He didn’t get far. On the third peak, in the snow, his heart stopped. Hypothermia had already taken his body temperature down to 64 degrees. Rescuers tried three times to get his heart going again. He was airlifted off the mountain and put into an induced coma for five days.
He lived. But it took months just to get feeling back in his hands and feet.
Most people would call that the end of the story. A man nearly dies on a mountain, he stays off mountains for the rest of his life. Nobody would blame him for that.
Tommy didn’t see it that way. He called it unfinished business.
He ran the London Marathon to raise money for the mountain rescue team that pulled him out of the snow. Then he kept training. Four years after he nearly died on that trail, he went back and finished the Bob Graham Round, start to finish. One of the rescue volunteers who helped save his life ran the opening leg with him. The doctor who treated him in the hospital was waiting at the finish line.
I read that story and it stuck with me.
Most of us have something we started and walked away from. A goal that scared us. A deal that fell apart. A version of ourselves we gave up on because it got hard, or it hurt, or life knocked us down for a while and we never got back up.
Tommy Price is proof the clock doesn’t run out just because you stopped. You can go back. You can finish it. It might take four years. It might take longer than that. Doesn’t matter.
The finish line is still there waiting on you. Go get it.
Phil
