Guest Post: Well earned ...by Pat Walsh

 * Well earned *

Beautiful spring weather and great to be alive and outdoors. I dug some of the vegetable patch today to get the plot ready for the onions and courgettes. I need to rake it next before I plant. Then weeding, watering, harvesting and drying just to have a few onions for winter. A bit of physical effort in the fresh air. Working with our hands in the soil, a time to think and be free from the world. A chat with the robin who thanked me for opening a free takeaway of worms with such a glorious song. 

If I had a literary bone I could invoke the spirit of Heaney, McGahern or Kavanagh and wax lyrical about the loamy brown fertile soil of East Cork crumbling in my fingertips but I can’t. It would be easier and cheaper to go to the supermarket and buy a few onions. But where is the satisfaction in that. 

What has all this to do with running you ask? Everything really.

We train, we plan, we start something and bring it to a conclusion by finishing a race and all you might get is a banana. But it isn’t any banana. It is one you have earned and cannot be bought. 

It isn’t the intrinsic value of whatever we are handed, it is the joy and self satisfaction that you accomplished something worthwhile. Cherish that moment, you did it. In team sports it can be an overall effort that determines winning or losing but in running it is your win and you alone. 

The greater the effort, the longer time from inception to finish the more you should value the moment. Think of the physical and mental benefits the entire process has brought to you. The fresh air, the friendships, the laughs. We forget the tears. You cannot quantify the value of that.

In a world where we think we can buy everything then it is important to appreciate the things you can’t purchase. The next time a small child, who is helping at a race, hands you the banana, then know it is a special one. My banana. When I’m having steak and onions for dinner in the depths of winter I will still hear the robin singing his beautiful refrain.

‘Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.’….. Heaney

Take care and be kind in a world of turmoil. No fossil fuels were burned in the garden today. 

#pwr