I don’t have many heroes in sport, but from the time I first saw this picture in Life magazine of Herb Elliott and his coach running the sand dunes at Portsea he became my hero. Here are some thoughts and quotes from a presentation he recently did in Australia. He is 82 years and sharp as a tack. He retired from running at age 22 and has never looked back. I think there are many lesson todays coaches and athletes can learn from Herb Elliott.
“Turn yourself into a better human being through sport”
He related that he ran to exhaustion 4 days a week, the other two days he just ran for the pure joy of running. As a note most of this time he was working an eight-hour day!
He related a workout on a very windy day when his main competition in Australia, Merv Lincoln was also doing a workout at the same track, as it turned out it was almost the same workout. He observed that Lincoln chose to run with the wind while he ran into the wind. Herb said he knew could beat Lincoln after that day because he was ok with being uncomfortable.
For all you complexifiers out there this is a gem:” Running is so bloody simple – you are born, you walk, then you run. Don’t make it complicated!”