D66 – 73.5Km
For some time I have wanted to include in the daily log selected message from those we receive every day. After more than two months we have had so many that it would be impossible to include them all. One thing is certain, we have enough material to make a thick book when we get home. Thank you because it is a real pleasure to open our mail every morning.
Far from blissful admiration (bliss being synonymous with passiveness), all your messages are very lively: questions, suggestions, advice, thoughts about yourselves or about life in general, the excess or lack of media coverage, current events news in France, incomprehension, encouragement.
Understanding or misunderstanding, usefulness or uselessness, tough reality or dream: this is what you help us live every day. There is no doubt that Serge inspires passion. Passion gives access to dreams and without them life really isn’t worth living. Passion covers a multitude of subjects and is personal to each of us.
Linda has given me permission to share the message she sent us last week. It is entitled “A huge thought for all of you”
This sharing with you is unique, as is each of your very rich messages. Thanks to you all and please continue to help us dream too.
“Serge,
In the dictionary there isn’t a word strong enough to qualify your courage, you strength, your willpower. I would like first of all to salute what you do and why you do it. If the media have passed on the good message that you try to share: it’s about simplicity, about surpassing oneself, about personal conviction, about looking to the “past,” about the plenitude with which you commit to this Feat, with a capital F.
I would also like to salute your wife, whom I know is very, very close to you and who lavishes attention on you. Thanks to “Her” (I’m sorry I don’t know her name) your Feat will be accomplished and She will lead you to it’s successful conclusion. Thank you for this marvelous website, which has good illustrations, is fun and very easy to use and which, I have to admit, leaves me puzzled and dreamy.
At heart, I am a sportswoman. I have been doing French boxing for 20 years, and running for a year and a half (on top of my boxing). I’m 39 years old. My boxing is at national level and one morning in April 2004 I woke up with the idea of running the Paris Marathon even though I had almost never run. I knew that a marathon covered a distance of 42km195 and that was all!! So, being a novice as far as training, difficulty and above all, knowing if I could handle such a distance with a sport I didn’t like, I decided to give myself the means to do it and nothing , and I means nothing, could keep me from it.
First I started working on my psyche because I had to be sure that I would reach my goal, standing up and with a smile. It was out of the question for me to end up in the first aid truck!!!! I had to work on the aspect of “I hate running” and tame this rejection, because my one and only objective was to cover this mythical distance.
It’s useless to explain the difficulties I encountered during my preparation: Physical, which took place during every kind of weather: cold, ice, rain, mud….I had given myself a year to prepare myself and my boxer’s mentality helped me a lot to reconcile my mind to my body.
I didn’t give myself a time objective, I wanted to attain what seemed unattainable to me. To that goal I gave the number 42km195 and believe me, when you start from km zero it’s enormous!!!!!!
So, what’s the reason for all this?? You get up one morning and set a “crazy” objective. What are we looking for by going beyond our own limits, since it is only going beyond ourselves and nothing more? Deep down we know that we have something to prove, that we are looking deep into our guts for the thing we haven’t yet achieved and the sensation to say: I’m going to find the answers in effort, pain and sometimes fear. Yes, to be alone with our effort, to hear our own breath and to look for the answers to the questions that we ask ourselves every day or simply to feel free, to feel that the world (it’s a good word for you) belongs to us, because to master our body and our head could mean to master “our world.”
Ha, and the end result!!! Let’s talk about the enormity of our success, the delicious satisfaction we feels as soon our foot crosses the finish line, the swell of tears of happiness mixed with pain. Once again, I can’t find the words in the dictionary to express the personal satisfaction one feels. I finished my marathon standing up with a smile, I ran all the way, It took me 4H53!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mission accomplished for me, except today I want to go further, further. To be successful in something gives birth to another project, tougher, crazier.
I can understand you Serge. Every since you started, whenever I run I think of you and the 11H average you swallow up every day, the “modest” addition of two marathons one after the other. When I’m feeling soft I say to myself: “go on old girl, forward, He’s there and multiplying your dose by 10,” after that I take my shower and have a good meal, I get up the next morning at 6H30 and attack my 10H day and I tell myself “Serge is still there!!!!!!”
Where do you get that strength, that will power, that courage???? I know that you must feel worn out, want to give up, wonder why you started this crazy thing, knowing that it isn’t your first Feat!!!! You must have your weaknesses and the thing that gives you such merit is that you are able to overcome those low periods, and I know how difficult it is to find all the reasons to keep the body going when it is tired and in pain, but you do it Serge. Hats off, bravo…..Good luck.
Thank you, Serge’s lady, for being with him as you are, it’s a beautiful love story, a beautiful association and a beautiful enterprise. Thanks to the team that attends this man and, again, thanks for sharing this great Feat with us every day.
Sporting regards,
PS: Sorry for the length of the text, but it’s the minimum for a maximum of kilometers. You can read it in several installments.
Linda”