YOU’RE RIGHT

This is a photo from my patio. Rain or shine it is an inspirational view.

INSPIRATION ON AN ISLAND

Many of you know I love basketball. I especially love university, college and high school basketball.
I enjoy the growth and positive outcomes for many of these kids. I enjoy the camaraderie and spirit. It is a different game when it isn’t an overpriced pro league.
The teams from different schools travel a lot and do all kinds of fundraising to pay for their travel costs.
I have bought the chicken, the pie shells, the poinsettias, the wrapping paper and yes, even the manure.
But imagine you live in an isolated community. Who do you play against? Who comes to your school to challenge you in a game?
Haida Gwaii is off the British Columbia coast and is a group of islands commonly referred to as the Queen Charlotte Islands. You will get here by boat or by plane. For them to travel to play any other teams it can mean multiple, long ferry rides. If the weather turns bad it means longer stays in hotel rooms as well. 

These boys needed to raise about $40,000 – $50,000 to play this year. It is worth it. There has been a basketball scholarship for one of the players, Nathan Vogstad, to go to Simon Fraser University.
“It is showing they can make it to university too. It is not impossible being on Haida Gwaii,” says Vogstad. “If you work hard enough and keep going to the gym, you can do it too.”
Hats off to this small community for supporting their basketball team so they can compete against other teams and improve their games and their futures.

HE DID IT

Eight hours, 25 minutes and 30 seconds. He did it. The worlds oldest person to finish a marathon. 

Mr. Singh....YOU ROCK
You can read his story here.

I AM AMAZED

Sometimes out of tragedy we find our inner strength. We choose a path of strength and look forward.

I don’t know of many who could do what this man has done. I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed.

Although Mr. Singh ran in his younger days he had taken a break for about 50 years. Yup. A long break in there. How old is he now? Mr. Fauja Singh is 100 years old. That in itself is a motivation to others. A century old, people.  He lost his wife and son and needed to find a new focus in his life. He turned back to running and at 88 he ran his first 20 kilometer race (32.18 miles) SERIOUSLY!!!

He is going after the Guinness World Book  record for the world’s oldest marathoner. He was born in India and resides in Briton. He is running in the Toronto Marathon on Oct. 16th. to challenge the record.

He is a very small man. He is 115 lbs. and is 5’8 tall. He is a vegetarian.

Adidas has featured him in their “Impossible is Nothing” campaign and there is a biography written about him called Turbaned Torpedo. He is illiterate and cannot read it. He has a Facebook page with over 16,000 members. He also runs to raise funds for charities.

To  train he alternates between running and walking and covers about 13-16 kilometers a day. He has had an injury but that was when he tripped over a cable for one of the cameras filming him.  They don’t have a medical crew running with him because they couldn’t keep up.

An amazing man and an inspiration. The biggest marathon I have today is the pile of ironing in my laundry room and I likely won’t complete it. Hanging my head…..