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Dear All

Worth a read for a real bit of motivation  Regards Eric

-----Original Message----- From: Steve Trew [mailto:trew@personalbest.demon.co.uk]

ladies and gentlemen,

This is a long one. But please, please stick with it. Thanks.

At the weekend I was humbled. We were fortunate to have Paula Craig as our guest speaker at the weekend training camp.

And Paula Craig is awesome! I'm told off a bit about using that particular word on some of the race commentaries... but certainly on this occasion, the word was absolutely correct.

Paula's story is well known to the triathlon community; she was hit and paralysed just three years ago while out bike training. On the 27th May 2001 she was hit in the back by an 84 year old car driver.She knew immediately that she was paralysed. She also had -apart from the spinal injuries- broken her wrist, shoulder blade, a rib, torn the tricep away from her arm.... oh, yeah, she'd also broken her leg... but didn't realise that one straight away!

Twenty one weeks in hospital, but then straight back to training.... very different now, training in a wheelchair.

She attended a goal setting meeting at the hospital and was asked her immediate goal, "I'm going to do the London Marathon", she replied.

There was a stunned silence... then, "We were thinking about maybe setting the goal of putting your own socks on......" came the reply. But of course, she did do the marathon, and The World Champs triathlon and... and... and..... just about everything that she set herself.

No, I'm wrong there. She did EVERYTHING that she set herself.

She did the swim training session with us, of course. Despite just having had yet another operation to free the muscles in her legs.

Pauala is a truly astonishing person, a truly astonishing athlete. Her hour plus talk was filled with jokes, with laughter, what it most definitely wasn't filled with was any vestige of self-pity, not one tiny piece.

She talked about doing Pembroke; the guys out there who've done it know about the hills on the bike.

Now imagine doing those hills in a wheelchair. Imagine doing transitions where you've got to transfer from one racing (bike) chair to another racing (run) chair. Imagine getting out of the water and hoping that someone's going to be there to pull you out. Imagine hearing when you're in the water "The start's going to be delayed for 10 minutes, sorry about that!" and knowing that you've got to stay in that cold water and just suffer it 'cause there isn't enough time to get you out and get you back in again.

She told us about the operations, and she laughed while she told us, and she made us laugh with her.

She told us, and I quote, "I am so lucky". She said to us, "It happens, you may as well get on with it". She told us about trying for Athens on the marathon, The paralympic association have set a target standard of 2 hours 15 minutes, Paula has done 2 hours 6 minutes..... but the british paras have set a target standard of 1 hour 54 minutes. So now she's set her target for the half ironman at Sherbourne, well, i guess you would, wouldn't you.

Paula told us about getting up for her 1st training session of the day at 5.15am, rollers in the garage of course, she told us about training again after work... oh Paula has a full time job, didn't I mention that? Nothing too taxing though, just a detective sergeant on the murder squad, hhmmm.....

She told us everything, she answered all the questions. All the personal, intrusive questions. And she kept smiling and laughing and talking.

As one of the athletes said afterwards, "I wish Paula had given that talk before we did the brick session..... I would have got every one of those reps under 3 minutes 45".

I said the word was "awesome". Paula is, she really is awesome. We felt humble, we felt very lucky to have been able to listen to her, we felt very lucky to be able to get up out of our chairs afterwards and walk over to talk to her. We felt very, very humbled. Paula Craig is an absolute inspiration.

So what's the point of this? Dunno really, I just had to write it. I just wanted to share with you guys out there how lucky we are. And I wanted to let you know how fantastic Paula Craig is. So, no apologies, none at all.

Thanks for staying with it.  Steve Trew

you're in the water "The start's going to be delayed for 10 minutes, sorry about that!" and knowing that you've got to suffer suwait in that cold water and just suffer it 'cause there isn't enough time to get you out and get you back in again

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