13 years ago, Christian Cullen began playing rugby for the Allblacks (New Zealand’s rugby team); with the ball in his hands Cullen was incredibly fast, supernaturally strong and almost impossible to tackle but those weren’t the qualities that made him great… It was the look in his eye when he got the ball that made him great.

When Cullen ran the length of the field to score those match winning tries he wasn’t looking at the players approaching him, the obstacles in his path, the moment he got the ball he was focussed on his goal, he was looking at the try line. In a weird way it seemed like in his imagination he had already scored, the rest of him was just working out how.

It takes more than a little courage and a lot of self belief to imagine the finish line at the start of the race; but this sense of destiny is what sustains you and propels you on any difficult journey. If you don’t have the finish line in mind why would you ever consider running a marathon?

I have been sitting here today imagining the future, imagining success, what looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like; it feels really good to take your mind off the obstacles.