Mud Wrestling with Raspberry Bushes

The after-effects of mud wrestling while running. Those shoes were green when I started!

Today's 50k was the first race with the new "Do what you can" motto. The first race in my year of going after it and not making excuses.

I definitely had my work cut out for me.


Ten miles in I was already tired. The usual tricks to keep my brain from realizing this did not work. So I was faced with 21 miles of running while the negative voices in my head tried to tell me to quit. Thankfully the positive voices in my head are stubborn and refuse to let me quit unless I'm risking hypothermia, crapping my intestines out on the trail, passed out cold... You get the drift. Fortunately none of those things happened today, which meant I did what I could in the moment. Or moments -all 1,200 of them it took to finish.

Days like this, when the body doesn't quite work how we'd planned, are never easy. They are, however, great for character building. They are they days we recall during tough times and say, "I did that so I can do this too."

Now if I could just get these feet clean....