Last Friday was a little different to my typical Friday evening. My mate picked me up at 9pm – when I’d usually be starting to fall asleep on the sofa and think about heading to bed – and we drove north for an hour, heading for the hills.
The 100km run I’m doing in a couple of weeks starts at midnight so I needed some practice running at night and using a head torch.
And it was certainly an experience!
The run started well enough, it was a beautiful evening and the sky was incredible as you can see in the pic. But around mile 12 I started feeling really sick and lethargic. By this point the head torches were out and it was pretty dark.
As was my mood!
I’d not really known how to eat in prep for running at night and had eaten far too much. My mate is far more experienced at this stuff and explained that at night my body will be used to resting and digesting food. Here I was asking it to digest all the food I’d eaten AND run at the same time.
The outcome being that I felt really sick and like I had no energy at all – lesson learnt!
It was really weird running in the dark, at a time I’d normally be asleep. As the tiredness really started to set in my feet became more and more clumsy. I was constantly tripping over the challenging
terrain.
Nothing I can do about that but good practice all the same.
We’d planned to do about 25 miles and when we got to 18 miles we were very close to the car. My mate asked what I wanted to do. It was 1:30am by this stage, we could either head back or add on another hour or so.
I can’t tell you how close I was to saying we should go home. But I figured we’d come this far, and the extra miles would be good for me, both mentally and physically.
So we set off to do an extra loop. Which it turned out was uphill, into the wind for the most part!!
In the end we finished at
2:30am having run 22 and a half miles, with lots of lessons learnt. The most important of which was realising I could tough it out and keep going.
I’ve been training for this 100km run now since January. Six months of training which has been as much about preparing my mind as it has my body. As the weeks of the plan have progressed, I’ve found I’m capable of doing much more than I thought.
A few weeks ago I had a weekend where I had to run 12 miles on the Friday, 30 miles on the Saturday and 15 miles on the Sunday. I remember nervously looking at that before starting the plan and thinking, there’s no way I can do that!
But I did and I could.
I couldn’t have in January, but five months later I was able to. And that’s what following a plan is all about. Knowing you aren’t where you need to be yet. But trusting the process and believing that simply following it consistently will get you where you need to be.
I heard a great quote recently from Steve Magness, “confidence needs evidence”.
He describes how we don’t just get confidence. We gain it from knowing we’ve done the work. That we’ve been consistent, and our brains then know that we aren’t going to “fall apart when we enter the arena”.
We all have doubts when we set out towards our goals.
Whether it’s losing weight, a 100k run, chasing a promotion or a big project at work. It’s normal. The key is to not let those doubts distract you from getting started.
Because as Steve Magness says, the only way you’ll gain confidence, and banish those doubts, is by doing the work.
If you were to commit 6 months to working towards a goal you really care about, what would it be? P.s. I've been blown away by the sponsorship so far, thank you.
If you would like to donate, no matter how small, I'd really appreciate it 🙏
