Beyond the Blog Day 21 (May 18) - Coming To Jesus In The Woods
The morning ritual of trying to keep my toenails from falling off
Even now, two months after this day, the powerful experience of this day, and the raw emotions it unleashed, are as vivid as the moment it happened. I gave up. Just for a short time, but I gave up, and surrendered to the negativity and self-doubt that I had dammed up for the last three weeks.In my personal post of April 13, which I did not publish, I wrote this:
“I'm pretty good at showing confidence on the outside when I am in turmoil on the inside, so this is my admission that I am freaking out. I feel like I've done all the big training I could possibly have done, but is it enough? How do I know this can even be done? How will people react if I fail?”
These are terrible thoughts to have, of course, and as the Ruck kicked into high gear, I shoved the bad stuff down and moved forward. But physical and mental exhaustion broke down these barriers, and I suppose starting this day in a bad place meant a reckoning was bound to happen. As Matt commented in his notes for this day (and his video shows in painful detail...):
-Richard sleeps in and wakes up a little late...Rough morning, legs are tight and back hurts
-Start off with sandy trail run (park at gravesite)
I started the day in a very dark place..exhausted, sore, and non-verbal
The “sandy trail run” was in Bladen Lakes State Park, only a few miles from White Lake and Elizabethtown. I’ve done dozens of races in this area (both triathlons and trail runs) and know the terrain pretty well. In fact, I planned this deliberately when I mapped out the route so many months ago. But it wasn’t the terrain that was the immediate problem, it was my body...starting to break down from three weeks of marathon rucking. Everything hurt, from my shoulders to my back, from my legs to my destroyed toes, and when I set off this morning to trail run alone, I was in no shape to do so.
Consulting with Monty on the route through the park. I would have been lost without him.
The State Park is actually quite nice...very quiet, lots of lodgepole pine trees and brush, but also very sandy. The farther I got in, the sandier it got, until it was like running in the dunes. It was also getting very humid and uncomfortable. So with all this negativity coursing through me, it is no wonder that I got tangled up in my own legs and fell to the ground like a bag of rocks.
As I said in my blog post for this day, “As I lay there awkwardly sprawled in the sand, unhurt, staring up at the gray sky, tears of frustration welled in my eyes. My personal demons attacked without mercy, and the dam I had built over the last three weeks crumbled. I can't do this for another nine days. It hurts too much, and every day it gets a little worse. I'm going to let everybody down. I'm letting myself down. I have failed.” But when I think about that moment, it was as if I had to give up and empty myself completely, in order to renew. I couldn’t do this alone. So while I am uncomfortable talking about my own faith, I will say at this moment I gave myself up to God and asked for help. What do I do now, Lord? The answer, as I wrote, was simple. There wasn't any jolt of electricity or sudden revelation. It was just movement, in the right direction. Get up, son, and walk. Force your body to move. So I did, one plodding, sandy step in front of the other, headed down the trail to my friends who were waiting for me.
So that was my "Come to Jesus" moment in the woods. It was pretty intense, it was nothing I anticipated nor did it happen in some area that was particularly challenging, like the mountains. It was just me, alone, hot and miserable and sprawled out alone in the Eastern NC sand. What I took away from that moment, however, will stay with me forever.
More practically, I still had about 22 miles to ruck for that day. Emerging from the trail, I was so happy to see Monty and Matt with a chair set up for me. I didn’t share with them what had happened because I did not want them to worry, and in any case, I appeared fine (just drenched in sweat, as usual). Our plan for getting in miles today was to run around White Lake, which is about 7 miles. There are lots of sidewalks and pedestrian trails around the lake to accommodate the triathlons held there, and traffic was minimal, so it made for easy rucking. The heat, as always, was relentless at “White Bake”, as it's called by the triathlon community. In particular, there is a one-mile section that has a large white fence bordering the road. The fence amplifies and reflects the heat, so it feels like running in a microwave!
Once I got through the terrible part, the day began to turn around, running on familiar ground at White Lake
I did two full laps rucking around the lake, my mind in a much better place as I wandered through memories of races past, like the gas station on the corner where my friend Charlie almost passed out from heatstroke, or the long stretch of motels with no shade, thinking of my friends Dusty and Jody running with towels on their head. Or the lake itself, normally placid but one year we experienced whitecaps as we bobbed our way through tumultuous waters. Good times.
Once I had finished my laps around the lake, we had a nice picnic at the Subway near the lake...it was getting hotter by the minute, so after lunch we headed out to Lake Waccamaw, about 30 miles away, to ruck the trails around this beautiful state park. As we drove in, we noticed an unusual number of park ranger trucks driving around, and as it turned out, this was their annual alligator counting day. I know Monty wished he could have been chasing alligators with them, but duty called. Matt and I hiked out together on the Waccamaw River Pinewoods Trail, which ran several miles along the lake and then cut into the forest. It was really quiet and we were in no rush. We got in about 5 miles or so, and I still had 2-3 miles left, so we returned to the ranger station and I just rucked laps around a nature trail until I completed the requisite mileage, completely spent.
Walking the nature trail at Waccamaw State Park to get my final miles in
We had difficulty finding a hotel that was close to where we finished for the day, and settled on the Holiday Inn in Lumberton, where I typically stay for White Lake races. It’s the best hotel in the area. We checked in and Monty went out food shopping...I had a podcast interview that night with my friends the “Ultra Running Guys”, and after all of the emotions of the day, I just wanted to do the interview and go to bed. It actually turned out to be a great way to end the day...Jeremy and Jeff are really great guys and were really supportive of the venture, giving us lots of air time. It was fun talking to them and talking about the challenges and adventure of it all, and once again reminded me about how fortunate I was to be undertaking this voyage.
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