The day I stopped running from my pain and my fears - Transitions

I love when folks psychoanalyze me.  Or at least try.  It entertains me.  

I've gone through several phases in my run journey.  

• The beginning: when running was all about getting healthy.  

• The need: when running became an escape from the trials of my life.  

• The transition:  when I discovered the joy and the freedom of running.  This is the story that you're here for today and that's the one we'll focus on.

But there's a little context that's required.  During the "need" phase, I was going through a very tough time in my life.  Emotionally, mentally, physically.  You get the picture.  Running was my escape.  My literal run from the craziness of the time, little did I know life could get crazier.  

I had survived my first and second marathons the year before.  I had signed up for my third.  I was in a rut.  I felt lost.  Half Marathons / races, the few that I did at the time provided brief relief.  I needed training.  I was undisciplined, unmotivated, and lacked proper training at the time and required organized runs to get my long runs in.

It was this need to have organization around me that got me on the half marathon running circuit.  I figured if I run as many half marathons as possible between then and the San Diego marathon, I would be better prepared to actually run a marathon than simply finish one.  

This is where this story begins.  

I needed a race.  I found one nearby.  The Aravaipa Trail White Tank Half Marathon.  I was excited.  It would be my sixth half marathon.  There was one thing that was different about this one.  It was a "trail run."  I had become mentally adept at the half distance.  Besides, how different can a trail run be from a road run?  

Up until this point, all my runs had been on roads.  Don't get me wrong, I had done some running on dirt paths, that I thought were trails.  Little did I know my definition of trails and actual trails were two different definitions.  

White Tank in the title of the run, refers to the mountains where the trails exist.  Got up early,  arrived in time to see these people who were going out for a 50K?  WTF is that?  And the folks that were doing the 50 miler that day were already out.  

I noticed the differences almost immediately from traditional road races.  The crowd was immensely smaller and intimate.  People were relaxed.  Laid back and it felt like I was amongst family.  

There was actual food at the start / finish aid station.  There was a pizza company setting up to prepare free pizza for the crazy folks that dared to run farther than a marathon distance.  

This would be the day I learned what the term "ultra-marathon" meant.  

Still I was here for the 13.1 miles.  I didn't look at a map or sorts before beginning.  I made a lot of assumptions and assumptions would later become my sen sei.  

Took a photo that would become my Facebook profile for a long time thereafter, not knowing the mountain in the background would be traversed.  

Before long it was time to venture out.  There was a count down.  A horn.  And we ventured off.  I settled into a pace that I thought I could keep for the distance.  Joined a "pack" for added motivation.  

We ran along the wash and the base of the mountain for a couple of miles.  Edging ever so closer with every step.  I remember thinking this is awesome to be so close to something so majestic.  I also remember trying to figure out how we would loop out and back around the base of the mountain.  

The pack I had joined stopped at an aid station, and it's here where I noticed there was movement in the mountain.  I initially assumed before my eyes and brain could catch up with reality, the movement was attributed to animals.  But NOPE!  Those are people!  "Are we going up there?"  I silently quivered to myself while maintaining my cool and composure to those around me.  

Yes you are.  You are going up there.  And up there is up White Tank mountain and over it and back up and over to the finish.

The climb was brutal.  But I got to actually "know" the folks in my pack.  Stories were being shared.  A mid 50 year old was training a 20 year old!  Jennifer, was visiting town and needed to get a run in while her boyfriend was out golfing.

Then there was the view.  The view of the valley to the east I had never seen before.  I would have never come up here on my own accord.  I was caught in a moment of pure elation of the wonders of nature.

My perceived problems were catapulted aside, as I gave into the beauty of this new discovery.  A new view of the place I called home.  All while my body, despite the pain (physical and emotional), felt alive!

Then we crested White Tank and there was this view of the "back-county".  We descended quickly into the wash.  I whipped out the phone and took photos.  My heart aflutter.

I got separated from my pack, because I wanted to preserve and enjoy this moment I was experiencing.

The climb back up the back side of White Tank was challenging.  I found myself alone.  The terrain was difficult.  I could see the crew I started with in the hills above.  There were sections that had extreme drop offs.  I definitely would not have done this on my own accord.

The temperature climbed and I began to think about my safety.  How much fluids I had left in my pack.  Don't do anything stupid as I don't know how long I would be by myself before someone found me if I injured myself by falling on these rocks.

The environment cut to the core of what's really important.  There was a survival kick and frantic enjoyable fear within.

During this alone time, I processed so many thoughts that I had fled from in the past.  Realities I thought were too cruel to face.  I began to face my fears, my angers, my anxieties.  Not all of them.  But this is where I learned not to run from them.

And during this deep self analysis I heard the sounds of impacts on the ground.  Was this an animal?  By time I turned around, I was able to spot the ultra-runner who was leading the 50 mile pack fly by like a cheetah chasing the course as his prey.  Before long, another.  The lead female would fly by.

They all had something in common.  They each cheered me on.  Provided encouragement, ever so briefly.

What is going on here?

It was this time, I crested the mountain and saw my decent back to the aid station I visited earlier.  The decent was worse than the accent.  Who knew going downhill was even more physically demanding than going uphill.

Needless to say almost four hours later, totally exhausted, in pain, dehydrated, dirty, I finished.  Or should I say survived.  Yet I had found something that I had been missing for some time.  A part of myself.  I had found balance.  I had found something that brings me happiness despite myself surroundings and it wasn't taking from me, like running on the road had been doing (another story - prequel).

The pack I had lost earlier was also there waiting strangely enough.  To this I had also found a community of crazy folks who also had stories of life crazy journey that trail running helped them to face instead of run away from.

My father would die within a couple of weeks from brain cancer.  I often wonder how fvcked up I would be in the head if I didn't find love in the back country on this day of March 14, 2015.

All I know is it was on this very run that running stop becoming something that I endured and became something I loved.  This was my transition from feeling like I had to run, to I get to run.  The day I transitioned into my journey into ultra-running.

...and now I face my first 100 miler later this year with trepidation and a smile.