My Personal Best

WOW!!!!

I hardly know where to start … best hike ever! I just wrote a list of phrases as they spilled out and will now follow the list down expanding on the points. Thank you very much for the comments I received to my pre-hike-post.

Best hike ever.

I had my best hike ever. Less than 10 minutes from the end, the guy walking next to me informed me that this was our (so he was clearing trying to include me in his perceived failure) that this was “our personal worst time” and therefore he was disappointed. To which I was quick to reply… “How can the hardest hike I ever did AND didn’t quit on, be my personal worst… It’s clearly my personal BEST as I overcame the hardest challenge.” The previous 2 successful completions of this hike had been easy for me (relatively easy by comparison as I was for the first one extremely well trained and prepared, and for the second, I had only a week before returned from doing the GR20 in Corsica, so was in the best shape I had ever been in my life and had 200+ miles under my belt on far tougher terrain. I’d sailed it last time!).

No thought stands still.

I used this when my brain started wittering on about the pressure point under my big toe (one hour and 4 miles in) that would definitely become a blister. (It didn’t, and I consciously moved my attention from it, and eventually changed socks at a convenient checkpoint, for more padding and the toe was fine, and no blisters.

Catching and replacing unhelpful thoughts.

At one stage I heard in my head; “I’m broken...” “This is killing me” “My body is ruined” ….going round and round and round and round like a stuck record…. When I caught what was obviously NOT HELPING THE SITUATION I replaced it with “I am strong...” “My body is a machine…” “I am doing this…” “Push on through”  Enjoying my environment.

I had the space in my mind - I think because I had shut up the negative nonsense - to smile at everyone I passed and met (on hill ascents and descents we passed each other) and I had the time to survey my beautiful surroundings on the tops of the rolling hills and in the lush green valleys.

This is easy.

Self-talk to the max! Instead of; “I’m not a runner” I went with: “A little run, a little bounce on the flat, on the downhill will help – hey just give it a go” - It helped to break up my machine like stride (vary my cadence) and actually the jogging relieved the joint pain in my hips.

Enjoying the hike.

In the night I was walking down a field in the dark in the wet grass 10 hours in, descending towards the base of my toughest hill on the course. Instead of already mentally exhausting myself with fears of the imminent climb, to take place in 15 minutes time and last for 15 or 20 minutes of excruciating uphill slogging … I was bouncing along happily, revelling in the moment and saying out loud to my companions… “I’m so happy I’m really enjoying this”. The trick is to focus only on the step you are taking NOW. If you can take this single step right now in this moment, you can deal with the next single step when it is time to take it. There is no point burdening this step, now, with a step you gotta take in 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 hours’ time. Imagine the insanity or worrying about how tired you will be and might be unable to climb the 10th hill when you have yet to climb the 5th hill…. I swear I have been guilty of that 

Trusting that the best thing for me will happen at the right time and in the right way

The first half is 1pm Saturday to nightfall. If you are fast you don’t get grouped for the night until 7pm. If you are not fast you could get grouped at 3pm. I got grouped at 19:30. I was solo and I had made my best effort to get to my target checkpoint. Still it was a lottery who I would get grouped with. A group of guy runner had seen me and asked me to join them as I had local knowledge of the route. I liked this. But then the grouping official asked me to be grouped with a pair of women. “You girls go together” – I managed to catch my “gutted” feeling before I had it, and accepted what is. The girls were awesome and the best group I could have had. Being a bit of a sadist/tom-boy I usually find boys better, as they are tougher, but these girls were ace and we had fun and we even helped the boys on a few navigation points with our local knowledge. Walking across one field (in the dark) we could see the head-torches of another group going off at an odd angle on the wrong bearing, so I shouted “Oi lads – what you dong over there” and they corrected their course to converge with ours. 

Doing my best.

I had done my best "marathon", 26 miles in just 7 hours. My personal best. When my body was having pains, I had to accept that my best is different at every moment. My best now is not the same as my best at another moment of now. I did my best at every moment whether it was my toe, hip, ankle, headache, my knee, or my stomach that was paining me. I had never had my “stomach go” before. I started to feel nauseous early on. Then I couldn’t eat. The water was sloshing inside me when I run. The anti-inflammatory tablets i had taken were in there mixed with too many jelly babies, and the offending “energy gel” and little else. I was retching-air, had stomach cramps and external pain sensitivity from just touching my torso and stomach area... what was going on I will never know - but is was a surprise! My head went, I felt seas-sick – and when the battery died in my head torch I chose to stumble on walking in the dark rather than replace the battery, I felt like to even look at it would make me puke! Clearly not the decision of a “right mind”. Maybe/likely I was having a hypo. Anyhow I did my best. And a cup of sweet tea and ginger biscuit, delivered to me by a checkpoint official, saved me enough to carry on.

Going to give.

When sh*t got real (12 hours into the event, and a heart-breaking 12 miles from the finish line… I let go of my “fastest time attempt” (I was on course for a sub-15 hour time, already 30 minutes ahead of my best previous performance. I made it to that checkpoint, where I had to let my group proceed without me, a full 30 minutes before I had ever got there before. But you can’t kick a dead donkey and make it move, so I had to accept that I had to give it an hour to see if it was safe for me to continue. I had no doubt I was continuing, but the officials could have retired me without my consent, and I looked TERRIBLE by all accounts.  So, Instead of pushing on and potentially slowing down my companions, I stayed in the check-point to regain my colour. There I found myself confronted with a change of plan. I now had no group. But luckily I was able to help a couple of guys move on (there were two of them, and according to the event rules, 3 was the minimum night group number). They had both been entrenched in the checkpoint, there groups long gone, one sick with stomach cramps, and the other sick, having suffered 4 or 5 hours of agonising hiccups and retching (similar to my problem). He said to me, “I think this will be my last attempt, this happened last year, I just have to accept that I don’t have a finish in me”. Obviously I was not letting that happen… not on my watch! 

Being an inspiration to others.

We continued together supporting each other and allowing each other to feel that we were not “holding each other back”. The three of us fast time hikers/runners, now reduced to a cripplingly slow pace. When “quitting” and “retiring” came up, or “leaving the sickest hiccup guy” at the next checkpoint (I was asked to continue with another group) - I said I didn’t care about time and we could wait all night for his hiccups to stop, and anyway we still had a full 8 hours or something to finish the remaining 8 miles of the hike. He had already said he was done, quite seriously deciding to quit, deciding to accept failure. That was when I managed to crouch down next to him in his hunched over defeated position (no mean feat at that point). I told him how different he would feel when the day broke and he could see the mist over the next valley... and that we could get rescued if he couldn’t make and it to the end... now was not the time to decide to quit... And any way what you going to do when you get home, i said. You will feel like a loser in the “body-bus” and you will regret this moment for a LONG time. Poor fool carried on... I loaned him my hiking poles for his sheer determination to help him straighten up his body taller (to see if it would help stave off the hiccups). I couldn’t imagine how he tolerated those hiccups! What an effort!

Accepting what is.

Okay so I wasn’t going to smash my best time – and the excuse to quit was my ashen grey face, inability to bend my legs, hip and pelvis seize after the long recuperation wait at the fateful checkpoint … probably a near-coma inducing hypo. I could easily have quit without much disgrace. I could have said “I was on course to beat my personal best time but I HAD to pull out coz I had nausea!” It’s true, and still true, two and a half hours shy of my best performance you could say my success was cut short by nutrition sickness (or you could/should point to my total lack of training and preparation). But I learned so much more about myself and the nature of completion, and competition by carrying on to “fail” and achieve my personal best. Instead of accepting failure I accepted this “is gonna hurt, it isn’t going to be pretty and it isn’t going to be a time I can brag about… but my success was always guaranteed”.

Celebrating my success.

Hell I am more proud of myself this year than last year. Even though it took 5 hours longer. I worked 5 hours harder for it!

Turning it into a WIN WIN situation.

So I could have “failed” in somebodies eyes – the other guy he felt like he failed. I freaking smashed it!!!! I learned so many lessons. Lessons I already knew I knew. Hahaha

Success or failure is a choice.

I chose to succeed. I saw people around me making that same choice, to succeed or fail, some of them quit, some of them turned defeat into success.

My own definition of success.

Yep! I define my success. And I am allowed to change it. And that’s fine.

The difference between knowing ... and KNOWING.

I know you have to train, I am not a novice or an idiot, but somehow this year things have just come up. Other sports (that don’t help hiking muscles), other stuff. I know you have to condition your body. I know you have build-up your body in advance with good nutrition. I know you have to carb load the week before. I know you have to take food you can “stomach” with you on the event. I know you have to force yourself to eat every 30 minutes, because by the time you “feel hungry” it’s too late, and then you stop feeling hungry and then it’s really TOO LATE. I know you should not try a “new” thing on the day of the event (I stupidly had an energy gel 2 hours in to the event), and I believe that is when I ruined my stomach and made me “feel nauseous” for the rest of it. As previously mentioned… I know it, I knew it, and now I think it’s time I turned knowing it, into knowing it, to the living it level of knowing.

The power of UNTIL.

Of course I couldn’t leave out the power of until… I had to keep going UNTIL. That’s the point. That’s the difference between success and failure in a situation like this, and in life.

Final words from my friend, his text me last night made me laugh and smile. I love how my friend didn’t ask my finish time… and he didn’t need to ask if I quit either! 

“Pain is just weakness leaving the body” if you believe what you read on cheap t-shirts! Mate sounds crippling. Well I know you like to leave it out there and put your body on the line! And I think its bloody great. I’m kinda glad you are hobbling as I know you’ve gone at it like a rabid terrier on marching powder!  Legend