve changes. Everytime you watch someone do something. Every new person you meet changes you and what you want to become. Somehow.

Maybe if I wasn't always changing. It might be easier to decide what I must do. What I must do to become that person that everyone knows. The beyond middle aged person, with unlimited interests and stories to tell, busy each day, happy with his life. But not searching. Anymore.