Race thoughts, life plateaus, unanswered questions, thinking like a dig

I've had trouble thinking about how to come to terms with myself about my race day performance at my race at this past weekend. And strangely, sitting in the park watching my mom's dog (which I'm dogsitting for a week) and pondering some deep chats from earlier in the day seems to have gotten my head properly wrapped around it.

My current life philosophy has me to the point where my life goal is currently to be "happy and content like a dog". Tonight, after work I'm sitting in Ben Lee Park near the tail end of walking my moms dog, watching him wander around contented as possible, tail as high as it could get, no concerns in the world. Just ten minutes prior, I'd walked past an older guy walking his dog, a kodiak I think, on a leash and he says to me to call my dog back. I said something like "no worries, my dog won't hurt a soul and wouldn't fight back, he's as happy as can be". And sure enough, the other dog barks and bites at my moms dog, and my moms dog just runs away with his tail wagging, no big deal. He's happy and nothing can take that away. And I realise (EPIPHANY!) that this mental thought process is what I've been trying to get to for the last couple years. Well, this really isn't much pf an epiphany as I'm well aware of this, perhaps it felt like an epiphany for realizing that I'm now at that point.

In 2010 I used the motivation of training for the Death Race as a way to move beyond a horribly failed almost decade long relationship and a way to try to keep myself on a positive path, to stay out of trouble. It worked. But when the training stopped I fell back into old habits. Hard. Real hard. Working and running in 2011 I came to the realisation that for me to get past old life habits, and to maintain that I needed to maintain a running regiment that was very focused. And it worked. Even if it isn't necesarrily true, I view myself as a negative, 'bad', person, and I go through a daily effort to counter the habits instilled in me by my parents growing up. The efforts required to maintain a training program to get there (to a race I mean), the journey itself, seems to provide me with the tools that I need to transfer to the rest of my life to improve myself from what I perceive to be a not good person.

I overthink things, and take things too far in terms of my desire to 'fix myself' in this regard and think I need to become some sort of perfect before I go try and move beyond a certain plateau pf life improvement. For example, I've been single for three years because I feel I can't go looking to share my time with someone until I've 'fixed' myself.

Anyway. The end of my school year (2010-11) I was suspended from university for having a recieved a 'failed year record", basically a technical way of saying that I failed more courses than I passed. The reason? After falling out of training from my 6 month long crescendo of training for the death race I slowly fell hard back into old habits. Even though in 2011 I still managed to carry myself through finishing three ultras that year, I was into some bad habits. Most of that school year I was taking psychadelics on a daily basis, even while at school while working in a chemistry laboratory. Yeah, I got a couple A+ grades in the courses that interested and came natural to me, but failed the rest and thus received a 'failed year standing' and was told that I must take a whole year leave from school. This academic result came two months after me realizing that I was messing up bad and needed a change. I finally dragged myself to AA meetings and did that for 87 days in a row and intensified my previous sessions with the counsellor at school (drug and alcohol consellor I had seen on occasion regarding relationship issues in the past). And like my constant journey of changing myself from the person I felt I was to whatever the person I felt I wanted to become, I continued in my style of a couple steps forward, a step back, a couple steps forward... repeat etc. Except the last couple months had been a couple extra steps back, followed by a more intense effort to take a few giant steps forward.

When I recieved my email from the university saying I was to not attend university for a year I was okay with that. I looked at it as an opportunity to achieve a certain level of 'fix' to myself and then maintain a plateau of that work on myself. Except that didn't last. Working at the golf course (which I really enjoy most days as its very professional) I was abble to distract myself, it was good. But I was laid off at the end of October 2011 and ended up working five different jobs at restaurants that were just horrible. Quickly my illusions of reverting to advancing myself in the culinary world were shattered as I realized my summer job at the gold course was one of the few restaurants in town that was good to work at. Quickly I soured on the culinary world. Yet, I had maintained a clean lifestyle, no drugs in 2011, and since dropping alcohol from my life I maintained that. I acted quickly and re-acquainted myself with the counsellor at the university and wrote a fantastic letter to the dean of science at the university explaining my life situation and the challenges I felt I had overcome and exaplined I was a changed man and asked for my suspension from school to be reconsidered and to be let in early, I was totally over my time away from school and wanted to get that done and move on with my life. They let me back in, and in novembet I found out. At the same time I found out about the running group that I have been running with since the beginning of the year. Things were looking up. I felt good. But... I knew I needed motivation to achieve my goals at university. At the time I didn't realise it, but I think looking back at my success at the death race, and the coupled 'fixing' of self that is my constant life goal, was because of the consistency provided from running. I knew that I needed running back in my life in a much more consistent way to help me achieve my goals at school.

So I ran. And I've run a lot, I set lofty goals, and in my head self talked myself up. Motivated to the max, I needed it. May 15 and I'm already at 1450 km for the year. I've never run more than 2050 km in a year. Idle hands are the devils playground for me. I know this. For me my running goals, even though I tell myself they are, aren't running goals, they are life goals to help me achieve the level of progress I want in myself.

It's worked for me. Yes I'm a better runner, but the main life goal thus far into the year has been finishing my degree. I've done what I needed at school every day to do it. And so the thing is, the thing that drives me to run, has been done. At a meeting at my running group at the beginning of the year we were asked the goals for the year. I believe my answer was something about "being consistent" unsaid to even myself was that I wanted to be consistent in regards to how I act as a good person. The work dput into running, has me to a much better level of that than I have been before, I"m happy with that, It's got me to a point where I successfully got school done.

The last couple weeks before the Elk beaver 100 km race I was very nervous about school. At the beginning of the semester I had a meeting with the professor within the chemistry department in regards to double checking that I had met all my degree requirements. I only needed two courses to finish. I signed up for three courses, and knew that I only needed two to get my degree. And, I hated one of my profs. So without checking with the prof I switched courses and forgot about it. Until I had done my exams and was suddenly scared shitless about no longer meeting the degree requirements. Daily I checked the university website to see if my graduation application status had been changed to 'application approved". And I waited, and still kept training and running. And waited.

A week before the race I checked again. And it said "graduation approved".

YES!

I had acchieved my goal. The goal that I took two years too long to achieve, that I had lost relationships and friends through a course of revisiting drugs and alcohol that I wish I hadn't done so. But I had done it, and mostly through the realisation that running is the tool that took me to the place that made me able to do it. And suddenly, within a day (and a week of my 100 km race) I was totally de-motivated to race.

I had achieved the main life goal. And the journey of running took me there. I had already reached the finish line. I didn't know it at the time, and it's taken a few days of hard thought to get there, but I instantly lost motivation to race that race as I had already won. The motivation of the race, and the journey of the training, was the tool I needed to do what I really wanted.

So on the day of the race. When the going got tough, and the pain started to come that I knew would come because it's a long race and that sort of pain will come, and I knew that I could finish by pushing through that world and accepting that I would live in a world of self destruction to do so. I gave up. I quit. I stopped.

Nothing left. And I was completely okay with it. I know other runners who have DNF'd, and have read race reports of others that have done it and I expected it to feel so different. But I couldn't be any happier about DNFing. I smiled, and I was done. I finished the race I really needed to finish and that was good enough. Maybe a little silly that I needed to take a ferry ride and drive for a day and run four and a half hours to figure that out, but it was a great trip with the family, so that's okay.

Looking forward, I really don't know what to make of these thoughts. I feel like I'm satisfied with the time I've spent at this life plateau and it's time to get on with crescendo'ing upwards again.

At work today I had an extended discussion with a co-worker abouut things. About, not drinking and stuff, and I was saying stuff along the lines of me being hesitant to go after certain things in life because of the way I perceived myself. To which the response that I guess the way I am perceived at work by the way I act is much better than the way I perceive myself, so maybe the efforts and bettering myself are working, and it's time to step off the plateau.

What this has to do with running? I feel like my running adventures have been with the goal in the back of my head to "prove something". Not necesarily to anyone, but maybe just to myself. But, with feeling like I've reached a level where I want to be I don't feel a need to prove anything. So I'm not sure where I want to take that thought in regards running.

I very much enjoyed my journey thus far in the year of running; but I feel like the ratio of training to running up and down mountains for fun is a little off. I needed to register for the races I did to use them as a tool to keep myself motivated to achieve my non-running goals. But now, I don't think I really need or want to run three 100 km or greater races within a three month period. It's too much 'work' and not enough time to fuck around running in the areas I want, too regimented. I still know I want something to keep me 'future focused to race for. But I think I will change my schedule from: 146 km trail in early july, 195 km trail early august and 100 km road in mid sept to instead a schedule of 146 km trail in early july and a short 54 km trail in early sept.

I feel like I am ready to transition my running from being something I need to do in order to maintain the person I want to be and to use as a tool to achieve other goals; into something more fun based.

Where this will take me, not sure. Definitely an unanswered question on that way. But running like a contented dog is good for now, and having that take me where it does in my next race is just fine.

Interesting side note; I think in the last few months I've barely written a single deep thought on my running blog, just no side thoughts.