Last Day Of College - Bitter Sweet

So tomorrow is day of my last exam, and my last day of college. The past 10 months have probably been the hardest months of my life so far, and I'm under no illusion its not going to get harder. After doing three A levels in one year, which are conventionally done in the space of two years.
This approach has demanded double the effort, double the commitment, ten times the discipline and I'd say about three times the aggravation. Plus I've had to squeeze in my training regime on top of all this. I can't sit at a desk or computer all day without doing some kind of exercise even if it just half an hour of intervals on the turbo trainer every other day or so.

Captured this from the view of the Geography department after a few weeks in.

This journey has been incomparably harder than preparing for Ironman Wales 2016. By comparission preparing for any future events will be easy. You get up on time, turn up to your session, give everything you've got and recover...day after day. Straight forward enough, easy to maintain.
But going complete all out balls to the wall academically is a whole different kettle of fish. There is new information being thrown at you every day, left right and centre, and a share of your chances of success rests in the hands of those who deliver this new information, are they a crappy teacher? do they bring the passion? do they bring too much passion? I had a combination with mine, but thankfully no one terrible. Small classes meant lots of opportunity to ask lots of question, the only stupid question is the one that never gets asked.

The way the whole one year stint of madness worked is that you sit a one hour mock exam under complete exam conditions per subject EVERY week. The ultimate aim being to improve a little every week so by the time the real exams come along you are a well drilled and fine tuned exam acing machine. This would force you be constantly revising. Got space between lessons? Great, get assigned some study sessions. This would consist of you having various two hour slots added onto your time table where you would have to report to one of the study rooms which were supervised while you worked for the duration of your stay. Thankfully I was never assigned any of these because I developed the discipline to show up without needing the extra incentive of knowing I would be hunted to the ends of the Earth by the staff if I failed to show up.

Lots of early mornings to cram in some training time before heading into college, whatever it takes to keep the dreams moving on their way to becoming reality.

Shot from a cold December 10 mile/16 km morning run.

How do you keep yourself motivated through doing all this crazy shit. I like to think of motivation and inspiration like food. You have to keep it coming in, save some for later if need be. Be constantly looking for new sources of inspiration (one big discovery for me was that of the words of a former US Navy SEAL known as "Jocko", he helped a lot with the early mornings). And funnily Rich Piana never ceases to give me an extra boost with his relentless "WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES" attitude. One of my favourite quotes I draw strength from often is "Sometimes it will seem impossible but remember, Its only impossible if you give up" (not sure who that is by).

"Robin, if you come to the economics club with me I'll buy you 10L of coke" Alice 2017 Classic student approach, a lot of stimulants and refined sugar was abused over the course of this journey.

As I write this the last couple of hours of this whole experience will draw to an end. I've gained a lot more than I thought I would. I never thought I'd developed the work ethic I have now and my self discipline has never been so high, when that alarm goes off in the morning my feet are on the floor before I know what the hell has just happened whatever time it is. Hopefully I can carry it through to University next year. It will keep ticking over with the training for the Helvellyn triathlon this year up in the Lake District.

I thought I'd be stoked as fuck at the prospect of this all drawing to an end to start a new journey, but the feeling is bitter sweet. much like how I felt crossing the finish line of my first Ironman.