Mental toughness – Page 16 – My Outdoor Living Room

For me, as for pretty much everyone, this summer has not been normal. The strangest things I found were things like the complete inability to just jump in the car, and go and visit somewhere. Having that spark of imagination, or memory and saying, “Let’s go there”, as, in my area anyway, most places had booking systems. Furthermore, when it was possible to go somewhere, I was finding them more packed to the rafters with other tourists than normal, so things were pretty strange. I did get a good mountain walking day in over south Wales on midweek day, but it had to be an early start, which I have never minded.

On my previous post, I mentioned losing momentum over the summer, and lacked motivation. My way of dealing with this was to take a week off running. After returning to it, a couple of weeks later, I realised I’d been running on 6 consecutive days. Competitive drive activated. I thought, “Why not go 50 days running every single day?”, so that’s what I did. One of these runs was a few miles along the Worcestershire Way long distance footpath, which runs for 30 miles north to south, or vice versa of course. I have completed an organised ultra marathon along most of the path on two occasions. The light bulb of adventure pinged on and I decided to attempt to run the whole thing. A couple of weeks later, I decided to run it in both directions, in one go. 60 odd miles (or 100km, as that sounds more impressive).

I have lived in Worcestershire for my entire life, except for four agonising months when I lived in Warwickshire. The shame. In all those years, it’s amazing how little of the county I have seen and how little I know, although I probably know more than some. During the training for my solo ultra marathon, I covered miles and miles that I’ve never seen, passed through towns, villages, orchards, woodland and valleys completely new to my eyes and feet. One hidden gem was a valley that was home to a self-sufficient community, living in shepherd huts and cabins. Almost like a hidden oasis. There were steep climbs that were tackled practically on my hands and knees. While it made me wonder at my home county, it made me curious about firstly the other hundreds of places like it also in my county still to visit, as well as neighbouring counties and the rest of the country while I was as it. It’s things like that that make you realise how short our time is, and how busy we are. How many Saturdays to see all of Worcestershire? Don’t even get me started on all the books I need to read (or should read), films I need to see or albums I need to listen to. Next time someone says, “Life is short” – agree with them, cos it bloody is!

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the run, but in a nutshell, I ran out of gas/daylight at 41 miles. Not the hallowed 60 that I had dreamt of. There was a pub at 41 miles that was too good to resist. It happened to be right at the bottom of a steep bloody hill too, so perfectly placed. I’m very pleased I did it, and it was just what I needed for motivation.

As I write, I am planning the next one, in a week’s time. Another local long distance footpath, more to discover. This desire to complete things in their entirety has been with me for years. When I was younger, I cycled a little bit of the A38 road through my home town, and wondered what it would be like to cycle the whole thing. I got home and did the research for an hour or so (pre-internet days), until I was talked out of it by my parents, with their many what if questions and parental concerns. Seven years later, they watched as I cycled the length of the UK. I’d regularly run a section of my local canal, and in 2011, I ran the whole 32 miles of it. That mentality still exists. I don’t know if I’d call it adventure, stubbornness, stupidity or what, but you can bet your life, if there’s a trail, famed road or river, someone, somewhere will have at least thought about traveling it in its entirety in one fashion or another. That quizzical curiosity of what lies past the end of your street. What is beyond that hill? Then what? Then what again. And again. In old days, people didn’t have the need to do it unless it was for trade, and besides, they were probably terrified of falling off the edge of the world. Toppling off the edge of the world is fine with me.

Active resting. A contradiction in terms. How can you actively rest? Or indeed, rest in an active fashion? This is a term I have only seen splashed around lately. It seems it actually means something different to what I thought/hoped it meant.

From my running exploits over the years, I have learned many things, and terms for different training activities. It happened gradually, from just going out for a ‘run’ and seeing how it went, to having a structured training plan. I used to believe that in order to run better, I needed to run more, and as fast and as hard as possible every time I went out. After a few years and a fair bit of experience, I realised this was not the case, and I needed to have regular rest days and days that are easy runs, at a much slower pace. From my internet research, I can assume these easy days are what are now being called active resting. The act of running, but very slowly compared to your normal pace, allowing your presumably tired muscles to recover. Makes sense.

Here’s what I thought it might mean. Stay with me. I related to it because the phrase resonated with me as something I consider myself to do. I thought it might mean going outdoors for a possibly strenuous walk in the mountains, or anywhere, that whilst being taxing physically is actually resting your mind and, in the long run, providing relaxation. I may be completely wrong, but I like mine better. I do prefer to get up early on days off and distance myself from stresses and strains of every day life – resting. Not being one to lounge around in bed, this is how I choose to be alive.

In relation to the aforementioned resting, I have just (as of yesterday), reached the end of a 50 day running streak, that is, 50 days of consecutive running. It wasn’t structured, and most of my runs were active rests really, but I enjoyed it and effectively out-ran some niggling injuries that had been getting me down since June, as well as shifting a few extra pounds I had gained from being housebound and greedy. The feeling of being overweight, though only by a few pounds, coupled with pain when running and a distinct lack of motivation pushed me to taking a week off and seriously consider whether running was still something I wanted to continue doing. So I picked it up again, created a couple of challenges for myself and allowed them to keep me focused, driven and motivated. Thinking lockdown and working from home would only last a month at most back in March, I made the most of every day, running, workouts in the garden, push up challenges, just being in the garden; but as time went on and various issues niggled at me, I lost my drive, purpose and motivation. Luckily I seem to have recovered some, if not all of it. In the midst of it, I wildcamped and also managed a pretty rewarding day in my favourite part of South Wales.

So, fingers crossed, I’ll bore you stupid with one of my stories from one of my adventures next time, as I haven’t done it yet. Stand by.