The race of life

I still wake at 4a.m. most mornings, not to lace up shoes, but to face the quiet hours with the same resolve that once pulled me out into the dark for hill repeats. Even though I don’t run anymore, my body finally vetoing the obsession, the habits and discipline still lingers like an old scar, tough and telling. The internal alarm of my nervous system is the only beeping I hear now. It’s gentler, a soft chime that feels more like a memory than a command. But still, when it calls, my body is already half out of bed before my mind has time to protest. Habit is a stubborn thing; it outlives ambition, ego, pain even the ability to run.

These days, I make coffee in the kitchen instead, enjoying the few quiet hours in my day and looking forward to real coffee from Blackout when I get to the clinic. Outside, the Johannesburg air is cool under streetlights, the quiet covers the pre-dawn sky like a blanket. I don’t head out onto the streets or trails anymore that once felt like punishment and later like prayer. My legs won’t allow it. I miss the the rhythm of footfall and breath, the small honest conversation between body and ground. But the rhythm persists in other forms in my life: a steady breath through conversations in clinic, or mapping out the day’s battles in a race plan, knowing it wont go according to plan but having to continue irrespective.. I’m not chasing medals or finish lines; there’s no race calendar anymore. Yet my training’s imprint shapes everything, the confrontation between will and the world, where hills become deadlines, and the dark receives me without question.

The habits and discipline that i developed revealed how far the body, and spirit, can stretch before borrowing too much from tomorrow. Karma came not just in physical pain, but in the quiet admission of limits. Quitting wasn’t failure; it was mastery, teaching me the sound of a soul saying “enough” without regret. And in that surrender, I learned to persist without needing a medal. Now, unable to run, those lessons serve me in the ultra of life: the one without marked trails or encouraging crews.

The discipline from covering those ghost miles, getting up early, covering distance despite how I felt, translates to the intensity of adulting with business, children and life. The training taught me to break impossible distances into manageable segments: one hill, one hour, one crisis at a time. Often I feel lost or overwhelmed but I remember I built a resilience that carries me where hope alone falters but felt knowledge endures. I run these mental miles for the boy I was, who thought finishing defined worth, and for the man I became, who knows chapters close but stories evolve. Mostly, for my children, navigating their own ultras, trials, heartbreaks, sleepless doubts. I want them to inherit more than my failures. I want them to grasp that the body’s trust extends to the mind’s, that strategic retreat breeds strength, and that true preparation isn’t for a single event but for the self you summon when the path becomes impossible to run.

Some days, I feel the echo of a hilltop burn, lungs aflame, hands on knees,as I tackle a coffee house issue, life issue or some bodily dysfunction in clinic. Only now, I smile wider, knowing the fire is an ally. It’s the same blaze that warmed me in moments of brokeness and defeat, but yet alive with insight. It fuels me long after running faded, turning intensity into innovation in clinic, discipline into daily rituals that keep family bonds tight. Process, once forged in ultras, becomes life’s silent partner, demanding no race number, just presence.

It asks me to show up, to the uncertainty, the ache of what’s lost, the quiet exchange between effort and existence, until it’s no longer about miles at all.

Until I realize the race I trained for was never on some rugged trail or mountain.

It was always this: the steadfast return, the 4 a.m. affirmation, the courage to confront limits I refused to face, and to endure anyway.

Not for victory. Not even for wisdom.

Just because life’s hills loom in the shadows,

and so do I.

Travel well.

Coalition of the Willing is free.

I would however like to continue to share ideas with you and that means time out of clinic. If you have found valuable ideas or thoughts in what I’ve shared with you, please come and grab a coffee, and discuss them with me in person at Blackout Brew Coffeehouse. www.blackoutbrew.co.za

I’m here most Wednesday mornings from 11:00am to 12:00pm. I hate small talk, so we are going to get straight to the deeper, meaningful stuff. Straight in. No kissing.

If you aren’t in Joburg, South Africa, or can’t treat yourself to phenomenal coffee, please consider supporting me by buying a virtual coffee on the link below.

Buy me a Coffee

I would also appreciate you subscribing to Coalition of the Willing and sharing this story with people who you think might benefit from it.

Share Coalition of the Willing

Diverse voices in meaningful conversation. over coffee, breeds powerful collective action.