Reading the signs (incorrectly, as it turns out)

This time in three weeks, I will (hopefully) be more than half-way through the 100k London2Brighton ultra marathon.  If I make it to the start line, it won't be for a lack of trying to sabotage my own efforts.  None of it has been deliberate, but an astute observer of behaviour (e.g. Ben, Adam, Bassman, Cathy, all of my colleagues in Shetland) might suspect that there has been an unconscious process at work that is designed to make me DNS this race.  Here's what has been happening in the past five weeks:

A combination of the Cough from Hell, a too-tight band on my sports bra, and a mobile phone in the wrong pocket of my hydration vest meant that I ended up with bruised ribs following the JMW ultra.  I couldn't take a deep breath without feeling like I was being stabbed so, not surprisingly, running hurt.  A lot.  I still can't lie flat or on my side, but as of last week I am able to breathe normally again whilst upright.  Hurrah!

Eleven days after the JMW Ultra, I whacked my left foot into a heavy plastic boot tray in the flat where I was staying in Shetland.  I had been hitting my foot into it all week and even said to myself at one point, 'You're going to break a toe on that if you're not careful!'  But did I think to move it to where it wasn't in the way?  I did not.  Did I break a toe?  Thankfully not, according to my x-ray, but the pain felt like every other broken toe that I've had and my poor toe was given a diagnosis of 'bruised and traumatised'.  I missed almost two weeks of running, and was convinced that L2B was not going to happen.  Three weeks and a bit on from the injury, it still hurts to walk in my bare feet but as long as I wear shoes with firm soles and keep my toe buddy-strapped to its neighbour, running is possible.  In fact, it hurts less to run than it does to walk and last weekend's 2 hours on Saturday and 3.5 hours on Sunday did it no harm. 

A week and a half after the toe injury, I whacked my traumatised toe into a piece of furniture at our friend Richard's house.  A day or so later, on the same piece of furniture, I did it a second time.  When we got back home, I managed to drop a torch, complete with batteries, onto my poorly toe.  Lots of pain, lots of tears, but my toe seems to have survived.

And just yesterday, I stepped into a patch of nettles with my bare right foot (don't even ask how this came to pass), leaving me with a rash and pain that's still there today, and then dropped my Kindle, pointed edge first, onto the top of the same bare right foot.  The bruise overlaps the nettle rash.  Lovely.  Just lovely.

Coming so close to not being able to start the L2B race made me realise how terrified I am of doing this.  There was a very large part of me that hoped that my rib pain and traumatised toe meant that I would have to pull out, and I was entirely okay with this.  Running (well, running/walking/shuffling/whingeing/crying) 100k seems utterly impossible and I didn't want to even try.  An injury would be the perfect excuse to stay in my comfort zone.

Cue Coach Ben.  After a particularly extensive whinge (me, not him) along the lines of 'I HATE EVERYTHING AND I QUIT,' he provided lots of encouragement but, more importantly, gave me a kick up the backside.  'Stop faffing and stop trying to find excuses.  You ARE going to do this so you need to commit to it and just get on with the running.'  Or something like that.  It was what I needed to hear and it bumped me out of my self-pitying mode.  While I am still terrified and still can't imagine how I will be able to keep going for 100k (and am still dropping things on my feet), I'm back to (kind of) looking forward to it and trying to remember to see it as a grand adventure.

It's been along time since I've done something that really scares me, and one of the reasons that I wanted to run 100k was to step outside of my comfort zone and really challenge myself again.  I just didn't appreciate how very very far outside of my comfort zone this was going to turn out to be!