Earned, Not Give- Chapter 8: Post HTL

Opening your mind to the possibilities

Previous chapter:

Earned, Not Given- Chapter 7: The Light

This event opened a lot of doors for me for what was possible. After completing this, I set my eyes on new things. The next thing was to run an ultra marathon. 

I used to not think that it was possible for me to run an ultra marathon. I believed that ultra marathon was something that only mutants could do. You had to have some special endurance gene to be able to run that kind of distance nonstop. 

Well, I rucked at least 65 miles during the course of this event. I also had 40 pounds on my back or more for a majority of it. I also didn’t sleep for two days. 

What is running for 12 hours going to feel like compared to this? 

A few years later, I signed up for my first ultra marathon. It was a 50 miler in Pekin, IL. 

I knew it wasn’t going to be a cake walk. Running 50 miles is still hard to do. I was essentially going to be running from sun up to sun down. 

I didn’t have any master plan in running this ultra. I went to it alone. I didn’t have a support crew or anyone to help me out. I basically loaded out a duffel bag full of food and meal replacement powder and decided to go for it. 

It would have been easy to overthink this event and not sign up for it at all. There’s hundreds of blog posts on what people do to plan for an ultra marathon but I decided that I was going to just go with my intuition for it. I would listen to the advice of some friends that had run races like this and not go into any rabbit holes on it. 

Eliminating the overwhelm of planning is often the best way we learn. If I made a mistake over the course of this event, so be it. At least I would learn a little more of what it means to run an ultra marathon. 

The 50 mile ultra beat me in ways that I wasn’t expecting. The most challenging part was keeping pace with the time that I wanted to have. 

I ran the first 35 miles of my race as fast as the last 15 miles. The last 15 miles I was barely running. I was essentially fast hiking up and down the hills. 

I didn’t eat enough throughout the course of this race. Even though I ate the food that came available to me, I should have brought food that was a little denser in calories. Throughout a 50 mile ultra, you’re going to burn about 7,000 calories so fueling is essential. 

I was eating meal replacement powder and drinking swigs of some salt water concoction for electrolytes that I made at home. Was my plan bad? Yes. Was it better than no plan? Maybe. I was winging it during this event but if I didn’t have that badge of honor of finishing the GoRuck HTL, I don’t think that I would have showed up to this 50 mile ultra marathon. 

When you finish something that is hard and I mean, really hard. It changes you. It gives you a memory of what you can endure. I think all of us can endure more than we believe we can. 

Doing this event is one of my fondest memories. I hope to grow more memories like these as my life goes on. 

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