An Inspirational Story

This one is more than 20 years old but it still is impressive even by today's standards. Cliff Young was an Australian farmer and sheep herder. In 1983 he was 61 years old. He lived with his mother on a farm outside of Melbourne.

There was a race called an "Ultra Marathon", it ran from Sydney to Melbourne, that's 534.7 miles to us Yanks. On race day Cliff showed up at the start in Sydney. World class athletes competed in this race. No one paid attention to Cliff until he walked up to the starters table to register and get a number.

He was in his overalls and work boots with galoshes over them. Everyone thought he was crazy. He had no teeth, he was 61, and his only "trainer" was his mother (age 81). Cliff was given number 64, and the press started to take an interest. When asked why he was entering, he told them that "his farm was 2000 acres and sometimes he would run (because until 2 years ago they were to poor to afford horses or 4-wheelers) around the farm gathering the sheep before a storm and sometimes that took 2 or 3 days and this race was only a few more days." The record for the race was 6 days.

When the race started the runners left Cliff far behind. He sort of jogged-shuffled like an out of shape suburbanite might as they go for their morning half mile "run". After the first day, people were shocked. He was still in the race! He was far behind the pack but he was still running. In fact he had ran all night. The experienced racers would run 18 hours and rest 6. Cliff didn't know that was what he was supposed to do.

Along the way people cheered him on. He would smile his toothless smile, wave and jog on. People watched live race coverage to see Cliff. As the days went on, Cliff got closer and closer to the world class athletes. At night while they slept Cliff ran on. The last night, he passed all the other racers. By the last day, he was way in front of them. Not only did he run the Melbourne to Sydney race at age 61, without dying; he won first place, breaking the race record by 9 hours and became a national hero. Not knowing that he was supposed to sleep during the race, he said when running throughout the race, he imagined that he was chasing sheep and trying to outrun a storm. He had run from Sydney to Melbourne in 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes.

That's not all. When he was given the first prize of $10,000 he said, he didn't know there was prize money and “There’re five other runners still out there doing it tougher than me,” and he gave them $2,000 each. In fact it was said he never kept any of the things he was given. He always passed them on to a child or someone he met soon after receiving the gift or award.

This happened before Google or Microsoft but it is true. I read several stories about Mr. Young, and I thought I might pass it along so you might be inspired too.