My World in Words
Welcome to my blog, the place I try to put my inner world into words, aiming to share wisdom gained through experience, hope, mistakes, and everything that makes life both beautiful and messy.
FYI - Posts will appear haphazardly and on no set schedule other than the one life sets out for me. Things get a little chaotic at times, but I will always return eventually.
My Marathon Journey
The idea of running a marathon was a huge part of what got me into running. It is the first distance I 'trained' (loosely at least) for, and ever since crossing the line of my first one in 2015 I have been enthralled by the beauty of it. I ran my first one almost entirely with my head, just to prove to myself I could.
Australian Mountain Running Championships 2019
8 days out, the Saturday before the race, was where I freaked out. I was home alone, getting ready for race week and trying to organise my travel to Queensland, when it all hit me at once. My longest run in the last 5 months up until that point was 12km, and the race was 14km up and down a bloody mountain. I sat, breathed, meditated, and ate chocolate peanut butter as I tried to reframe my thoughts.
The value in the struggle of therapy.
That is perhaps the first struggle of any type of psychotherapy or deep internal work; the anxiety and fear. It is confronting to walk into a room knowing I am going to be asked to face up to my true self and explore my deepest reality. Sure I could hide behind the masks I have been crafting for years, but that would negate the reason for being there in the first place. Instead I have learned to see the anxiety for what it is; a positive. It is a sign that what I am doing means something to me, and is important. If I didn't have a sense of anxiety before being in a situation that evokes such powerful feelings of vulnerability and pain, I would say either the walls I have up are so thick I have even myself fooled, or I have somehow become so wise and content that I have nothing internal worth working through. Thankfully, I am years beyond my protective layer being thick enough to fool myself, but I am also many lifetimes away from having nothing internal I can do to improve my wellbeing.
When each day became a gift.
Total: 15.2km in 60 mins. 38 laps of a track. In the middle parts of the workout where the speeds were fastest, I hit an 18:25 5km split, a 38:19 10km split, and a 59:15 15km. 12 months ago my PB's over those distances in races weren't even that fast; let alone at 30 degrees celsius, 3000m altitude, at night, alone, on a treadmill. I lie back and shut my eyes, trying to take in the moment of again realising that after all the doubts and fears going into this session, I am again more capable that I realised. The only reason I now know that, is because I threw caution to the wind and had a crack. A tear comes to my eyes as the exhausted relief sets in, and I make the connection that right now, in my day to day being and doing, I am genuinely living the life my 8 year old self dreamed of.