chapter 2: the grace and gifts in doing hard things!

My cousin, very lovingly, mentioned in our family group that I am “slightly touched” in my pursuit of these ultra trail races.

Both my uncle and my aunt have also voiced concern that my body is being permanently damaged by my running 110 km in one sitting (this last weekend in the Cederberg Mountains)

Ironically this all started with me when I was knee high to a grasshopper, sitting in front of the TV with my dad each June watching the Comrades marathon (90 km road race from Durban to Pietermaritzburg).

We never missed the last hour of the race because it was when the “normal humans” doing this abnormal thing finished their day and their race. This hour is when the race got quite dramatic and emotional with heartbreak for those who missed the cut off by mere seconds, no getting an official finish or a medal, for all their efforts and months if not years of training their bodies and minds.

The image of these men and women pushing their bodies past their physical limits with their minds was one of the first memories I have in my life of what grit and courage looked like!

Another moment I remember so clearly from those days is when my dad measured my enthusiasm for doing it one day with… “you inherited my knees, so sadly you won't ever be able to do it Brett”!

And so begins the tale of my pig headedness ;-)

Another trait of my entire family is stubbornness. We have it from both my fathers line and my mothers lineage.

My uncle has defied death, far more than a cats nine lives ;-)

My father has also broken his doctors prognosis for health and is stubbornly outliving his doctors “reality”. I too did the same thing 17 years ago.

So it was with utter cheek and glee that in a chat with my Uncle after he lovingly gave me a mouthful about my knees and the damage I was doing to my body, that I reminded him of his stubbornness to break all predictions of his many dances with death.

He laughed… because he knows I take after him, having looked up to him my whole life. He shouldn’t have lived a full life if he wanted me to be tame ;-)

I believe he also laughed because he knows I am going to bank those comments as fuel for yet another challenge to break the glass ceilings of my own beliefs.

But it also got me thinking about my WHY now? These things change from one year to the next and one race to the following.

What do I take from these and this race in particular? What's the gift? The nugget?

Cederberg Traverse doesn't even have a medal, if you finish. We got a t-shirt, cap and jumper for our efforts. Its really got nothing to do with any of that…

…I use running as a teacher.

I learn from the training

I learn from the race &

I learn from everything that comes with this pursuit… it's not about a race which sounds like a very Lance Armstrong-ish statement, when he was cool way back when, but it's true!

It's about exploring an edge, where it’s not comfortable - into the minds realm. Ironically in my blog last week, I mentioned that these races were within my comfort zone… hehehe what utter rubbish ;-) I was nowhere near my comfort zone the entire race!

Saturday 6:30 am through to Sunday 7:13 am was the hardest ultra trail race I have taken part in thus far - more pain than any other race, but more beauty than any other too!

A handful of learnings and wisdom from Saturday/Sunday…

I get time to process what is stuck

This year has been remarkable on so many levels but it's also been very difficult and I have a habit of supporting others at the cost of my own needs, which is something I have been growing awareness of for years, experimenting with subtle and consistent changes.

On a relentless 15 km climb early in the run through overgrown brush cutting at my legs for 4 hours in the midday heat, I thought about people in my life who’s expiration date is more known than not… a number of clients but also some loved ones.

The difficulty and challenge of the climb actually helps me access and release any stuck emotion, which I can't otherwise seem to feel fully or let go. This seems to be one of my best ways to process very deep & difficult emotions that I often deny myself from experiencing.

I have been experimenting with this for years and the work of Edith Edgar, Dr Susan David and Mark Bracknet. They each have helped me to realize that this practice of running ultras is an incredible way for me to feel it all and let go of difficulties I hold sensitivity to (denied emotions asking to be felt)!

All of these brilliant emotional specialists have experienced deep hurt and because of it have dedicated their lives to supporting others with a form of evidence based road map towards emotional health.

Basically their work can be summarized in one phrase - “as humans we have to feel the feelings we fear in order to release them from our minds and bodies, because they influence every decision we make, without realizing it, as well as our physical health”.

It’s simple but practically unbelievably difficult to practice this because it's hard to choose painful feelings (and memories), even if the purpose is to release it and free ourselves from it!

I believe it's why most of us have such deep judgment against therapy, because that choice is a choice to feel what we don't want to feel.

Next gift/learning…

Laughter & humor are even more important when life gets intense!

At Heuningvlei (km 42 and second aid station) we go deep into the Cederberg mountains for another 45 km. If something happens in this section, no matter what it is, you are going to have to hike out or call a helicopter, which is tricky because there is no signal.

It’s where the race gets very real and as an aspiring mountain goat (AMG ;-), you are fully committed.

I got to almost exactly the deepest part of the race away from support, running on my own, around the 60 km mark and I felt a bit of chafe building in my groin area.

I had been wetting my head and t-shirt at every river crossing because of the heat. The moisture got into my tights and started an uncomfortable rub between my left inner thigh and my scrotum, my ball sack ;-)

Within 500 meters after noticing the chafe, it became clear that this was going to go from an inconvenient situation to a race ending “stuck in the middle of nowhere” situation.

Funny not funny, right!

Plan A: I applied all my vaseline and kept moving but it got worse.

Plan B: There were two men ahead of me and a husband and wife team behind me. I figured I chased the two guys ahead of me down, because I was too shy to ask the couple for vaseline for my balls.

I chased the men, knowing I was “lighting my last matches” with regards to making the chafe worse.

Willie, a person not my appendage ;-), gave me a different lube to try out. I strategically ran ahead of him and Janes in case it didn't work so I could have the best chance at more options.

100 meters later it was worse…

Janes then gave me a roll of tape which was like electric insulation tape but less sticky.

I took off my tights which I was wearing under my baggies and taped my penis and scrotum into a cone shaped layer of protection as well as my inner left thigh.

Basically, if I took my pants off, I wouldn't have been strictly naked. It looked hilarious ;-)

Willie also said I should run kaalgat (naked in Afrikaans) holding my “package” as a last resort. Thankfully the taping worked and “plan C” never had to be implemented.

I ran the next 40 km with Willie and Janes and every runner we came across, Willie would get them to ask me about my “demons faced in this race”!

Lovely guys, with such a good sense of humor, and I wouldn't have finished the race if they had not helped me to create my own custom chafe proof underpants.

This story also covers these extra learnings…

Problems are inevitable in life, solve one at a time and drop the stories around them!

Ask for help when I need it - let go of being shy in what I need to move forward!

I run these races for a multitude of reasons and after each one, there are these incredible gifts which become clear in the afterglow of the experience…

Something very big always changes after these moments, belief rises, limits crack and the confidence in myself changes. And it's not in running that these change… my work changes, my relationships shift, my nutrition becomes clearer in what fuels my body etc etc

There is this theory that Jordan Peterson has which didn't really make sense to me until I took on these big challenges. It goes along the lines of…

“become a monster and then learn to control it - because that is where we integrate our shadow and become virtuous, moving closer toward enlightened”

I have done many personal development processes and the invitation is always to look into our shadow, recognize the darkness - the part of ourselves we deny because society demands we be “good” and “righteous”.

In the difficult spaces of these races, I get to tangle and wrestle with, often overwhelming, difficulty on a physical, mental and emotional level…

And through these I meet my monster, and in doing so I become braver and more accepting of this inner monster's role in my life.

There is something quite primal and deeply nourishing about these pursuits, something deeply spiritual as well. It's where I go into communion with my version of God… and that alone is worth everything I endure.

Simply put - the true higher gain is that these races can clear the mind of long standing clutter. They also seem to realign me to myself and remind me that I am indeed human, I am fully alive, and I am deeply grateful for this whole life thingy ;-)