It's funny (not haha funny) how life works sometimes. I am a preparer. I am not a spontaneous, fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. I like to know what I'm getting into, and then plan and prepare for it properly. I rarely decide last minute to race, making rare exceptions for 5ks and 10ks (usually because my kids are racing). I follow training plans to a "t". I don't skip workouts, unless I'm injured or really sick (and I mean really sick). I might move scheduled workouts around a bit, but at the end of each week I am typically less than a mile short of my training plan for the week. I practice race nutrition, I do long runs, I do back to back long runs when my coach tells me to. When I decided to run a difficult 50k, I trained on the gnarliest, rootiest, rockiest, hilliest, most nasty trail I could find, day after day after day. I trained with my headlamp in the dark, on those nasty trails, so that I'd be ready for the first hour of the race in the dark. I spent almost 7 hours navigating the 20 mile loop of the race course (with several wrong turns and a few extra miles thrown in), the day after running 13 miles on hilly trails, so that I would know what it felt like to summit the peaks on tired legs. I did everything I could to be successful at what I knew would be the hardest race of my life.
Three weeks from race day I had a big weekend, 39 miles in about 43 hours. All of them on trail, almost all of them with my always-willing adventure buddy, and some of them in the dark. I had the biggest week of elevation gain, and mileage of my life. I was riding high, feeling good about my months of hard work, feeling ready to go nail the race in 3 weeks and knowing I was officially tapering now. I couldn't stop thinking about how hard, but satisfying, it was going to be to finish the race after preparing, practicing and working consistently for 8 months toward this goal. I finally had the confidence of knowing "I can do this!"
And then, a mere 3 days later I stepped down wrong while running the same trail I've spent hundreds of miles on over the years. I rolled my ankle and it hurt. I was able to run home, and it was sore but didn't seem too bad. Then the swelling started, the bruise along the side of my foot appeared and the pain in the top of my foot gradually increased. And suddenly I could see all my hard work, and all my preparations going down the drain.
To say that I experienced despair would be an understatement. It's ridiculous, and the rational part of my brain knows this. I might be healed in time to run (after all, I've confirmed with x-rays that there are no broken bones, no stress fractures, and no or dislocated bones or joints). And if I'm not, there's always next year. And really, isn't this all a first world problem anyways? But still, the downward spiral of my emotions is real, and uncontrollable, and has left me feeling like I don't even want to get out of bed. It's ridiculous, I know, but the feelings are what they are.
And yet part of me wants to feel this pain, this despair, this overwhelming sadness for what I fear is now outside of my reach. Because isn't the pain and sadness of disappointment and sorrow what makes the good in life actually feel good? If we don't feel the pain and learn to deal with it, regardless of its source, don't we just take the successes and joys in life for granted?
I am reminded of Henrik, who worked very hard for months to take down a team swim record this past spring. He got to his last swim in his age group for that event at the state championships and was determined that he was going to beat it (he was very close, so it was reasonable to think he could). He finished the race, and did not break the record. He was devastated and found his way to my lap in the very crowded stands, soaking wet from the pool, sobbing about how it's not fair that he failed when he worked so hard and tried so hard to do his best. My heart broke for him, as I wanted to see him break the record and because I knew how heartbroken he was for having fallen short of his goal. But I also knew he had another event to swim in 10 minutes and that I had to get him back down to the pool with his emotions under control so he could do his best for his last event at his first state meet. He was able to do so, with what looked like an "ugly swim", but somehow managed to pull a slight PR. It didn't make up for his failure, but it did light a fire in his belly to work even harder for the next swim season (which he has done all summer long, resulting in some huge time drops in his only summer swim meet). And somehow in the end, I think that after a fairy-tail first swim season, this failure taught him more than he would have learned if he had succeeded.
The low-lows are always so very hard, but they are not what defines us. We are instead defined by how we handle them, how we rebound from them, and what we learn from them. I'm not sure yet, if this low-low is the end of this training cycle and the end of my dream of completing my first 50k this year. But I do know that I need to figure out what my rebound is going to look like, either way, so I can move forward and find new (or renewed) goals. And regardless, I need to move past the emotions so that I can be ready for race day in case I can run. When I am able to run this 50k (whether it is in 11 days or next year), the high-high of that success will be even higher than it would have been if I hadn't had this adversity thrown into the mix. I am not defined by a fluke injury a few weeks out from the race, but I am defined by my work ethic and my "never quit" approach to life. This is something a stupid sprained ankle/foot cannot take away from me.
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