Picking up from last time –
I excitedly started the Super as I ran past the DJ saying, “Let’s do it again!” (This became my catchphrase at the start… I don’t know if you’re allowed to say you have a catchphrase if you only say it twice… But I said it with heart. I think it counts if I declare it does, and I am.)
During the Beast, I was taking time to let me brain over-think everything in my life (as I often do with long runs/walks). I love getting out all those analytical and tiring thoughts – tiring out my brain with my body.
During the Super, I mainly just lived in stress sloshing all around in my brain. I kept doing math of miles, and how many more there were to go, and how my pacing was going, and the difference between what I expected and what I got – and on and on and on.
I obsessively checked the time at every mile marker to see that I was still on pace to finish on time.
As I speed-walked through the forest, I thought, “what if somehow I don’t make it in time?! How will I ever possibly explain this to everyone on social media/my blog?! This will be the most embarrassing shame I will ever have to live with. This will be worse than getting silver instead of gold in the math pentathalon in 3rd grade (which I will never get over ’til my dying day)! I am Aurora De Lucia. I do not DNF.”
Then there was this tiny part of me that sort of started trying to justify it all to myself. “Well, I thought I was going to do about 12 + 8 + 3. So, 23ish (maybe up to 25 point something, if each race had a lot of extra tenths of miles thrown in to that uncertain zone of the ‘+’ at the end of the mileage listed on the website)…
Now that the Beast is over 14 and the super’s over 11, even if I just finish these 2, I’m already at 25 (more than 25)! That’s already what I thought I was going to be doing today. Even if I can’t get to the Sprint, can I consider that a victory?”
Of course, then the logical part of me quieted down that weak part of me. Ooooobviously that would not be okay. I didn’t tell myself and the world I was going to do a 25 mile course. I said I was going to do the trifecta-in-a-day – which was exactly what I planned on doing.
So, let’s make it happen. I’ll pick up here next time.