Trusting my instincts

In just under 2 weeks I will be participating in the Golden Gate Dirty-30 Trail Ultra.  I'm looking forward to it even though I know 32 miles at altitude with 7,200+ feet of elevation gain and loss over rocky terrain is a little much. It will be my first ultra since the Icy-8 Ultra in February 2014.  This year when I finally ran my first pain-free 50 yards at the end of January, I knew it was just the beginning.  I knew I'd found something I'd been looking for seemingly forever.  It was slow and it was short.  But it was also light, bouncy, easy, and pain-free.  Now all that I had to do was reproduce that enough times to cover an ultra-marthon I thought to myself.

I told my friend and he said, "whoa whoa, there's a lot between 50 yards and an ultra-marathon."  Of course I knew this but my mind was in a different place.  My mind was being led towards what I could do, a world without limitations.  I went slow at first.  I took every other day off to rest my feet.  I only increased my distance by 100 yards or so at a time.  But at some point, about 6 or 7 weeks into the transformation something clicked with my body and I started to run longer distances seemingly effortlessly.  My feet would get tired...they still do now, except I seem to be able to run every day now because I recover quickly.

I really come alive on the trails and in these mountains.

Much has changed.  I have no desire to compete for the sake of beating others or appearing superior in speed or endurance.  I just bounce over the earth giving thanks for the freedom of movement I enjoy.  I do like running events for the comradarie.  If it's a party, a celebration of life and the pursuit of happiness, I want to be there.  But gone are the days of comparing myself to others.  They are gone in all the areas of my life.

In this upcoming ultra I will celebrate my life.  I feel like I have come back from the dead.  There was an awful voice that told me it couldn't be done, not for me, I'd lost too many times.  But there is always a way for people who believe.  I had to step back from the noise and listen to my inner being.  It spoke softly, "strip away everything you don't need, trust your body, trust your instincts."  So that's what I did.   I stopped worrying about what everyone else was saying and just felt the answer come to me.

Change wasn't easy and yet I never doubted what I was doing.  Once I made my mind up to trust myself, it was the only voice I heard.  The old demeaning voice just melted away.  It was useless I understood now to question this.  My only hope to run happily again was to believe 100%, without a doubt that this was what I needed to do.  People stop me because they think I am running the trails in flip flops.  They think I am tough running barefoot or in thin sandals and somehow I can handle a lot of pain.  What they don't know is how much pain I went through before I ran barefoot.  I am running barefoot/in thin sandals precisely because I hate pain.  Now when I've seen the truth for myself, that the majority of us don't need anything fancy on our feet to be healthy or to perform, and in fact most modern shoes are a detriment to our health...it becomes very difficult for me to sit idle with the status quo of needing supportive shoes.  I realize now, the only reason I ever needed support was because I'd worn support for so long my feet had become abnormally weak and no longer could properly support my body weight.  People see my feet and they say, "well good for you but I could never do that."  It's the hardest thing for me to hear...have you even tried?

You should slap me in the face next time I say I can't do something that I've never tried.  Our thoughts are the beginining and end.  And I'm just going to keep going with what's been working, trusting my instincts.