My Journey With Health And Fitness – Finding Inspiration

So the alarm goes off at 4:30am this morning and I think, screw this (may have been due to the wine and tequila celebrating our anniversary yesterday). I reset it for 5am and when it went off a 2nd time I was more than willing to go back to sleep. Then of course I thought about all my kitties waiting for their breakfast and hauled myself out of bed. Once back from my walk I tried to set up for my 7:30am online workout but technology was definitely against me. Instead I cleaned all of the windows in our condo and given the heat toady I am pretty sure I got a better workout than I would have done in the online fitness class.

I have tried through this blog and posts on social media to help motivate people. That might be to get fit, deal with mental health or just to be decent human beings. But there is a young man in the UK who is truly an inspiration to me and thousands of others. Today he is accomplishing such an impressive feat and I have done my best to support him on his journey. I truly hope my words of encouragement have helped him.

Marcus, known as @thehullboy on X, is a 17 year old who 2 years ago tried to end his life. He has been very public and transparent about his struggle with mental health made even more difficult by the fact that his dad suffers from dementia. A year ago Marcus decided to run a mile a day to raise awareness for mental health. Now, he was a big guy and so running could not have been easy but he did it. That lead to him running his first marathon in September. Wow, I thought, good for him for pushing himself all the while telling his story about his personal struggles but that was only the beginning, his ultimate test was still to come.

About 2 months ago Marcus set a goal that was pretty remarkable, he wanted to be the youngest person ever to have run the entire length of the UK. In doing so he set a goal of raising 20,000 GBP for mental health. Now this is a pretty big venture and I have followed his journey as he ran a marathon almost every day. There were a few setbacks such as a twisted ankle (I sent him a reply advising to take a couple days off to recover) and a car accident that totaled the ride along car which caused a bit of a delay but he kept going. I was proud a few days ago when he acknowledged his body needed a break and cut back a bit to do so. Every day when I see his posts I like or comment, always with as much encouragement as possible because I am so inspired by what he was trying to do.

Today is his last day on this journey and he will have met his goal. His fundraising has been going crazy the past few days especially yesterday when an anonymous donor kicked in 20k. As of yesterday he had raised 100,000 GBP all to help those who struggle with mental health. What an amazing job this young man has done. Even better, today all over X I saw such heartfelt messages of support from people who have never met him, they are just as impressed with him as I am.

I’m anxiously awaiting the final post that he has crossed that finish line though I know he will do it. I can’t wait to reply with how proud I am of this courageous young man in accomplishing a goal few of us would even consider. I truly hope this journey will put him on a path of enormous success because that is what he deserves.

So, be a Marcus. Inspire people around you and if you can’t do that, encourage those that do inspire others to keep doing so. Trust me, the past few days watching him closing in on his goals have made me feel better than I have in a long time.