Beautiful views; dark moments.

It seems time to renew this blog. Much of last year was spent building endurance, something which given the right mental propensities can be very enjoyable. Not everyone likes the idea of being out there for hours but the idea of running for hours rather than to here or for this distance is very liberating. You are out for four, five, maybe six hours; you either sit into a nice rhythm and enjoy yourself… or go mad “eating your head”; pretty easy if you make the choice. But there’s only so much to discuss about building endurance. You just do the work… And so I haven’t blogged much.

Chiva Ultra

At the end of 2011 I had a very dark running experience at the Chiva Ultra, an otherwise gorgeous race with some beautiful alpine-like scenery as seen in the accompanying image. I have no idea what happened, but I was shot; from about the 20km mark to the 50km mark I just wanted to roll over and sleep . I was stuffing down food for most of the race with the hopes of creating some sort of metabolic fire, but it wasn’t until the pull of the finish line that something in me decided it wanted to run.

The GR10

Once the usual never again demons became bored with my head, I decided to enter the GR10xtrem, which had been my first ever ultra race back in January of 2011 (I had DNF’d that edition of the race). This year it was being held on my birthday, and I had put in plenty of useful volume during the Runner’s Festive… so racing it was inevitable even though I wasn’t much interested in more pain. After the Festive I coasted the first two weeks of 2012 without any significant key runs, hoping to rely on maintaining fitness and getting in some naps the week before the race. I’m pretty sure overall fatigue was the cause of the Darkness at the Chiva Race. In the end it was all good. 16:37 for 93 kms with about 20 minutes spent off course. By far my best race to date, no dark points or serious suffering.

The New Clarity

Having put down a year of volume it is becoming clear that physically I’m good to move in a different direction. I’ve been spending time reading books like Deep Survival and offerings from Mark Twight. I’m still distilling what I have read, but I’m sensing a serious thread of mental clarity with respect to running, training and applying myself. Pen will be put to paper to help crystallize those thoughts, but two key bits that are bouncing around in my head these days are the following:

In every endeavor, people who concentrate and refuse to quit become the elite.

There is “I can” and “I can’t”; there is no “I will try.” Ninety-eight percent means hitting the ground

I’m not sure how else to explain it but I feel new ideas, dedication and concepts filling a void I didn’t know was there. This coming weekend I have an 80km ultra to think about it all…