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Roger Love on Fitness
Roger Love reflects on setting goals, risking failure and
pushing through
IT’S 11.40pm and I'm walking through the manicured
grounds of Ardingly College, a private school 25km
north of Brighton, when I go over on my ankle.
That’s good, I reason, if I am properly injured it means I
can stop walking and no-one can judge me.
By this time, I have been walking for 16 hours on the
100km Richmond to Brighton walk, organised by Ultra
Challenge, and I am at a low point.
Everything is hurting, legs
and feet especially, and I have
- inexplicably - had a bister
on the back of my left heel
since 2km.
This is just stupid, I’m
thinking. Why am I doing
this?
On closer inspection, my
ankle is fine. I have a serious
talk with myself and crash on
into the woods and the night.
Once I reach the 80km point,
I am in better spirits, and at
88km, I am feeling positively
optimistic as I start a brutal
climb up the Downs before
the descent to Brighton.
I reach the end on the
racecourse in 25 hours 23
minutes - three hours quicker
than in 2018 - and feel elated,
before going to bed for the
day.
It’s the low and high points that explain the attraction
of these types of event - whether walking, running or
cycling (or all three). It’s testing the limits not just of
your physical endurance but your mental strength, too.
I got through my low points with a mixture of carrot
and stick, telling myself how great I will feel at the
end and how terrible - and embarrassed - I would feel
if I quit. I also used anger, railing at anyone who has
doubted me in anyway in my life.
In practical terms, I knew if I just kept walking, I
would get there. One step after another, count off the
kilometres. It worked.
That was in May. Later, in July, I am walking up Mount
Roger Love after walking from London To Brighton in May
Snowdon in Wales with my big-hearted 16-year-old
daughter, caught up in mist, howling wind and driving
rain.
We are well-equipped but, three-quarters of the way
up, she is fed-up, achy and soggy. I’m not sure we
can make it to the top. But we have a chat about how
suffering makes us strong and how if we walk 10mins at
a time, we will get inevitably there. We do.
What was breaking us wasn’t
our bodies - it was our minds
- and once we got a grip
and came up with a plan,
we proved stronger than we
thought.
I was reflecting on this as we
headed towards September,
a month in which people
- rested from holidays and
perhaps wanting to feel
better on the beach next year
- start a fitness drive.
There has to be a risk
of failure with any goal;
otherwise it’s not a goal, it’s a
box-ticking exercise, and we
are all stronger than we think.
So, why not make your goals
big this autumn.
It need not be a marathon in
sub-four hours or a 100km
walk in sub-24. What scares
us is relative. I had a client
for whom walking round London Fields was a huge
challenge; others thought running 5km non-stop was
beyond their endurance or could not see how they
could lose weight. For another, a single press-up was
her Everest.
They all had to be brave to work towards these goals.
So, this September, let's challenge ourselves physically
- and especially mentally - and just go for it whatever
it is.
Roger Love Is a personal trainer based
in Netil House E8.
rogerlovept.com
LOVEEAST Sept/Oct 2019 31
Photo courtesy of and © Roger Love