Never be held back by the norm

Post date: 08-Feb-2010 05:51:22

Cliff Young passed away in 2003. But not before he had set some pretty astonishing records in ultra-marathon running.

Every year, Australia hosts an 875-kilometer endurance racing from Sydney to Melbourne – considered to be the world's longest and toughest ultra-marathon. It's a long, tough race that takes five days and normally participated by world-class athletes who train specially for the event. Backed by big names in sports like Nike, these athletes are mostly less than 30 years old men and women equipped with the most expensive sponsored training outfits and shoes.

In 1983, these top class runners were in for a surprise. On the day of the race, a guy named Cliff Young showed up.

What was different about Young was that he was 61 years old and instead of wearing state of the art trainers and a comfortable t shirt and shorts he showed up in overalls and galoshes over his work boots.

Everybody thought that it was a crazy publicity stunt. But the press was curious, so as he took his number 64 and moved into the pack of runners in their special, expensive racing outfit, the camera focused on him and reporters started to ask:

"Who are you and what are you doing?"

"I'm Cliff Young. I'm from a large ranch where we run sheep outside of Melbourne."

They said, "You're really going to run in this race?"

"Yeah," Cliff nodded.

"Got any backers?"

"No."

"Then you can't run."

"Yeah I can." Cliff said. "See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or four wheel drives, and the whole time I was growing up-- until about four years ago when we finally made some money and got a four wheeler-- whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep, and we have 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I'd catch them. I believe I can run this race; it's only two more days. Five days. I've run sheep for three."

When the marathon started, the pros left Cliff behind in his galoshes. The crowds smiled because he didn't even run correctly. Instead of running, he appeared to run leisurely, shuffling like an amateur.

Now, every professional athlete ‘knew for certain’ that it took about 5 days to finish this race, and that in order to compete, you would need to run 18 hours and sleep 6 hours.

The thing is Cliff Young did not know that!

When the morning news of the race was aired, people were in for another big surprise. Cliff was still in the race and had jogged all night down to a city called Mittagong.

Apparently, Cliff did not stop after the first day. Although he was still far behind the world-class athletes, he kept on running. He kept running and every night he got just a little bit closer to the leading pack. By the last night, he passed all of the world-class athletes. By the last day, he was way in front of them.

Not only did Cliff Young run the Melbourne to Sydney race at age 61, without dying; he won first place, breaking the race record by 9 hours and became a national hero!

Now for the Sydney to Melbourne race, almost nobody sleeps. To win that race, you have to run like Cliff Young did, you have to run all night as well as all day. And today ultra marathon runners affect a similar running style to Cliff Young...it saves energy!!

Never be held back by the norm

Never be held back by so called 'correct' beliefs

Create your own reality

Create your own destiny

Be proactive, not reactive

Be the best you that you can be !!