I read this story that I recently ran across to Jason, Anna and Taylor last night at dinner and was moved to tears again reading this. Indeed, maybe this is the year to pull a Cliff Young. :)
"When unknown 61-year-old farmer Cliff Young shuffled off his farmland and destroyed 10 professional runners in a 544-mile race — a legend was born. The ordinary gave birth to the extraordinary as Young beat the field by 10 hours.
The story of a scrawny, socially awkward farmer who trained in gumboot galoshes chasing dairy cows and won Australia’s 1983 Sydney-to-Melbourne Ultra Marathon in Forrest Gump fashion is preposterous and outlandish — and all true.
In 1983, the Sydney-to-Melbourne race was considered one of the world’s most difficult physical tests: 875 kilometers (544 miles) of flats and hills that would take six or seven days to complete. Contestants could eat and sleep as they chose; first across the line took a $10,000 prize. The field included professional marathoners with corporate backing, including one, Siggy Bauer, who had previously set the 1,000-mile world record in South Africa.
Young’s running background centered on rounding up sheep as a child on his family farm. Initially, when he entered the Sydney-to-Melbourne race, he was met with derision and disdain. As a 61-year old potato farmer, he lived with his mother, was a vegetarian and teetotaler, and had trained for a month by chasing livestock in pants and galoshes.
Physically, he looked like he might keel over with the next wind, yet he was set to race against world class athletes. The ultimate unscripted character, he showed up on the morning of the race with holes cut in his pants for ventilation, and with no teeth. (Young said his false teeth rattled when he ran.)
When the race began, the pack blew Young off the line as he began moving with his trademark shuffle — a true tortoise-hare start. And by end of the day, pundits were concerned that Young would collapse and die somewhere along the route. But that night, when the professional runners stopped to get four to six hours of sleep, Young grabbed two hours and kept running. No science and no technique; he just got up earlier and grabbed the lead while the others slept. The entire nation of Australia responded with a roar and television reporters scrambled after Young. “What sort of a runner are you?” Young was asked as he stopped for water. “I’ve got no experience. Just born and bred in the bush.”
And after the second day of non-stop running, Young slept for an hour, got up and ran. By the third day, Young was plastered across newspaper front pages and cheering crowds urged him on as his lead grew bigger — and bigger. Race director John Toleman was starting to believe the potato farmer just might win the marathon. Toleman, in aHerald excerpt from a new book on Young: “… when he got to the front he ran like a scared rabbit. He didn’t want to stop. Everyone was going, ‘Oh, this old bloke’s just gotta blow up.’ He was just miles and miles in front — he covered 200 miles in the first 48 hours. And he did not want to stop.”
By the fourth day, Young had caught the attention of the international media and he didn’t disappoint. A day later, he crossed the finish line in first place, a full 10 hours ahead of the next competitor. He had literally made one of the greatest runs in history. According to the Australian: “In breasting the tape at Doncaster, in Melbourne's east, the sexagenarian had covered 875km in five days, 14 hours and 35 minutes — the equivalent of almost four marathons a day — shattering the previous race record by more than two days.”
Young took his $10,000 prize and doled it out to the other finishers, keeping none for himself.
He later faded from the media spotlight and died of cancer in 2003. Cliff Young — a true legend."
Ann Voskamp reflected further on this story here:
"Said he grew up on a farm with sheep and no four wheelers, no horses, so the only way to round up sheep was on the run. Sometimes the best training for the really big things is just the everyday things.
That’s what Cliff said: “Whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go run and round up the sheep.” 2,000 head of sheep. 2,000 acres of land.
“Sometimes I’d have to run those sheep for two or three days. I can run this race; it’s only two more days. Five days. I’ve run sheep for three.”
“Got any backers?” Reporters shoved their microphones around old Cliff like a spike belt.
“No….” Cliff slipped his hands into his overall pockets.
“Then you can’t run.”
Cliff looked down at his boots. Does man need backers or does a man need to believe? What you believe is the biggest backer you’ll ever have.
The other runners, all under a buffed 30 years of age, they take off like pumped shots from that starting line. And scruffy old Cliff staggers forward. He doesn’t run. Shuffles, more like it. Straight back. Arms dangling. Feet awkwardly shuffling along.
Cliff eats dust.
For 18 hours, the racers blow down the road, far down the road, and old Cliff shuffles on behind.
Come the pitch black of night, the runners in their $400 ergonomic Nikes and Adidas, lay down by the roadside, because that’s the plan to win an ultra-marathon, to run 544 straight miles: 18 hours of running, 6 hours of sleeping, rinse and repeat for 5 days, 6 days, 7 days.
The dark falls in. Runners sleep. Cameras get turned off. Reporters go to bed.
And through the black night, one 61-year-old man far behind keeps shuffling on.
And all I can think is:
The light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.
καταλαμβάνω Katalambanō – Comprehend. Understand. Master.
Cliff Young runs on through the night and there is a Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not master it.
The darkness doesn’t understand the light, doesn’t comprehend the light, doesn’t get the light, doesn’t overcome the light, doesn’t master the light.
Darkness doesn’t have anything on light, on hope, on faith.
“Darkness can’t drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” Martin Luther King had said it, had lived it.
The accepted way professional runners approached the race was to run 18 hours, sleep 6, for7 days straight. But Cliff Young didn’t know that. He didn’t know the accepted way. He only knew what he did regularly back home, the way he had always done it: You run through the dark.
Turns out when Cliff Young said he gathered sheep around his farm for three days, he meant he’d run across 2,000 acres of farmland for three days straight without stopping or sleeping, without the dark ever stopping him. You gathered sheep by running through the dark.
So along the endless stretches of highway, a tiny shadow of an old man shuffled along, one foot after another, right through the heat, right through the night. Cliff gained ground.
Cliff gained ground because he didn’t lose ground to the dark. Cliff gained ground because he ran through the dark.
And somewhere at the outset of the night, Cliff Young in his overalls, he shuffled passed the toned runners half his age. And by the morning light, teethless Cliff Young who wasn’t young at all, he was a tiny shadow — far, far ahead of the professional athletes.
For five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes straight, Cliff Young ran, never once stopping for the dark – never stopping until the old sheep farmer crossed the finish line – First. He crossed the finish line first. Beating a world record. By two. whole. days.
The second place runner crossed the finish line 9 hours after old Cliff.
And when they handed old Cliff Young his $10,000 prize , he said he hadn’t known there was a prize. Said he’d run for the wonder of it. Said that all the other runners had worked hard too. So Cliff Young waited at the finish line and handed each of the runners an equal share of the 10K.
While others run fast, you can just shuffle with perseverance.
While others impress, you can simply press on.
While others stop for the dark, you can run through the dark.
While others impress, you can simply press on.
While others stop for the dark, you can run through the dark.
The race is won by those who keep running through the dark.
Could be the year to pull a Cliff Young.
When those reporters asked Old Cliff that afterward, what had kept him running through the nights, Cliff had said, “I imagined I was outrunning a storm to gather up my sheep.”
-above from http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/01/how-to-get-through-the-dark-places-thejesusproject-2/
more on the Cliff Young Shuffle
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