Anticipation.

“I can’t wait until I can go inside a pub again”.

“Won’t it be amazing to play live music again?”

“Imagine the feeling when we’re allowed to be inside Croke Park with 80,000 others for an All-Ireland final”.

Our lives are full of anticipation these days. Biding our time until restrictions are lifted so we can do that magical thing we have been waiting to do for so long. But does the event itself always live up to the anticipation?

For years I anticipated the feeling of winning a county final.

Won’t that be incredible? That feeling when the final whistle is blown and we have won. I see what it’s like for others. People running round the pitch, hugging teammates, others sinking to their knees, emotional. I can’t wait to experience that. How will I react?

But the anticipation got in the way of the event itself. And for a long time I never got to experience that feeling because we as a team never focused on the event itself sufficiently to actually win it. Too busy anticipating how it might feel after the event.

One golden rule which is regularly espoused by successful coaches and players is to control the controllables.

In other words, you can’t control how your teammates play, how the opposition plays, how the referee performs, what the weather will be like, or indeed how you react to the final whistle in a big game. However you have more control over your own performance. Your preparation, nutrition, rest, mental state, training. So focus on that instead. If you and enough of your teammates do that right, the chances are that some day you will get to experience that feeling.

It tied in with a message I received before the final we eventually did win. It came from a man who trained me for a few years in Dublin, and read something like this.

“Focus on the game, not the feeling you want after the game. Best of luck”.

It was like he could see into my soul! They were the exact words I needed to hear, and we finally got to experience that feeling of winning something a few days later. And it was every bit as good as we hoped.

Anticipation can be a great thing. The feeling of looking forward to a holiday for example means we get value for the money spent on the holiday before we even leave our house. It’s when it overshadows or somehow inhibits the event itself that we can be left with disappointment.

At the end of October 2006 I went with some friends to New York for a long weekend. Chance and a small bit of planning brought a big group of us from all around the world to that city that weekend, and it’s one I will always remember.

We flew back on the Sunday night, and so arrived into Dublin Airport early on the Monday morning – with the bank holiday stretching out in front of us. One good friend didn’t make the trip – he was running his first marathon in Dublin this particular day, and I was determined to find him on the course and cheer him on.

It was before the days of smartphones, and you couldn’t follow the progress of runners online as you can now. But he had told me he hoped to run it in 3:45, and from that I could calculate his average time per mile, and hence try to estimate where he might be on the course at any given moment.

I shared a house in Clonskeagh at the time, and so headed home from the airport first and tried to spot him around there. I didn’t. I thought I might get him around the back of UCD then but missed him there too. Finally I headed for the Baggot St. area, determined to catch him on his penultimate mile.

But as one jaded and unfamiliar runner after the next passed by, I thought that either he had significantly surpassed his expectations or he had hit the famous wall somewhere out by the Phoenix Park. Finally he appeared, and I was so excited to see him that I ran the next mile by his side in my jeans and jumper.

The man in question is ex-Sligo goalkeeper James Curran from Tully, Strandhill. He was 25 at the time and musty have had a great internal clock, as he finished the course that day in 3:44:48.

I thought of him this week when I read that 29 is the age at which people are most likely to run their first marathon. The same book told me that people are more likely to run their first marathon at 49 that at any age between 45 and 54, and that ‘9-enders’ – ie people in their last year of a life decade - are generally over-represented among marathon runners by a huge 48 percent.

It’s indicative of a trend that also sees these 9-enders more likely to commit suicide or cheat on their partners. A preoccupation with aging and a desire to evaluate our lives at such ages is linked to a rise in behaviours that suggest a search for or crisis of meaning.

Looking for meaning isn’t a bad thing however, and shouldn’t have to lead to a crisis. Be like James and do it at 25, or 37, or 54. Run a marathon, travel to meet friends, find a new partner if that’s what you really want, but why wait until your age ends in 9?