Wake Up Call

Saturday morning. 5:00 AM.

There was rain tapping on the windows, and only darkness to be found beyond it.

My eyes were open at that time of the morning because I had been invited by a good friend to a local running club. There was a regular schedule of 8 to 12 kilometre laps that kicked off every Saturday at 6AM.

“Running? At 6AM? What?!” was my gut reaction of disbelief to first hearing of the group. It all sounded crazy but there was some underlying thing that caught my curiosity — enough of a spark to eventually decide to show up one day. And that day had arrived.

I wish I could sit here and tell you that it was the allure of running in the earliest hours of the morning that kickstarted me up and out of bed that morning, but it was not. The comfort and warmth forced upon a sticky situation that destroyed any conscious attempts at taking the right steps. Luckily, in its place, was this question:

“If today was race day, what would your next actions look like?”

In the face of this, the rain, the cold and the darkness crumbled away into dust. Taking the first critical steps towards where I wanted to go had suddenly become the ‘easy’ option. There was no way I was going to continue laying in bed if today was race day. Not a chance! No matter what the conditions would look like, at the very minimum, I would show up.

The next thing I knew, I found myself standing on the starting line just before the 6AM kickoff with a sizeable crowd of other runners— who would have taken the same decision to overcome inertia in order to arrive at the same place and time as I. It was inspiring and incredibly welcoming to have been surrounded by a sea of wonderful human beings, even though they were all complete strangers.

An hour later, the morning run was complete. What I had previously regarded as ‘not happening!’ was now ‘accomplished.’ It was sublime. A surreal experience.

After the run, the club gathered at its usual spot, a nearby cafe where the runners could hang out, debrief and sip coffee. And it was here where first names were introduced, stories exchanged and human connection forged. I would not have been able to articulate it at the time, but I instinctively understood that there was something good and worthwhile happening underneath the surface.

Week after week, I continued to make the space and time in my life to be able to show up consistently on Saturdays for that very same 6AM start time. And what is fascinating to reflect on is how my internalised perception of what was ‘reasonable’ started to shift and evolve as I spent more and more time with the group.

It started with the small steps. The friction of waking up early on a Saturday morning very quickly became the new routine and faded into the background of effortless action. It became very reasonable to eat and sleep at a particular cadence on Friday nights, in order to be able to show up early on the next morning ready to run.

Then things started to escalate through getting to have conversations with others in the running club, most of whom were on some path towards chasing down their own (seemingly) impossible dreams. Not only my perception of what was ‘reasonable’ had evolved but also my perception of what I had considered to be far beyond my reach.

This was exemplified through the beliefs I had held around running long distances. As someone who had routinely ran 5 kilometres, between 2–4 times a week, a distance of 20 kilometres had seemed like a stretch. Not impossible, but definitely a challenge. As I got to meet people who experienced half marathons, full marathons, ultramarathons and Ironman triathlons, this perceived ‘ceiling’ continued to rise from 20km to 25km. From 25km to 35km. From 35km to full marathon. Suddenly, 42 km was the new baseline of ‘difficult, but not out of reach’!

It’s very strange reflecting on all of this today, because a lot of it sounds like hyperbole, but it was actually a near weekly experience of having direct conversations around the accomplishment of scarier and scarier goals. This particular environment made it very easy for me to assess and recalibrate my own internal standards of what I had considered to be achievable.

Having said that, while cultivating self-belief is a powerful and necessary force, it is not sufficient in and of itself. It seems to be a critical priming agent that allows us to take action towards creating the life that we would like to live, but there is still the very necessary step of actually doing the work.

Being surrounded by crowds of inspiration would be meaningless if that energy was not harnessed through individual action, because it is in our personal capacity  to affect the reality around us that leads to a real sense of competence — which then serves to justify the originating sense of self-belief.

The lessons I would learn through the group conversations at running club on the weekends would be actively applied through solo training sessions during the rest of the week. It was within these confrontations with reality that led to the positive flywheel of:

We believe so that we can do, we do so that we can believe.

“It is for this reason that every good example is a fateful challenge, and every hero, a judge. Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out to its observer: “You could be more than you are.” When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable…

Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person."

- Jordan Peterson