Never Give Up

The distance swimmer Diana Nyad has just completed an epic 110-mile swim between Cuba and Florida, finishing this Monday.  It is always inspiring to read about these kinds of awe-inspiring performances, especially as I embark on another marathon.  Of course, there is no comparison between an old guy like me running 26.2 miles and Diana Nyad swimming four times that distance, facing obstacles like jellyfish and sharks for more than two days and nights, setting a world record for distance swum without a shark cage.  Surely that is much more suffering than I am capable of accepting.

NBC News seemed surprised by the fact that also struck me:  she is 64 years old, exactly my age. "Most amazing to many, she succeeded in middle age after failing several times. Her first try was in 1978, when she was just 28.  It took her 52 hours and 54 minutes of what appears to have been pure misery."

In the news story that I watched this morning on TV, she reportedly told those who were waiting on shore for her, "Never give up!"  Her message, she said, was to "Be fully engaged.  Be so awake and alert and alive every minute of every waking day."  Her mantra through the swim was "find a way."  "It doesn't matter ... what you come up against because none of it's going to be pleasant. You're hardly ever out there going, 'Oh, my God, isn't it a beautiful moon tonight?' The crew is feeling that. But you're kind of suffering through the whole thing. So my thought was, 'everything you come up against say -- and this is why people are relating to my story -- all of us suffer heartache. All of us suffer difficulties in our lives. And if you say to yourself 'find a way,' you'll make it through."

At the end of the story, several senior swimmers were shown training in the pool where Diana had trained.  One amazing African-American woman said she was 74 years old and that she enjoyed every single day.  "Go until you can't go no more."

That's what I need to hear both now in Week One of my training and also at Mile 26 in December, if I am blessed enough to make it to that point.