Just keep going

First things first today:

Adam Scott - get him up here, I wanna boof him.

Now, let's move on - here's blog 34 about how I reached level 10 in the beep test yesterday:

On a basketball court in the Randwick Army barracks in 1998, during pre-season for Sydney Swans, the squad were doing a beep test, and the entire team watched on and cheered as ran a 15-11, the highest score for the Swans that season. I pushed my body further than I thought I could take it to get there, and yesterday at Thornleigh oval, I ran another beep test where I found a level I didn't know I had to reach level 10.

The beep test is a 20 metre shuttle run that incrementally gets faster as you climb to higher levels, the highest of which is level 23, and in my 1998 test, once I got above level 12, pushing off the foot of Stefan Carey at one end, and Greg Stafford at the other, every length I ran was more a mental challenge than a physical one, my body had nothing left, all I had was my subconcious telling me to "just keep going."

For the last two months I've been running beep tests with the goal of reaching level 10, but I haven't been able to get past levels in the low nines, but yesterday I found that same mental fortitude that got me to level 15-11 in '98. When I hit level 9, my legs felt like they had nothing left to give and I felt like I was getting close to the inevitable low 9 drop out, but I said to myself "just keep going," so I kept going until the recorded voice told me I was at level 10.

As a 33 year old, I'm proud to be able to say that I ran a 10 in the beep test, but as a 33 year old diabetic stroke survivor, the result vindicates the decision I made straight after my stroke to close my eyes and jump back into the life I'd been living before the stroke and see what I could achieve.