Surviving hard times.

I am always finding that lessons learned on the road apply to my everyday life as well. In 2019, when I was in the middle of the Killington Spartan Ultra race coming off the mountain at around 16 miles, 9000′ elevation gain I was tired. I knew my husband was waiting at the bottom and was determined to show I was A-OK! This is what he ended up seeing:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard my husband speak of anything I’ve done with such pride as he does recounting this moment. He saw big tough guys pass this point, who were doing the shorter race, see the uphill sandbag carry and just walk off or sit down in defeat. I just smiled and kept going… and going another ~6 hours until I timed out at 26 miles, 12,200′ resulting in my first DNF on the 31 mile, 15.5k course. My motto I said to myself thru this race was “There are the trained and the untrained, I am trained!” (Denzel Washington, Man on Fire). I also felt better by encouraging others around me.

A podcast I was listening to this weekend, Trailrunner Nation episode 505, had one of the hosts Krissy Moehl sharing how she used to come into aid stations smiling asher mom was keeping an eye on her health and could pull her from the race. Later, she was told she had impacted others by being so positive from others at the races. In addition to the benefits of being positive, her advice for running was if you feel bad, before quitting, eat something and make your decision in a better state.

My advice to myself and to my team at work today is this: As we go through this difficult transitional period in our company sale, stay as positive as you can. If you’ve had a hard day/week, let’s pause and do something that makes us feel better before quitting. Let’s plan something to do this week that accomplishes something at work but also for ourselves.

You can do more than you think you can and if you/we end up being unsuccessful, then we were brave enough to try. If you don’t have some failures along the way then you’re not setting your sights high enough.

Question is, how do you know when you truly should stop?