these days I am learning to try and try again and not give up... so many life lessons and sometimes I am just done with them!!! but just when I think I am ready to toss something out..... I see the value and I just get stronger.... and I start over....

delicate tenacity - a brave seedling sinks its roots into stone beside the geehi river at the valentine trail ford

jagungal wilderness, kosciuszko national park, new south wales, australia

departing from Ryde

Wild echeveria, California Coast.

2359hrs

There are many meaning to the word Tenacity. Persistency. Purpose. Cohesiveness. There are many physical meanings to the word concerning the laws of physics.

The connection to the above image is that the shot is a photograph of a section of my North Face running shoes. I have several running shoes and have pounded the groud clocking up insane miles for someone as tall as me. I have trained hard and run two marathons. The second being a joke as I had not trained hard enough but the preparations for the first I remember clearly.

To run a marathon is a serious assualt on the body. Even when training hard and smoothly the vast majority of us do not have bodies tailored to endure the harsh demands placed upon the body. This applies to any serious extreme physical workout.

People often bemoan the fact that East Africans have a genetic advantage concerning long distance running. I see this as selectional scientific prejudice because if it was that much of a concern than the same scientists would research the then obvious genetic advantage some northern Europeans have concerning the extreme rigorous nature of selection for the British Army's special forces (i.e. the SAS) as there is an unusually higher ratio of Scots in that regiment.

Anyways, to train for a marathon takes some dedication. You always have running and preparing for a run on your mind. I loved it so much, as prior to that, although being a mountaineer skipping up mountains at some speed at times, I just could not run at a proper pace for a proper distance - not even beyond 2 miles.

My reasoning for running a marathon was my fitness had dropped to such a low that it was plain embarassing. So I played a mind trick on myself. I hooked up to a charity, declared to everyone I was running the marathon - that meant I had to train. Four hard months of training. The months prior, during and after the marathon represented a strong mixture of personal sadness, huge joy and a bewilderment of curiosity into so many aspects of medicine, my student union involement, my editorial commitments to many magazines, and so much going on behind the scens, that it is incredible that I completed that marathon in '06 in a decent time and enjoyed the entire thing,

Being tenacious is a word perhaps disappearing from our on average pampered society. Some people are not pampered though but the majority of us have been for over a decade and the credit crunch is biting hard.

To accomplish your dreams you must reach out and grab hold of them with all your hands and feet and mouth too. You need to exercise hard graft both mentally and physically to get there.

I have always considered myself a tenacious person. There have been times though when my srong sense of purpose and self belief dropped nearly out of existence. I shudder sometimes at that period in my life and stagger at the then loss of purpose.

My purpose to do medicine and some of the many other things that have dominated my life is due to a reason which I do not explain readily. It is something that drives me and for those who read these posts you should be able to work it out. There have been times when I have done so many things simultaneously for a sustained period of time that looking back now it is amazing I actually did them. The explanation on a simplistic stage is that I love so many things and wish to experience so many things all at the same time. Why you may ask? That in itself is another story.

I thought about running a marathon this year. Several years back due to the strongheadedness I would have during a lead up to finals. Many people do it. However, it is their only commitment during final year, for me it would not be and there are certain times when being tenacious is not about conquering the world at the same time, but being measured in your determination to make the objectives of your purpose a reaslisaiton.

Goodnight

July 21, 2002, Bryce Canyon National Monument, Garfield County, Utah

Fairyland loop area, Pinus longaeva, Intermountain Bristlecone pine.

And you, how old are you?

I asked the Maple tree:

While opening one hand,

- he started blushing.

~ Georges Bonneau

Bigger On Black

Of course, the weekend we were going to do fileserver and network maintenance, Todd and I got locked out of the Yelp HQ due to a failure of the electronic entry system.

Todd attempts to hack in and frob the locks from the system's control panel.

"I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head."