So, I haven’t blogged in a while, I’ve journaled but, to be quite honest, those notes are a gigantic, cringe-worthy, mind dump, and often make next to no sense! Honestly you’d probably have me sectioned…

But I really do want to keep up the blog because it forces me to actually get my thoughts in order, something that seems to be surprisingly difficult of late. So, firstly a catch up post Challenge No 1!

In short it went swimmingly and I enjoyed it immensely. I hadn’t been on snow in years (my body can attest to that) but cross country skiing is still by far my favourite sport in the whole world and even just being in the mountains in some sunshine was such an amazing (and sorely needed) change. My mum came too which was fabulous. Having another person to share the logistics with is honestly amazing (and seriously reduces stress). But she was also hilarious. The list of comedic fails was endless, for example: getting in the wrong side of our German hire car to drive (and not noticing for several minutes), her inability to use a capsule coffee machine, trying to charge her phone with my (very obvious) laptop charger, and, funniest but most dangerous of all, driving on the left (multiple times I might add). “On the right! On the right!” became our weekend catch phrase…. Thankfully I know she enjoyed herself too and didn’t mind me taking the mick, mostly (and providing I didn’t blame it on her age…). A definite side bonus to the first challenge was that I got to spend this quality time with the ‘big M’. It was also lovely to hear her reminisce about her visit to Bavaria 30 years ago, when she was serving as a military nurse. This felt quite fitting and reminded me that my parents too are military veterans.

The race itself was shortened due to snow conditions and, at first, this annoyed and worried me as I thought less than 50km wouldn’t be perceived as hard enough. But funnily enough, at the 40km mark, I was totally fine with that! My body generally felt OK, but I started way too fast (thanks ego) and about 15km in my back injury from the 20 mile canoe session the weekend before started kicking in (injury from combined training load is a risk I face for the whole year). I was concerned to begin with but I kept scanning my body for injuries and decided that, although I hurt in a few places, they were all recoverable and wouldn’t cause lasting damage. It did, however, make me wonder if I would consider pulling out to prevent injury, or if the pressure and my ego would take over. That would be stupid, I know, but I’m not certain I would make the right choice, which was an interesting revelation. 

In many regards this race was easier than the ‘test’ ultra-marathon that I did last year as there’s nowhere near as much altitude or impact on the body, but xc skiing requires more than just robustness, you need skill, technique and A LOT of balance (despite which I still stacked it a couple of times!). And yet I kept questioning whether I was enjoying it too much, if it should have been harder in order to get more people to donate. I know this is crazy but rather than just enjoy the event I worried about this a hell of a lot. Post event I voiced these worries to my coach and he promptly (cognitively) slapped me about a bit, gave me a high performance shake up and rightly reminded me that this is 1 of 12 mental challenges! He also reminded me that if I don’t enjoy some of this then why the hell do it?! I know there will be harder challenges and easier challenges. Some will require more mental grit than physical strength and vice versa. Some will require many more long nights of planning than others. However you look at this, it is a huge project and that 45km I completed (with no ski training I might add) is just a slice of the effort I’m putting in. Safe to say it was a good chat.

The only other reflection/issue I will add is that I did notice that I started to get addicted to the social media side of the challenge; making sure I was taking photos, creating videos, managing content. It was definitely an added burden but, more worryingly, it became very habitual to check for new likes or followers. For me this equalled donations, which equalled success, but it started to melt my brain a little. In fact, I felt a bit underwhelmed in the 24 hours following the race and this was definitely because I felt that the energy I had put in (logistics/ planning/ marketing – never mind the skiing) was disproportionate to the donations we ultimately received (obviously extremely grateful for those we did get!). This is a bad way to think about it and, when I eventually noticed myself thinking this, I recalled a story that my coach told me: one about another fundraising adventurer who couldn’t enjoy his summit of Mount Everest because he didn’t reach his fundraising goal. Which is totally mental! What a shame to have put so much energy in and yet feel like you have failed. I vow not to feel like that. I must make sure that, even if I raise a tenth of the fundraising goal, I will be happy with my efforts. I will enjoy this journey (well maybe minus the blisters).

On to the next challenge!