Last Updated on November 21, 2022 by Heather Hart, ACSM EP, CSCS
Truth be told, during the early morning drive to the start of the 2021 Last Chance 50K, I had no doubt in my mind that I would place in the top three overall females.
I had creeped ultrasignup.com the night before (you know we all do it), and saw that out of the 25 runners registered for the 50K distance , only four were female. Ultrasignup isn’t perfect, but you can easily take a peek at your competition’s race results history. And while certainly no finish is guaranteed until you actually cross the finish line, the stats were in my favor.
Not to mention, I’ve won 4 out of five of my last individual races…and placed third in the 5th.
Despite a subpar training season, things have been going well for me in the racing world this Fall, no doubt a direct result of my sobriety and ever improving health. And so, I looked forward to finishing off my 2021 season with one last trophy to my name.
But it didn’t happen. In fact, not only did I no place top three, I didn’t place at all. I didn’t even make it to the finish line of the 50K.
And yet…for me, it was still a win. _____________________________________________________________________
In 2019, at the 25K version of this very same race, I had one of the worst races (if not THE worst race) of my life. And, I have no one to blame for it but myself. The night before the race, sitting around a campfire with friends, I all too easily slugged down four beers. And not just beer, but 8%, 12 ounce, IPA’s that kicked my ass and left me happily drunk.
My favorite kind.
I’d like to say that this was a “haha, ooops!” type of story. You know, the kind of stupid mistake everyone makes once or twice in a lifetime, and continues to joke about it for years to come. In fact, in my blog post about it, I even said:
“This is the part where the peanut gallery condemns the runner (that’s me), saying things like ‘oh I would NEVER do that before a race…’ Yeah well, neither would I. Until this one time. We all make mistakes.”
But the honest truth is that this wasn’t the first time I drank too much the night before a race, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time either.
I will never, never place blame on anyone but myself for the choices I made. But I will also tell you that the ultramarathon community’s affinity for for frequent and regular consumption of alcohol made it really easy for me to hide my own drinking problems. To this day, I still have no idea if most people had any idea how much alcohol I drank on a regular, near daily basis. If anyone did, they certainly never spoke up (not that I expected anyone to.)
And so, I ran the 2019 Last Chance 25K with a raging hangover, hating myself for what I’d done (to myself), but also too ashamed to do anything but suck it up and push forward. And in a way, suffering through those 15 miles felt like the best punishment for my actions, even if it only hurt my body further.
Self-sabotage, then punishing myself with more self-destructive behavior, was something I had become an expert at.
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Fast forward to the 2021 Last Chance 50K.
To be honest, everything was going according to plan from the very start. I was cruising along at a nice, easy “not a 50K PR” pace and feeling just fine. I was fueling on schedule, drinking when I should, and in general, just enjoying one of the day. It was one of those gorgeous South Carolina December days where the temperatures creep into the high 60’s and the sun feels so good…something the Vermonter in me will never get used to.
The course was an out and back, 8.22 miles at the turnaround. 25K runners would run the course once, 50K, twice. I hit the turnaround with no issues.
I stared in awe at how gorgeous my favorite section – where the trail passes over Wadboo Creek – looked covered in fallen autumn leaves. The vibrant green of the Saw Palmetto against the orange and brown of the season was stunning.
I saved my friend Lionel from getting lost at least twice, both of us getting a good laugh over it. I was really enjoying the day…
…until suddenly, I wasn’t.
In a typical “hitting the wall” race moment, I went from feeling great to feeling less than stellar almost immediately. I’m feeling far more tired than I should, and I’m instantly ware of how my face was starting to ache.
In case you missed my public social media over-shares this past week, I had a MOHS procedure on my face to remove a Basal Cell Carcinoma (yep, skin cancer). Because of the location (my upper lip) the reconstructive portion of the surgery was pretty rough, and I spent a solid 7 days with 1.5 inches worth of stitches running from my nose down to my lip, and down through the inside of my lip as well.
I was a good patient, and heeded to the doctors orders to do absolutely nothing that first week. I was advised even against “yard work” or anything that would get my blood pressure up, as it would potentially tear at the dozens of stitches placed four layers deep in my face. I truly did behave.
And when I had my follow up appointment a week later, I was, in fact, given the clear to race, with a promise that I would “listen to my body” and stop if anything felt wrong.
Ha.
Here’s a public service announcement from me, to you, in case you weren’t already aware: don’t ever tell an ultrarunner to “listen to their body”.
For they will not, in any way, actually listen to their body. And it’s not even that we are being outwardly defiant, but rather, that we have turned ignoring the part of our brain trying to tell us that something is wrong into a skill. An art form, even, one that can lead to sport specific success.
Because if we listened to our bodies, we’d never make it to the finish lines of distances like 100 miles. Our bodies spend the last 40 or so miles of those races not just trying to alert us that something is wrong, but sometimes downright SCREAMING that they are not designed to be doing what we are pushing them to do, and we really should STOP before something goes horribly wrong.
But we don’t listen. We don’t stop.
And that’s a small part of what makes these accomplishments so rewarding- we are capable of doing what so many others can’t. Of pushing through hard things, when every ounce of our being is screaming at us to stop.
And in an odd sort of way, mastering this skill feels powerful.
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As I ran down the trail, I noticed my heart rate was skyrocketing. I stopped to walk, to see if it would come back down. It didn’t.
Naturally, I doubted my watch, so I took it off, wiped the optical heart rate sensor off on my shorts, and put it back on my wrist. I watched as the heart rate reading jumped around a bit, but ultimately again settled at a reading much higher than it should be. I took my index and middle finger up to my neck to manually check my pulse, and felt my carotid artery pounding furiously.
Fuck. My watch was right. My body wasn’t happy.
But my first thought wasn’t that perhaps I should stop while I’m ahead, I should heed to the warning signs my body was giving me.
No.
My first thought was “this will probably get better if I just keep going. You’ve got to get yourself that top three finish. Suck it up and keep going.”
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For the past ten years, I have lived in an echo chamber of (mostly) my own creation.
One where I tell myself that I am stronger than all of the things that have hurt me.
One where I believed that suffering in the sport of running made me “feel alive” and “good” in a world full of bad things.
And to an extent, it does make me feel alive, and I will always love to run ridiculously long distances for that reason. But the other part – reality it took me a long time to understand- is that this forced suffering was also a coping mechanism to further ignore all of the pain and anger I had stuffed so far deep down inside myself, I no longer even recognized it existed.
And this was fueled by a community with an unspoken understanding that pushing through at all costs is to be celebrated. Hell, I finished my first 100 miler with an umbilical hernia the size of a small orange poking out of my abdomen, and people still tell me that was “badass”.
The more I conquered “hard things” in the athletic world, the more power and control I felt I had over everything else that ailed me. I’m sure to many of you, that makes zero sense. But I’d be willing to be just as many of you are nodding your heads, all too familiar with what I’m talking about.
It’s taken me a lot of hard work (and money spent on therapy, if we’re being honest) to not only get to the point of recognizing that the sport of running was quite literally helping me run from my problems, but that I was perpetually harming myself further in doing so.
It’s also taken me a lot of hard work to understand that I can still absolutely love and participate in this sport in a much healthier way. The way so many other people do. Please don’t get me wrong, I do not at all mean to insinuate that our sport is full of hurt people running from their problems. It isn’t. But there is no denying that there are plenty of us who do. And learning to have a healthier relationship with the sport? It takes a lot of unlearning.
Old habits are hard to break though, so when everything in my body was screaming at me to stop running, my gut instinct was to push through, no matter what. This is what I do best: acknowledge the physical pain, and then tell it to shut the hell up.
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I start running again.
I only had about two tenths of a mile until the start/finish anyway. I could regroup for a minute before heading back out for lap #2. Everything would be fine.
Immediately, as if being hit with an unexcepted slap to the face, my mind flashed to a conversation I had with a client just the day before.
You see, part of my job as a coach is giving tough love.
It’s not my favorite thing to do, but the truth is, I care about my clients as more than just runners. I care about them as humans too. And so while I never step out of my scope of practice, sometimes I have to say hard things that I feel need to be said.
Yesterday a client confessed to me that the idea of rest days make them uncomfortable, because there is such a direct tie with their mental health and running every single day. In short, this client said they were willing to risk the physical detriment of not resting in exchange for the mental health boost running gives them.
This is not the first time I’ve heard a runner say something similar. Hell, I’ve not only said the same thing myself in the past, but have clearly demonstrated it with my track record of quite literally running my body to the point that parts of it would literally fail. More than once.
I responded to the client:
“From a personal point of view, I 100% get it. Running and my own mental health are closely linked. As a coach (and hopefully without overstepping my boundaries here), in these instances I definitely encourage clients to dig deep and really think about the statement ‘willing to take physical detriment in exchange for psychological benefit’ . This is common in the running world, because we seem to justify running as a “good thing” (it’s not alcohol or drugs, after all), but anything we do that causes physical detriment as a way of coping with mental health issues, at the end of the day, isn’t healthy. “
Right then, my own words came crashing down on me.
Here I am, ten days after an operation that while not major, certainly wasn’t nothing either. Hell, just three days prior my lips were so swollen and inflamed, a sign that my body was fighting hard to heal, that one of our front gate security men shyly admitted he wondered if I had gotten Botox.
My body, one that I have abused over and over and over for the last decade in the name of sport, one that I have repeatedly demonstrated that I will not listen to, is still trying to speak to me.
And damnit, maybe this time, I should listen.
The thought crosses my mind at the exact same moment that the start/finish line pops into view. The same moment that I see the 1st place 50K female is just steps ahead of me.
As I cross the line, and race director Chad punches by bib number into his iPad, my friend Carl simultaneously asks me what I need before heading out on my second lap.
“What I need…I think…is to be done. I’m done.”
I speak the words without giving myself a second chance to think about it. Without giving myself a second chance to talk myself out of it. I immediately start rambling to Chad and Carl about my heart rate and how my face is starting to ache, and that I promised myself I would listen to my body. I’m not sure why I feel the need to justify my decision to them, but as I suddenly feel myself choke back an unexpected tear, I realize I’m not rambling to justify this decision to anyone other than myself.
Chad – the race director who is notoriously a hard-ass about not letting people drop down in distance mid races – cuts me off by reaching into his pocket and handing me a finishers coin, telling me he’s giving me a 25K time.
I take a deep breath, accept the coin, and feel incredibly grateful to be here, in this moment, with people who support me. And instead of feeling sad, I feel accomplished.
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Today (the day after the DNF) I am 100 days sober.
I am at 100 days of admitting that just because I am strong enough to run 100 milers and do other physically hard stuff, doesn’t mean I am strong enough to not need help in fighting what was trying to destroy me.
I am 100 days in to the journey of finally asking for help.
And I’m 100 days healthier – physically and mentally – than I ever dreamed possible.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that at times, all of this is still very scary. It’s scary to let down the guard of the hard-ass exterior you’ve so carefully built and fortified, the one you built to try and hide your demons not only from others, but to also fool yourself into believing you had then under control.
It’s hard work, harder than any race or physical task ever could be.
But one of the things my therapist often reminds me of is that she looks for concrete evidence as proof of healing. People can talk the talk all day long, and regurgitate the things they’ve heard and read as proof of improving their mental health. But what actions are they taking to demonstrate they truly are on a path of healing?
Heather of 100 days ago would have finished that race. Whether or not I would have taken home a top three finishers title doesn’t even matter. I would have let those inner demons convince me that I had something to prove, and come hell or highwater…or compromised health…I would have done it, damnit.
Because pushing through? Many would have perceived that to be the “hard thing”, but truth be told, for me, that would have been the easy choice. Even though it was the wrong choice.
As I sit here, trying to come up with some inspiring conclusion to this post, I realize I don’t have one. This journey, for me, is far from over, and I definitely do not have all the answers. So I guess I’ll just say this:
Sometimes, what you may initially perceive to be a loss, truly is the win you didn’t know you needed. And, instead of celebrating the fact that you are continuously slaying demons, perhaps there’s value in really stopping to see why the demons are still kicking around, always looking for a fight.
It’s scary as hell. But it’s worth it.
Heather Hart is an ACSM certified Exercise Physiologist, NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), UESCA certified Ultrarunning Coach, RRCA certified Running Coach, co-founder of Hart Strength and Endurance Coaching, and creator of this site, Relentless Forward Commotion. She is a mom of two teen boys, and has been running and racing distances of 5K to 100+ miles for over a decade. Heather has been writing and encouraging others to find a love for fitness and movement since 2009.
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