There are certain moments in a person's life when you suspect you didn't make the best choice. A moment of realisation and perfect clarity that you need to start to take things pretty fucking seriously...
Last night I had one of those moments.
I like to see what I'm taking on. It helps to see route plans, elevation, surfaces I'm likely to encounter, etc. all to help with training and how I feel going into it. I like to run a 3D flythrough of challenges and their routes to both help with understanding more about what I'll face, and also to help with charity fund-raising. Numbers like 50km, 100km and 300km are arbitrary numbers to most people. They are hard to imagine for many, often thinking it's simply an hour or two in the car.
It's hard to get a real sense of the scale of what someone is actually doing when they say they are tackling an ultra-marathon. This is where the fly-through helps. All you need is a gpx route file and Google Earth Pro, and you too can shit yourself when you realise what the journey ahead does in fact look like for you.
Going into the full-blown unknown can be scary, and it can be reckless. Knowing a thing better takes some of that anxiety away... At least that's what I thought.
I'm not ashamed to say that I might have been wrong on this one....
Ignorance in this case is probably bliss. As I was putting the gpx route into the Google Earth app, I had a brief moment where i wished I hadn't. Having taken on a 100km challenge, I knew what that looked like like, and what it felt like... I admit I was not prepared for seeing the route in 3D for this one.
It's a mind-numbing distance when you see it mapped out. Terrifying when I first watched this through. It is so far out of my comfort zone, that I find it difficult to describe how I felt when I first watched it. Concerned. Terrified. Anxious. Excited. Resolute. Slightly mental. It's brought up a few of my deep-rooted doubts and demons, for sure. But It's raised my commitment bar to a whole new level in my mind.
There is a fuck-ton of work to do. But having got the waking nightmare of realisation of what I've signed on for out of the way, I can focus on doing the work, knowing what is to come. Success in this isn't in how I fare on the challenge... It's in the training, preparation, rehab, eating, kit and applying lessons learned in the days, weeks and months of training I have ahead of me.
It's in making my peace with the enormity of this and getting my mindset bullet-proof.
Doubts are OK right now. I don't do failure well, so that is what's fueling me to go forward and put the hours, days and weeks of effort in. The sacrifices, the 'healthy choices', the putting in of extra effort when I have had enough for the week.
Watch this all the way through and you will understand why I am taking the approach I am in getting ready for this...
I hope you enjoy, and please do comment. It all helps.
Thanks for reading (and watching)...
Comments