Discipline

I wanted to give up.

Say “Fuck it” and trudge home. After all, I had run up and down the slope twice, and I had ran 1.5km to get to the slope.

My lungs were bursting. My knee complained. My abs shivered from fatigue. So “fuck it”, I’m walking home through short cuts and the short way. But if I did it once, I know I’ll stop when my lungs, knee, abs and hamstrings hurt. So I carried on and ran my way home from the slope past restaurants at Greenwood Avenue, up another slope and down again to the cross junction.

Why carry on?

Two reasons: Discipline; Preparation.

After all, talent without discipline to shape it becomes wasted potential; and harder I prepare, the easier it’ll be come crunch time.

That encapsulates Michael Jordan’s philosophy: train so hard that it would be easy on the basketball court. Similarly Blake Griffin takes part in an incredibly brutal training, and why?

"To do this stuff day after day, it wears on you mentally," Matrisciano said. "That's part of it. To go on the basketball court will be nothing for these guys. They will mentally adapt to it.

That’s why I run up slopes and then run back home. Not trudge back via a shortcut. And that’s discipline.