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It’s the day after the Outlaw Half triathlon and I’m sitting in my living room, on my own, tired but happy.

I want to tell you all about it in this post, the lead up, the weather, the whole experience of the two days.

I want to explain what it feels like and why. I want to tell you about crying on the bike, and the joy at the finish; but none of that is interesting, apart from to me.

So, I will tell you this little story.

I’m sitting on my sofa now ‘doing admin’ (whatever that actually means) and I’m reading a book that Chris Barrow gave to me called Building a Start Up That Matters.

Some of my admin time is spent reading stuff like this.

This is about a group of people that understand that the time has passed for making business just to make money. I start to read the first few pages of this book again and it takes me back to yesterday in the changing rooms!

I’ve just come off a 2 and half hour bike ride where I kicked the sh*t out of myself as hard as I possibly can, parked my bike and handed over the timing chip. I said hello to my wife and son and have gone for a shower.

There are only 2 of us in the changing rooms (most people who do these triathlons do the whole thing and they’re still out there, but the other guy is a guy called Mark).

Mark is ‘famous’ locally for setting up a triathlon shop and being one of the original Iron Man triathletes all the way back when there was only a tiny proportion of people who had ever done that and who were looked upon as physical gods.

He is about the same age as me, we’d never spoken to each other before.

I think Mark knows who I am, I think he remembers me… from Tim’s funeral.

The Start Up book talks about guys who create things to change people’s lives, it talks about profit and it doesn’t define exactly what profit is.

I walked into the changing rooms and I saw Mark. I sat down and got my stuff out and then decided to speak. I just went over and said “Hi Mark, you set up TFN didn’t you? I was a friend of Tim Dunne’s”. That just started a simple but beautiful conversation where we talked about Tim, what he had meant to us and what a good guy he was. We talked about ourselves, what we had done that day and how hard it was to keep doing it the older you get (Mark had been the first person back on the bike out of the whole field!).

Changing people’s lives isn’t about building a business, a charity or being the Prime Minister, it’s about choosing to do something positive that people appreciate; that makes their lives a little bit better, and they will remember when you’re gone.

Iain Hamilton, who founded the Outlaw, he did that.

Mark, who I spoke to yesterday, he did that.

Almost two years on, after I lost him, Tim still does that.

What are you doing?

It’s time to wake up.

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Blog post number: 1652