2018 Year in Review – A year of running from a DNF

On 26 November 2017 I lasted 9km of the Perth Spartan Asia Pacific Championship Beast before I became unconscious with heat stroke and woke up about half an hour later next to an ambulance. There are many reasons why I got heatstroke that day including the hot temperatures, training too hard the week before the event, pushing too hard in the early stages of the event, and the worst hydration strategy you could think of. In my head, the worst part of it all was my Did Not Finish (DNF) status. This was the first DNF of my life and it has haunted the whole of my 2018 racing season.

The quick fix that didn’t work

The DNF absolutely shattered my racing self-confidence. I immediately set out to prove I could race strongly in hot conditions by entering the Deep Space Mountain half marathon on 10 December 2017. This race was the same vert and distance as the Perth race I had heatstroke. It was relatively warm for the race, I came third. It did not improve my confidence.

I told myself confidence would come when I successfully completed a race in hot conditions. Goal setting for 2018 came along, and although I had normal goals for my A races (top 3 at Buffalo Stampede, Hounslow and every Spartan race I entered), the goal that dominated my motivation for training, competing and race planning in 2018 was to ensure I did not get a DNF.

Running from fear

On the start line of every race, the fear of not finishing would run through my head. I did not realise it at the time, but after each race I set increasingly high standards for myself at which point I believed the completion of the race would bring back my self-confidence. The escalation looked like this:

1. I will feel better once I complete a race in hot conditions.
2. I will feel better once I comfortably complete a race in hot conditions.
3. I will feel better once I complete a Beast.
4. I will feel better once I complete my next Beast.
5. I will feel better once I set myself multiple races in a row and still do not get a DNF.

I rarely articulated my fear of DNF to anyone because if I did it was usually dismissed with a comment that I was super prepared and there was no need to worry or that I was being irrational.

Even after I had races that from an objective perspective clearly indicated I could race successfully in hot conditions without heatstroke or DNF, I continued to fear a DNF. On 10 March 2018 I came 2^nd in the Australian Alpine Ascent, a 25km loop of Mt Kosciusko. The race was at altitude, the temperature was 25-30 degrees and the course was completely exposed to direct sunlight. The race was super hard on the body because of descending on very hard terrain and I had pretty bad calf cramps for a while after. I decided that my slow recovery from the race wasn’t quite good enough and that my confidence would return when I comfortably completed a race in hot conditions that doesn’t leave me so debilitated afterwards. I didn’t stop and reflect after each race, I just went straight on to the next, hoping the fear would go.

On 28 April 2018, lining up for my first Spartan Beast since the heat stroke, I was the most nervous I can ever recall being before a race. The race went well, I was the first female to finish, and for some time I felt relief. But then the fear and doubt returned. I decided that maybe to feel confident I need even more of a challenge and set about planning some pretty crazy back to back racing weekends. For example in October, I raced the Spartan National Series Sprint in Sydney on Saturday the 6^th. I then drove straight back to Canberra where I raced 26km on the Sunday morning as part of the Sri Chimnoy ultra. I then had five days until my next race the Hume & Hovell which was a 22km mountain run that involved driving to Woomargama after work on Friday. Afterwards I felt destroyed. I did not feel relief or a flood of confidence. I felt defeated that despite all the racing I have done this year, the DNF is still haunting me.

Why running from a DNF doesn’t work

Generally, my goal is to win a race. This goal is very different from the goal of just finishing. What I tell myself before and during a race when I am out to win is very different from what I would tell myself if I was just trying to finish the race. This whole year I have had conflicting voices in my head. When I am going for a win, my thinking is generally more positive, I am thinking about all the things I will do well, and I have good self-belief. When I am trying just to finish, my thinking is more negative, and I think about all the things that could go wrong.

In 2017, my training was motivated by a fear of not finishing so I often would tack on more endurance training to my program or replace a speed or technical session with a long run. This was not conducive to peaking for a race. I already had good endurance. Although my endurance improved, I rarely have to race above 25km, so the benefits of additional endurance are minimal.

For me, trying to build self-confidence through racing did not work. Confidence is not just a race away. It has to be built outside of racing. I started to realise this as I recovered from the October racing fortnight that ended with the Hume & Hovell. I was not only burned out from racing, but from relationships and from work. Luckily my boss agreed to let me take some leave at short notice, so I spent three weeks in the alpine town of Bright in Victoria to do some hard thinking about where I was going from here. While I was too far down the path of over racing to save my race schedule in 2018, I was able to restore some self confidence and promised myself I would be kind to myself at the Spartan Bright Trifecta. This is the race where I really started to feel like myself again. The National Series Super was tough and the most competitive race of the season, but I felt like I was able to give 100% and was not being held back by any fear. I had fun in the Sprint and there were several times during the Beast that I was smiling.

Towards a year of facing fear

Although I have not yet overcome the fear of the DNF, I have finally acknowledged what it is and that I have been running all year from it. I have thought long and hard about where the fear is coming from, and it ultimately comes from a place that is telling me I am not fast enough, strong enough, or worthy enough to compete at the highest level. The DNF in 2017 really fed this voice and it has taken over a year to tame this voice again.

While I am frustrated that I let fear rule me in 2018, I am glad for the opportunities it brought including improving my endurance beyond what I thought my limits were, improving my ability to run multiple races in multiple days, and giving me so much race experience on different terrains and race distances. I met so many amazing trail runners and OCR athletes this year and I may not have been so lucky if I had not participated in so many races.

2018 also made me realise that my number one opponent is myself. Once I sort out my head and just let my body do what it knows what to do, race results come. I also learned that talking about these fears can be a good thing. There are dozens of people that can help us in the right direction if we can just articulate what is going on in our heads. I was getting all the results I wanted and coping fine with training (if not a bit exhausted), so there was no reason for anyone to see there was a problem. If I had just said to a coach or athlete sooner that I was really anxious about not finishing, the conversation could have prevented months of living in this thought pattern.

I know that we all struggle with fears, and a little bit of fear can be a good thing. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, these are the points I wish I had taken onboard:

• A DNF does not mean you are a failure and does not mean you will DNF every race you enter in the future.
• It can take 6 months to recover from heatstroke. It is not a good idea to race in hot weather a few weeks after heat stroke.
• If you podium (or PB) in a race in hot conditions this is objective evidence that you can race strongly in hot conditions.
• Entering copious amounts of races will not necessarily improve your self-confidence.
• Talk to someone about your fear and do something productive about it that does not involve trying to prop up your self-esteem with further races.

In 2019, my race schedule has less races, based around my A race the Spartan World Championships. I am not entering any races just to prove to myself I am good enough. All races have been chosen to improve my half marathon speed and prepare for the 21km Lake Tahoe Beast. My programming will be based on improving my weaknesses, such as speed over short distances and technical descending, not on the fear of not finishing.