Hartlepool-born Harrison Smith is a financial adviser based in his hometown’s Greenbank business centre and is associated with Emerald Associates. Harrison offers an insight into money matters in an exclusive monthly column for North East Connected.
September is the month of the Great North Run. Only this time, I was part of the annual showpiece event on Tyneside.
This was the first time I had ever taken part in a half marathon, all in the name of raising money for charity with a good friend of mine, Bryn Fox. Our chosen charity, Mind, was identified because we had both been touched by the experiences of family and friends who have suffered mental health problems over the years.
There was another reason for it too. I wanted to get fitter and, being the kind of person I am, if I am left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have achieved that goal if I hadn’t signed up.
I always need a target, something to aim for.
During the first few months of training at the start of the year, I realised I was kidding myself. I wasn’t as fit as I thought. Then around April time, when Bryn convinced me to run an initial five miles, I genuinely thought I was going to die. My heartrate was around 190 beats a minute.
Having always played some kind of sport, plenty of football, you think that might be enough. Believe me, it wasn’t. Granted I have had three knee surgeries, making a run a lot harder without cartilage even if I am only 28.
To complete my first ever 13 mile run I knew I had to do more. I got my head down and ran twice a week. Slowly but surely, I built myself up to just short of the distance. Suddenly, the Great North Run was on me. The nerves were huge at the start, I will not lie, just standing there on the A167. I didn’t want to get injured or disappointed because I’d put so much effort into it.
You soon realise more than 60,000 other people are in the same position. It was a case of putting one foot in front of the other and I didn’t even have to walk once. The run itself restored my faith in humanity. There were so many other people out on the streets watching, giving out water bottles, sweets or even shouting my name, when they didn’t even know me – urging me on to the end.
I remember crossing the line at the end and my body started to go into shock. You start to feel levels of emotions you didn’t expect. You have accomplished something pretty amazing.
Anyone who says the GNR is easy is lying, it is not. But the end is absolutely fantastic; the culmination of all the training, fundraising and the race itself.
I’m so proud to have completed it, but it wouldn’t be a column of mine without relating the whole experience back to finances. And the whole experience can be, in truth, used as a very accurate portrayal of what it is like to plan for your financial future.
Many people delay starting saving/training because they don’t want to think about it. You think it will be alright in the end.
Quite often in people’s lives they will have an epiphany moment, where they think that maybe they aren’t as prepared as they would like to think. It is then when people start to do something about that, change begins.
For those who do train for that big run, they will be heading in the right direction. When they get to the finishing line, is the equivalent of hitting the financial goals people work towards. After all, you have done the miles/training to get where you want to be. Of those 60,000 runners at the Great North Run, there will have been those who trained every single day to achieve what they wanted.
Others, at the opposite end of the spectrum, will have expected to charge through without the required training and found it is not as simple as that.
I dare say there won’t have been many glad not to have put the preparation work in after reaching the end – if they did – at South Shields on that Sunday earlier this month.
And let’s not forget, the reason Kenya’s Abel Kipchumba won Great North Run in less than an hour was because he has planned and worked towards such goals for many, many years.
Make sure you’re ready too, whether that’s in life or preparations for the great North Run!
*For further information or to book an appointment with Harrison check out his adviser