On Working into Himself
That revelation got here to redefine Tommy’s understanding of struggling, each in life and in endurance athletics, as a coaching floor for hardship. For him, struggling through the run is a chance to really feel out the form of himself, to check the scope of his limits, and apply that information of malleable, surpassable boundaries to elements of his life exterior of coaching and competitors. That features elements like lymphoma – or just studying to carry out primary motions once more.
In the midst of a yr after being declared cancer-free, Tommy went from relearning how one can swallow, use his fingers, and stroll to finishing the New York Metropolis Marathon. He could have completed north of 4x his PR, however he completed.
It was a reminder that, although he wasn’t invulnerable, he was accountable for making choices in no matter circumstances he discovered himself. “People are unimaginable,” he wrote on Instagram following the race. “We’re really good, and highly effective, and robust. A minimum of we’re all the time able to these issues. Day by day and each second the optimistic elements of our common humanity are inside our attain. Individually and collectively, there may be all the time goodness and greatness inside our potential.”
For Tommy, the secret is merely recognizing and exercising the alternatives obtainable to you inside the scope of that potential. Lymphoma and its aftermath? Out of his fingers. Dedication, perspective, rising pre-dawn and getting out on the street? Completely in his fingers. And thru these controllable components, he confirms his personal capabilities. “In case you are shifting,” he not too long ago instructed the New York Instances, “you might be nonetheless alive.”
