The Great Race of Mercy

The day was nearly over, and I was waiting for something to feel moved enough to blog about today. It had been a good day at work, I'd felt really happy about how I'd eaten healthily, had some interesting and supportive discussions about health and fitness goals. I'd been for a swim after work and then came home to make a healthy and delicious mushroom risotto. I had even watched 'Go Hard or Go Home' which had stirred in me a desire to set myself a fitness challenge. It looked like this would be the sole focus of my blog today - until I watched an interesting  programme that put another facet on this idea of well being and sharpened my gratitude.

'Icebound:The Greatest Dog Story Ever Told' on BBC Four recounted the true story of a race via dogsled across the Alaskan wilderness to carry serum which was needed to stem a deadly diptheria outbreak in Nome.

Nome was a coastal town, but for 7 months of the year, the ocean froze which meant it was only accessible by a harsh journey over wild and frozen tundra. It was not long after the city was completely isolated by the freezing sea that the doctor recognised the cases that had taken several youngsters lives was not actually tonsillitis, as he had first deemed, but diphtheria. He had some expired serum, which he experimentally used on the ill, while an appeal was launched across America on the 28th January, 1925, for more serum. The only way it could be delivered, however, was by a relay of some 20 dog sled teams, made up of 150 dogs, over a total of 674 miles in temperatures as low as 60 degrees below zero.

It was a fascinating and heartwarming story, which really made me appreciate the compassion of people (the event was also called The Great Race of Mercy). It is sad there are still places in the world today that do not have access to even basic medical care or medications due to isolation, conflict, and poverty. It made me feel grateful that I have access to the foundation which enables me to have health and wellbeing.