I do most of my run training in the late afternoon or at night time, so signing up for Wild Horse at Night (a race at night, as you may have guessed even if you didn’t read my previous post on it) seemed perfect. Except I had all day to get nervous. That bit wasn’t so perfect.
When I get nervous I turn into a psychopathic b*tch. It’s unfortunate but true; My family suffers immensely.
I am sure there are plenty of you out there who really won’t understand why I might get nervous about a 16.5km trail run. I know that for many people, this is the equivalent of ‘a walk in the park’ and perhaps a ‘fun event’. Because the comments I got on the last post mostly used the word fun and even Grandpa said ‘it sounds exciting’ and that’s when I realised I was possibly alone in my fear of this event.
But don’t be too judgmental of my wimpiness – not only was this race the longest distance I’ve ever committed to running in my entire life, it was also my first outing on the trails since I was a schoolkid.
Just turning up at the start line was going to be a win for me. For some reason, 16.5km seemed like a much more imposing challenge than 14km had. Two hours of running (the time I expected to finish in) seemed like an almost impossible ask for my old-lady joints.
You may be asking why I even signed up for the event if I felt this way, but trust me when I say that the thought process when signing up for races goes something along the lines of ‘If I pay money to run it then I will deserve to complete it’. Zero logic or forethought is involved.
It got to the point yesterday where I had to tell myself that if I could just make it through to 4pm (when I could finally get changed and head off to Wild Horse Mountain car park, aka the start line) then I would have made it through the worst bit. Yes, overcoming the nervousness and just turning up actually became a bigger mental challenge than running for two hours through treacherous trails with snakes and rocks in the dark. Feel free to judge me for that.
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