Lessons From a 50 Mile Run, & Why Not Quitting Can Change Your Life!
"If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon. If you want to talk to God, run an ultra". My journey to becoming an Ultraman has changed my life & provided some helpful life applicable lessons that could help you too.
When I first started running my only goal was weight loss & fitness, so that my days hiking in the mountains would be more enjoyable. However, It wasn't long until I was hooked & watching countless YouTube videos. Watching athletes like Kilian Jornet run for three days in the mountains with only a few minutes of sleep. I now had a new goal. To complete an Ultramarathon!
Fast forward 10 months & I'm standing at the starting line with a small group of middle-aged men & women. I sensed a community attracted to the endurance world by life experience & maybe some demons of their own. The event was small. Not much hype. Just a small group of perhaps 40 people standing nervously in the woods. I was nervous, but excited. More importantly, after 10 months of training I felt the strongest I had ever been. I knew from the countless videos I'd watched in preparation however that no amount of training would prepare me for a 50 mile ultramarathon - the longest I'd ran previously was 26 miles & that nearly killed me!
I was there to discover my physical/emotional limits, & test a theory (to be explored in a future post, & I hope will sometime in the near future become a thesis for a PhD) that we are capable of so much more than we think - that most of the limits we place on ourselves are psychological! The next 50 miles would demonstrate first-hand exactly that.
All that follows are some of my personal reflections from the race & some lessons that I've found applicable to life. Take of it what you will..
1. Not Quitting is a Decision You Make in Advance
Perhaps the strangest surprise from my race came seven days prior to race day. A week out, I fell into a dark depressive hole with anxiety I'd not felt for some time. I couldn't seem to shake the negative ruminations that I was a fraud & had no business thinking I could do this. I had told many about my desire to complete this goal & now secretly I was doubting my ability! I was scared.
3 days out from race day I had a debrief with my wife on what to expect from me during the day & what I expected of her. The first discussion - perhaps because I felt fragile in my own ability to finish - I said whatever happens on the day DO NOT allow me to quit! We agreed the only way she would allow me to withdraw from the race was if I had a broken leg OR if I had problems with my lungs. There wasn't another excuse I could give on the day that would grant her withdrawing me from the race.
During the race it was hot - Incredibly hot! At 15 miles I was convinced I had a hole in my water bottles - the first of many delusional tricks my mind played. At 25 miles I noticed some painful movement inside my shoe & knew that my toe nails were being held in position by socks & blisters. The pain of this would continue to haunt me for 25 more miles! At 30 miles the sight of anything containing sugar repulsed me. At 35 miles my vision started to flutter & my stomach cramped. I began vomiting the cold salty sweet potato wedges that I'd been eating up to that point. At 40 miles I couldn't image getting out my chair even for a brief moment, to which my wife picked me up & forced me to keep moving. At 45 miles the pain in my calves became unbearable. At 50 miles I made it to the finish line. I told myself I hadn't quit!
The truth is it's so easy to quit. In fact 60% of the other competitors did quit, dropping out and opting for a still incredible achievement of a medal at 30 miles. I thought about it too, but I had made my decision in advance that 50 miles I would achieve. There is something important in aligning our actions with our values. When you make a decision in advance that no matter how hard something gets you will see it through to the end you are aligning action with value. You are making yourself accountable to your word. My key takeaway is making decisions in advance. Too often we are surprised when faced with difficulty. This is a recipe for quitting! But if a decision is made in advance of what the pre-conditions for quitting are, it's very difficult to go back on your word. During my race, meditating on these ideas I wondered, how many people have quit on the edge of a breakthrough? How many people have not even started because the emotional anxiety of starting was too much? We can't change the past, but we can certainly make the decision not to be a quitter in the future!
2. Pain Is Inevitable, Embrace It!
It's no surprise that any long distance endurance event is going to push you to your limits. They wouldn't be attractive if they didn't offer some sort of physical & emotional challenge. When it comes to ultra endurance, the goal generally isn't to run as fast as you can for a set time. The goal is to locate your personal edge of capability & force every essence of your being to move beyond it. With each expansion of the needle of capability a new version of yourself is created! We all know intuitively this is correct because it's the recognised process of human progress. But it's a different story all together to be faced head-on with your own capability! It's the most honest, raw & authentic version of yourself. It's the place of no bull sh*t! No public persona! No amount of filter that can positively enhance that moment! I experienced this first-hand at mile 38.
I'm not usually an emotional person. At mile 38 my body was broken. My calves & hips were sending razor blades through my legs. My blisters & toe nails I knew were so bad I didn't dare take off my shoes to look at them. My stomach in agony along with a painful headache that was affecting my vision. Emotionally, I felt like I had been dismantled from the inside out. Running alone across yet more sandy hills I began to cry uncontrollably for no reason whatsoever. I had tears streaming down my face at the slight thought of anything positive to try motivate me to finish. I had reached my limit with 12 miles still go! The choice I had was to quit or keep moving forward. In that moment I was reminded of Victor Frankl's first-hand reflection of human suffering from Auschwitz (Man's Search for Meaning). 'There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer'. I had a word with myself & kept moving forward. I overcame the pain & in that moment a new person was born!.
'Between stimulus & response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth & freedom'. (Frankl). Pain & suffering are inevitable in life, but Frankl explains how the best version of ourselves are born, not when we avoid it, but when we embrace all it has to offer to forge the strongest of characters. Robbie Balenger, in his 242 mile race to outrun a Tesla, said 'you don't to get to come back from a low until you have it... But when it gets hard, it all happens in the blink of an eye'. 3 months on from my race, sure I can remember the raw emotions of the day, but the pain is just a minute memory that forms part of the great memory of completing the race ! If you learn to embrace the inevitability of pain, you'll find ease in the previously daunting experiences because your line of capability has increased. The old you may have struggled, but the new you has tackled this before!
3. The Goal is Not the Finish Line, The Goal is to be Present
As someone who is a high achiever, never dwelling too long in the present with a future focused drive looking for the next thing, the ultramarathon quickly pulls apart that ideology. With a smaller race you can get away with thinking of the finish line as a motivator to say 'not long now'! 10-15km in to a 50 mile race however you quickly realise that thinking of the finish line is perhaps not the best strategy. Luckily, this wasn't a surprise on race day as with my long runs in training I'd already began honing the important skill of being present in the moment! Believe it or not, once you've learnt the art of training for endurance (coming in my next post), long runs can be the most meditative, soul searching activities of solitude you can take. Success in the ultramarathon therefore is the epitome of being present!
"If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon. If you want to talk to God, run an ultra". When it gets incredibly difficult & the low periods of extreme pain & emotional turmoil takeover, the only thing you have in that moment is yourself. 'You become instinctively aware of every essence of your being in that moment' (Balenger). You become intuitively aware of this specific moment in time & your relationship to it. It doesn't matter what tomorrow brings or what happened last week. All that matters is putting one foot in front of the other & overcoming this dark cave that stands before you. You meet yourself as you really are! Ironically, we live in a world where the truest essence of honesty has been shadowed by social media filters, lip fillers & hidden true individuality. How often have you seen pictures of people with a snapshot of some staged activity, only to make themselves look fitter, stronger or more adventurous than they really are? When standing face-to-face with mile 38, tears rolling down my face, I encounter myself as I truly am.
My success in completing my 50 mile run was because I was comfortable with expressing my honest self. I was happy for the vulnerability to be dismantled & be rebuilt. Instead of allowing my mind to wonder to the glory of the finish line (though I obviously did envision finishing as a motivating factor), I decided to break the race into bite-size chunks of 5 mile intervals & committed myself to enjoying each moment as it unfolded. After all, many of the emotions, niggles & experiences I'd not experienced once beyond the 26 mile mark. I had literally ventured the essence of my being into new territory. This has become the single most profound lesson from my 50 mile ultramarathon, that the goal is not the finish line, the goal is to be present! We have no control of the past & have no real bearing on the future. All we have is the moment & we can choose to be in it & enjoy it for what it's worth, OR we can be worrying about something of which we have almost zero control.
Summary
The question is, Are we truly honest with ourselves? Are we truly expressing the essence of who we are? Are we truly present with moments, friends, family, colleagues?
I hope my vulnerable reflections of my race have been helpful. If you are thinking 'that's great, but I cant run an ultramarathon'!' Why not try & find something that is challenging to you & make a decision to tackle it head on? Or locate an area where you know you often quit & make a decision in advance that quitting is not an option? Or take a serious look at your response to your moments & ask whether you are truly present? I'm pretty sure that each small success will domino into much larger successes. You are far more capable than you think!
With that, I have now conquered the 50 mile ultramarathon. I'm pretty sure I have a 100m in me!! But first, I am planning my next big endurance adventure in 2023. It will include a very long run, some mountains & some beaches! More information will be coming very soon!!
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to drop me a message & look forward to sharing more soon.
Much Love
Ross