Courage & Rice
“Go out and live your dreams, conquer life’s walls” South African endurance athlete David Grier arrived home in time for Christmas having spent four months covering around 5000 kilometres and some of the harshest terrain on the planet to become the first people in recorded history to run the Great Wall of China from start to finish, in one go, on foot.
(As the largest man-made structure the Great Wall runs across nine Chinese provinces)
By taking a direct route along the massively undulating “spine of the dragon,” Grier also became the first people to personally measure the length of the Wall, popularly thought to be 5 000 kilometres long. Their findings, currently being verified, will be presented at a gala dinner in Cape Town in February.
Miles for Smiles
At the same time, this middle-aged father raised money, and created invaluable publicity, for Operation Smile, a non-profit volunteer medical organization that provides free reconstructive surgery to children and young adults suffering from facial deformities such as cleft lips and palates. Their epic endurance test, sponsored by pharmaceutical company Cipla Medpro, formed part of the Miles for Smiles
Challenge, an annual event in which extreme sportsmen and women help raise money for needy youngsters.
Grier crossed the officially recognized end point of the Wall, at Shanhaiguan, on 15 December after four months of running, climbing - and sometimes crawling - for around six hours a day across relentlessly treacherous and weather-pounded terrain. Their mission, he said, was not only to inspire South Africans to “give the gift of a smile to children born without one”. It was also to show South African children, including their own - “everyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.”
Presentation Overview
This is an inspirational account of David’s journey along the Great Wall of China, achieving a world first record breaking run of the entire length of the great wall. Pushing his body to the limit, reaching deep into the inner strength of his mind through this run he had to personally deal with life-threatening situations and life-changing decisions, ultimately realizing that in order to continue with his journey he had to embrace change and evolve. He found out how important it is to be able to change as we travel our personal journeys through life to ultimately meet with success. We all have this ability, but must make that personal commitment to want to embrace change in order to move forward. Looking back on the journey, David measures its success not by what he achieved, but by what he learnt along the way. Making a conscious effort to take these lessons with him. The great wall, built as a protective barrier to shield the population of China from a common enemy, but in a sinister way keeping a nation busy. The wall has isolated China from the rest of the world for generations, but is now being broken down by the offspring of the very people that it was built to protect. The wall was seen as a hindrance to expansions in the modern China, but a symbol of strength (known as the sleeping dragon).
David sees similar imaginary walls built by ourselves trying to shield our defects to those around us, blocking out change.
But slowly as we move forward we dismantle these walls one at a time and release our sleeping dragon and go on to live our dreams.
This journey was not only about David himself, but he wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. Through this journey funding was raised to enable some 54 children to receive facial surgery from Operation Smile. These children were born with cleft pallets and hair lips. To date he has done some 200 talks to a wide range of audiences across the world.
