Each week, one of our our coaches jots down a short thought piece giving insight into elements of coaching, training, racing or mindset. This week Coach Chris talks about how the adversity of coronavirus and lockdowns in 2020 can be used as fuel for a better year ahead.
There’s something about overcoming adversity that makes the best athletes. You rarely read about the athlete who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and it was all just soooo easy to become a world champion. Not a great story either…
I remember as a kid, I knew all the stats and histories of the Newcastle United soccer players. So many of them were from shitty, poor areas, had poor educations or broken families. If you looked at the England team at the time, so many of those players were from the poorest parts of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and London, but despite (or perhaps because of…) this, they made it to the top of their profession. It’s not just soccer either. You can see this trend in other sports and in business. I’m currently reading one of the Percy Cerutty biographies. Percy was arguably Australia’s most successful and controversial athletics coach. He came from a large family with not much money, was physically disadvantaged with chronic poor health from a young age and had an alcoholic father. These things shaped him but somehow Percy and others like him find a way of making their seeming disadvantages, work to their advantage. It gives them grit, it shows them that there’s far worse things in life to deal with than the tough training or work they are doing, it gives them perspective.
One thing I really hope that comes out of the Coronavirus pandemic and all the disadvantage it has caused, is that it gives people more grit and more perspective. They are two qualities that are not only helpful for us as runners, when taking on our challenges, but for us more generally as people. Time will tell.