The other day in my gym class, I became frustrated with some of the whiny students. I have a simple ask upon their arrival- five laps of the extremely small gym, stretch, sit. It’s the laps that they complain about. I decided to turn this into a math lesson. Who did I use to prove my point? Terry Fox, of course!
I essentially had them all sit down and watch me perform the laps. Then, I tracked the distance on my watch. After that, I compared that to what Terry Fox was doing, on one good leg, through bad weather, on rough terrain, with cancer in his body! The point was this- stop complaining. The bigger message was this- Terry Fox was incredible. Allow me to explain.
Terry Fox by the Numbers
- Distance Ran Per Day: 37.6 km
- Days of Running: 143
- Total KM Ran: 5,373
Don’t forget about the training, though!
- Training time: 14 months
- Training KM: 5,000+
Put it all together and you have a guy in his early 20’s back in the early 1980’s that ran over 10,000 km with an amputated leg. His artificial leg was pathetic too, by today’s standards. We complain today about chafing. Imagine poor Terry, with the rubbing of his fake leg constantly causing blood and pain.
I’ll have 5k’s that cause me pain. I’ll come home limping or feeling out of breath. Imagine the daily pain that Terry dealt with, only to get back up and do a one-legged marathon the next day. And the next, and the next, and the next.
His Marathon of Hope ended when he felt chest pain and couldn’t stop coughing. What was the problem? The cancer had spread to his lungs. When I have a common cold, I’ll probably take a couple days off from working out. Terry probably battled these feelings of pain for weeks before he finally stopped. And again, it wasn’t some cold, it was literally cancer. Cancer so bad that he died from it 10 months later.
The beauty of it is, Terry Fox’s run actually never ended. There are Terry Fox run’s every year in his honour. Today, in fact, was the day a lot of those runs took place. They’re up to over a billion dollars raised at this point. Here’s the website if you’re interested. We do the Terry Fox Run every year with my school. It’s a quick lap around the neighborhood where I refuse any complaints from the kids. It’s hot? Terry Fox ran in on hotter days. You’re tired? Terry Fox was more tired. You get the point.
Needless to say, I’m a big Terry Fox fan. He’s even on my Mount Rushmore of humans (that can be a story for another day).
Terry Fox. What a legend.
