I stared at the email in disbelief. My heart raced seemingly as fast as it had just a few hours ago when I did my threshold interval session. The message was simple, but its impact was profound: “We are thrilled to announce that you have been selected for the CCC.” I had secured a coveted […]
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I woke up before my alarm around 03:00 am. I had hours until the start of the race. I had my nutrition ready, my race bib collected, and my brand-new running kit laid out on the small hotel room table. Everything was in place for my first race of the season. I had looked forward
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I signed up for the race on a whim. Having missed the start of my first race of the year – the Schwerin Seen Trail 61K at the end of March- (because I was stuck in the hotel room with severe gut distress), I wanted to get at least one training race in before my
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My mind felt empty as I climbed the steep hill around 2 am. It was a warm night; the bright moon and star-filled sky provided enough light to see without a headlamp. A sense of calm and peace washed over me as I moved my exhausted body around another loop on the motocross track, accompanied
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“You will not give up again,” I told myself. “Stop calculating. Just keep running.” I took a sip of water and trudged forward in the dark forest. “Just until the next checkpoint. Then you can take a break.” I wondered if they had coffee. Halfway through my first 100-mile race, I was on the verge
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I already know what would happen if I were out there: the giggles as I run to the high jump bar, the burning shame as I kick it, the disappointed sigh of the PE teacher as she writes another failure in her notebook. So I sit on the hard wooden bench instead, my gym clothes
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Disappointment and anger rose to new heights as I typed out the email. I had prepared for months and invested in new clothes, a backpack, and poles. I learned how to navigate with a compass and map and logged countless mind-numbing hill repeats up and down the same small hill in my local park. All
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I stare at the photo in disbelief. Anger, sadness, and compassion merge into an overwhelming emotional storm as I try to understand. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t find a logical explanation for why I didn’t see back then what I do see now. I do, however, know why I have changed
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“Just grab something,” I repeated those words as I approached the aid station. It was 02:17 AM, and I was on a motocross track where I had been running lap after lap for 16 hours already. I grabbed a few dried dates and a handful of peanuts and carried on toward the first steep climb
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“The final lap. This is the final lap. You already won. This is your victory lap.” I tried to force myself to comprehend what I had just achieved. To feel pride, elation and all those feelings I thought one was supposed to feel when winning. But I couldn’t comprehend it just yet. After running for
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