Stop doubting. You've got this.
I guess the past few weeks have shown me, not for the first time, what this journey is about. The road to the Jungle was always going to be littered with mental hurdles as well as physical ones - and those mental hurdles weren't always going to be pushing through a bad run or some pain barriers.
With the gutting news that I had, in fact, fractured my heel bone tripping over the dog on a devastatingly boring, flat run, I had to suck it up and pull out of the West Highland Way Ultra. Apparently even my slightly addled brain could see 5 weeks was not going to be long enough for the bone to heal up and the ligaments to regain strength.
But how do you deal with something like that? Last year I spent 8 months training for the 50 mile trail race that would allow me to put my name into the ballot for the West Highland. I completed that race, was allowed to put my name into the ballot, was actually picked (much to my surprise!) and then spent 6 solid months training in shitty, Scottish winter conditions, gradually eeking my fitness levels up and trying like hell to avoid training related injuries. ALL FOR MY F*****G DOG TO BREAK MY FOOT 5 WEEKS BEFORE THE RACE!!
Even if you're a non-runner, or have never been into sports, you can still get the gist of the frustration I felt here. I'm not ashamed to say the first thing I did was spend a good week feeling sorry for myself. I didn't do anything to particularly help my foot... I didn't really do anything at all to be honest. I just sort of moped. But that gets a bit wearing and so after a week I grew sick of myself and gave myself a talking to. Since when do I just lie down and take a kicking? You want to get to the Jungle? You want it badly enough? Well get up and f*****g do something about it.
Frustration was serving no other purpose than to make me miserable, and it certainly wasn't helping my foot. So I ditched that feeling. How? I told myself the West Highland obviously wasn't meant to be (stop rolling your eyes), and that this must have happened for a reason. There's obviously another race I'm supposed to do which will give me a better shot at Jungle training than covering the distance of the West Highland.
And I found it.
Say hello to the Vietnam 100km Mountain Race. I will, of course, fill you in further on this development, but for now it's been like a switch. Frustration gone, mardy-ness gone. Replaced instead with a feeling of complete and utter excitement.
And while looking at the strange similarities between the mental stumbling blocks in the seemingly insane endurance world and those in "real" life, I was reminded of one that re-occurs time and time again in myself and almost every other person out there (probably).
This weekend saw the race I was supposed to run as my "prep race" for the West Highland, the Lochalsh Dirty Thirty in the beautiful North West Highlands. I had signed up around February/March time alongside a friend who would be tackling this as his first ultra. We'd looked at training plans and the best way to tackle the distance, and run some training runs together; usually with far more wading, climbing and scrambling than was strictly necessary as we all know I shouldn't be left in charge of such things.
My friend had run a few marathons and obstacle races but never ventured into the world of ultra before. Now, I'm by no means even in the vicinity of knowing what I'm talking about half the time, but from my own slightly rough-shod experience of ultra running and training for these races, I could see without a shadow of a doubt he could manage the distance and the terrain. The training he'd put into it and the mindset for it was all spot on, and yet he couldn't see it. He had massive doubts over his ability to get to this race fit enough and over completing it.
Of course, he completely cruised it, and the whole thing made me laugh to be quite honest. How many times we tell ourselves we haven't worked hard enough for something, that others are far better, that we can't possibly manage it because it's ludicrous to even imagine being able to etc etc etc, when actually we'll be fine. If you care about it, you've almost certainly put maximum effort into it. And that maximum effort is usually over and beyond what's necessary for the task ahead.
Stop doubting. You've got this.
With the gutting news that I had, in fact, fractured my heel bone tripping over the dog on a devastatingly boring, flat run, I had to suck it up and pull out of the West Highland Way Ultra. Apparently even my slightly addled brain could see 5 weeks was not going to be long enough for the bone to heal up and the ligaments to regain strength.
But how do you deal with something like that? Last year I spent 8 months training for the 50 mile trail race that would allow me to put my name into the ballot for the West Highland. I completed that race, was allowed to put my name into the ballot, was actually picked (much to my surprise!) and then spent 6 solid months training in shitty, Scottish winter conditions, gradually eeking my fitness levels up and trying like hell to avoid training related injuries. ALL FOR MY F*****G DOG TO BREAK MY FOOT 5 WEEKS BEFORE THE RACE!!
Even if you're a non-runner, or have never been into sports, you can still get the gist of the frustration I felt here. I'm not ashamed to say the first thing I did was spend a good week feeling sorry for myself. I didn't do anything to particularly help my foot... I didn't really do anything at all to be honest. I just sort of moped. But that gets a bit wearing and so after a week I grew sick of myself and gave myself a talking to. Since when do I just lie down and take a kicking? You want to get to the Jungle? You want it badly enough? Well get up and f*****g do something about it.
Frustration was serving no other purpose than to make me miserable, and it certainly wasn't helping my foot. So I ditched that feeling. How? I told myself the West Highland obviously wasn't meant to be (stop rolling your eyes), and that this must have happened for a reason. There's obviously another race I'm supposed to do which will give me a better shot at Jungle training than covering the distance of the West Highland.
And I found it.
Say hello to the Vietnam 100km Mountain Race. I will, of course, fill you in further on this development, but for now it's been like a switch. Frustration gone, mardy-ness gone. Replaced instead with a feeling of complete and utter excitement.
(don't mind me sitting here getting giddy over the event trailer)
And while looking at the strange similarities between the mental stumbling blocks in the seemingly insane endurance world and those in "real" life, I was reminded of one that re-occurs time and time again in myself and almost every other person out there (probably).
This weekend saw the race I was supposed to run as my "prep race" for the West Highland, the Lochalsh Dirty Thirty in the beautiful North West Highlands. I had signed up around February/March time alongside a friend who would be tackling this as his first ultra. We'd looked at training plans and the best way to tackle the distance, and run some training runs together; usually with far more wading, climbing and scrambling than was strictly necessary as we all know I shouldn't be left in charge of such things.
My friend had run a few marathons and obstacle races but never ventured into the world of ultra before. Now, I'm by no means even in the vicinity of knowing what I'm talking about half the time, but from my own slightly rough-shod experience of ultra running and training for these races, I could see without a shadow of a doubt he could manage the distance and the terrain. The training he'd put into it and the mindset for it was all spot on, and yet he couldn't see it. He had massive doubts over his ability to get to this race fit enough and over completing it.
Of course, he completely cruised it, and the whole thing made me laugh to be quite honest. How many times we tell ourselves we haven't worked hard enough for something, that others are far better, that we can't possibly manage it because it's ludicrous to even imagine being able to etc etc etc, when actually we'll be fine. If you care about it, you've almost certainly put maximum effort into it. And that maximum effort is usually over and beyond what's necessary for the task ahead.
Stop doubting. You've got this.
Over and out, the stationary runner.
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