Bobby White: seven marathons, seven continents in seven days.

Bobby White: seven marathons, seven continents in seven days.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75e3dny5ygo

I’ve been following Bobby White’s story. It helps that I know him. He’d walk past me in the street, but we played in the same team for a wee while. I also played against his dad, Bobby White. He was a great football player as well. And they’d a younger nephew and cousin. Bobby White, naturally. They all played centre forward for some reason and would be first picks in any team. That’s Whitecrook for you.  I’d be the guy in the team picture slightly out of focus holding the jackets.

Anton Rogan was a Celtic full back in the Centenary season. He was Irish. Not particularly good but he did score a goal against Rangers when the ball hit off him in the last minute. Obviously, with so many Bobby’s in the family, Bobby (senior) mixed it up a bit and called his new-born son Anton Rogan White.

No doubt, Anton Rogan White would have been another great centre-forward, despite not being called Bobby. But he didn’t get the chance. He died at 15 in 2004.

His family have now collected over £100 000 for what was then Yorkhill Hospital for Children but is now Glasgow Hospital Children’s Charity.  

It’s perhaps a tougher environment getting folk’s attention for ten seconds than running seven marathons in seven continents in seven days.

Hell week.

Ask yourself a simple question. Can I do that?

You don’t know until you try and you’ll never try because it’s fucking insane—even for a Whitecrook lad.

I must admit I laughed, when I watched the interview and Bobby was asked how it was.

‘Fucking murder,’ isn’t one of the lines we normally here.

That obviously made it a better story. A writer’s job is to make things worse for his protagonist. Bobby had done the job just as well, blowing his knee up in the first few miles of the first day. A writer’s room is inside his head. Bobby White was stuck in the same place with mile after mile before him and day after day of continuous pain balanced on the balls of his feet and swelling knee.

An open door. Nobody would have blamed him if he called it a day. The heroic thing is sometimes as simple as showing up and putting one foot in front of the other.  

I’m not easily impressed. Wow!

https://www.justgiving.com/page/bobbyruns777