Throughout my sporting career one thing was drilled into me from my earliest memories. “Pain is only temporary, the memories of winning or losing is what you have to live with for the rest of your life.” You trained until it hurt, really hurt and then come the second most important thing that I was to remember. Training only starts when the pain starts. It is the mark of a champion and the mindset that is needed. After all, if it was easy, than everyone would be the best in the world. Having said that, the word champion is used to freely these days. In my day it meant there was no one else better. Getting back on track with what I was saying .Let me set the scene. It’s pouring rain with a strong wind blowing down the steep slope. What do you do? Option (1) Take the day of and tell yourself you could do with a day off and besides you might catch a cold! Snuggle up on the lounge with a cup of hot chocolate and some of your favourite biscuits. Option (2) Do the run down the slope with the wind assisting you, all the while justifying your decision by telling yourself that most people would stay at home like in the first option? A commendable effort, You would probably impress most people. Well done, but not what it takes to be a champion sportsperson. Option (3) is an example of what you would find in the background of some of the world’s greatest athletes.  Not only do you do the run up the hill into the wind, but you do it repeatedly until you can’t stand up and have to wait 30 mins in the wind and rain for your legs to recover so you can jog home. This is the code I lived by for the 1st  20 years of my life. That is until I found myself with an injury so horrific that I now live with Chronic Pain and those words haunt me every day because I now live a life where pain is not temporary but a constant reminder that you are alive.  Gone are the days where I lived for the aches and pains from a bone crushing work out. The high I could get from that no pain killer could ever match and I can say that with authority. There is not a drug I haven’t tried in a desperate attempt to escape a pain that is in escapable. The irony of an ideal life, to be the best I could be, aiming for the highest of heights, now living with the constant reminder of knowing just how bad pain can be. Fast forward 25 years and I have call upon the wisdom of some of the first words I can recollect from my childhood. I cannot change the fact that I’m in pain and will be for the rest of my life. I can however use the same mind set and techniques I used as an athlete to help me focus and function to a degree that if my limp wasn’t so pronounce and I didn’t have to use an aid to walk, then you probably wouldn’t give me a second look if we crossed paths. Please do not think I telling you it’s easy. It is most definitely not. Please refer to the opening paragraph. If it was easy that there would be sick people. Far from it, but just like my youth and sporting days, it’s hard work. You need a great team (Support) around you and great friends that accept you for being you. The one thing that has help though the darkest of times, when I’ve been in places I thought I could never come back from and still brings tears to my eyes when I think of them. I refer to the words from the world’s greatest coach I never had the pleasure to perform for!  You can never lose if you never give up! And that my friends is something you can take to the bank!