Strength doesn't come from what you can do. It comes by overcoming the things you once thought you couldnt do!

So as some of you may of already seen me post…I wasn’t successful in making the final call back for Season 2 of Ninja Warrior UK 

I’m not going to lie, secretly I was hoping I had made it.  It would’ve been a great opportunity to raise awareness for Ostomists but also that you can still do mad things after having a bag and Cancer.  Let’s be honest I wasn’t good enough.  I attended the audition under prepared (as I didn’t expect Id get through, or that it would be such a quick call back!) plus I was still not fully recovered from a shoulder injury.  BTW I’m not making excuses, they are just facts!

I know, I know, I made the auditions from over 17500 people that applied.  I am proud I made it that far.  The audition was tough.  An hour of really testing grip and upper body strength. Not my strongest areas.

Whilst we are being honest, yes, my ego was a little bruised, whilst I did enter to raise awareness, I did also enter for me.  To prove to myself I could. To keep pushing myself outside my comfort zone.

For a few days I was feeling a bit down, then whilst working on another exciting project (yes I will tell you when I can)  I realised.  Ive come a long way!  In training, in running, in OCR, mentally, physically.  In almost all aspects I am ‘better’ than the person I was before my brush with Cancer.

  

Never Give Up!
While creating this presentation I added a video which was almost 12 months old.  I was invited to visit Doug ‘The Beard’ Spence of Dirty Dozen races to his well-known backyard playground. Literally in his back garden.  We focused on efficiently traversing walls. Vertical and inverted. (a consistent obstacle in almost all OCR events) Up to this point I had seriously struggled to complete these solo.

With some tuition from Doug I managed to make both the inverted and HUGE vertical wall solo…for me a MASSIVE achievement.  It involved a lot of core strength, however, the technique (once mastered) allowed me to traverse with ‘relative’ ease.

 


Reflecting on this: a lot was also confidence.  You really need to commit to get past the point of no return.

Flash Forward to 2015

After multiple OCR’s August was Nuclear Races Recent Summer party.  There I was an Ostomist, a Cancer survivor, a Team member of one of the biggests OCR's in the UK.  Here I was helping to teach others how to traverse inverted walls, my once nemesis.  

 


It was when I saw these photos that I finally realised that not making N.W. and feeling sorry for myself was just not productive!

My journey is MY own. I shouldn’t compare it to others.  In all my events I have never worried about my finishing position.  Just that fact that I had tried.  We are all unique, all have our own challenges, our own limits to reinvent.

Looking back now…..WOW I really have come a long way.  I have no reason to feel ‘sorry for myself’ that I didn’t make the 3^rd and final stage of probably THE biggest challenges I had ever faced.

Anyway....there is always 2016!! ;)

#LIVELIFE  #LOVELIFE #BEUNBREAKABLE