2019 Year in Review – Honesty and Confidence
This is not a traditional athlete year in review where I outline my biggest race wins. This is a reflection on the two biggest lessons I learned racing in 2019. If all you want is race results scroll to the bottom.
Part 1: Honesty
In 2019 I decided I was going to be more open in person, on social media, and blog posts. It is not that I was being misleading before, but like a lot of people my social media was one big highlight reel with almost no “real me” in there. If you removed the pictures and names there is no way you could tell my Instagram account was me. I felt that I should be building the community by being honest and open about what it is like to be an athlete. To let others see that I work hard but despite this I often fail or fall short. I wanted to provide more opportunities to share knowledge and provide support, potentially for other athletes like me who are going through athlete life solo without a OCR group or OCR partner/husband/wife.
I was also hoping that if I shared more openly, people would like me more, because I would be more human and more relatable. I desperately wanted to fit into the OCR community which I found really difficult to break into despite competing in 5 elite Spartan races in 2017 and 8 elite OCR races in 2018. I still firmly considered myself a trail runner. If you have been to an OCR event you will know that there are usually large tribes of people from different OCR gyms or training communities that all hang out together and it can be difficult if you are constantly solo like myself. I never had an OCR partner/husband/wife/supporter waiting for me at any finish line. My usual strategy was to disappear as soon as possible after OCR races or I would get a strong sense of overwhelming loneliness. In 2019 I committed to hanging around and talking to at least three people after races.
I had a strong start to 2019 with a second in the trail half marathon at Kowen and first at Sydney Urban Sprint at Olympic Park. Working with Caine was going well and I had just succeeded at winning a 5km race my weakest race distance. The Spartan National Series started off well when I managed to win the 5km flat Sprint race at Tooradin. I wrote about all of these experiences. So far being more open had been a positive experience and I had people comment how useful this had been to them.
Crossing the finish line first at Tooradin, the first race in the 2019 National Series.
Starting the sandbag carry at Sydney Olympic Park Urban Sprint.
Where I really started to learn how being open can really sting was at the second Spartan National Series race in Maleny. Although I ran very strongly on the 14km Super course and crossed the line second, I did not complete enough burpees and received a time penalty at the end of the race which put me into fourth position. I subsequently wrote a long post on social media in which I openly told everyone about the time penalty, apologised and explained how disappointed I was in myself.
I could have done what most people do and lay low rather than making a public declaration of what I had done. I shared anyway because I had committed to being open. There were a significant number of other elite and age group racers in that race and other races in 2019 who did not complete enough burpees, and as far as I know, I was the only one who made a public apology or wrote about it to confirm what had happened and confirm it would not happen again.
I was expecting zero support or condolences. Not doing enough burpees is cheating and is wrong. I expected people to be angry because I have been angry at people not doing enough burpees in the past. It does not matter how much pressure you are under or the reasons why, you must do 30 burpees for every failed obstacle. I know all this.
Just before slipping off Olympus at Maleny.
I worked so hard to claw my way back through the field and cross the finish line second at Maleny. All this work during the race was wasted because of my stupidity in not doing enough burpees.
All the people close to me were completely shocked by how out of character this behaviour is. I am a massive rule freak. I am a full time lawyer. I love rules and seeing that rules are enforced. Everyone from my manager at work to my immediate family members and physio could not believe I had not done enough burpees, it was just so out of character for me. I have raced 22 elite Spartan races, and in only one of those races I have not done enough burpees.
I received a lot of negative personal messages after publishing this social media post. I read every message because I felt like I deserved it and also because I had committed to being open. I continued on with my season, winning the 20km Skyrun at Buffalo Stampede the next weekend, and finished 4th in the last National Series race at Picton with a super painful tendon injury. I had won the Australian Spartan National Series, which qualified me for the World Championships and the Asia Pacific Championships.
Despite this, the negative comments and messages continued with a few people being incessantly negative. I felt like I deserved it, so four months later, I had let it get out of control. I showed a close friend the messages I had been sent on Instagram from one account and she said it was ridiculous I had not blocked and reported this person already. That is when I started to realise I had let it get too far. I blocked the three worst offenders, but the damage had already been done.
When I subsequently continued to publish honest writing throughout the year I came to realise that honesty opens you up to criticism. I like to listen to criticism because sometimes it contains important lessons. Other times criticism is completely useless because it has no basis in fact whatsoever. I have decided to continue to be open and honest in my writing and communication with people. The positive comments from people who have been interested in or assisted by things I have written always outweigh the negative comments and criticism. So I will continue.
Part 2: Confidence
When you have been racing for a number of years, it is easy to take your race confidence for granted. You still get nervous for races but the excitement is always greater. I didn’t always have race confidence. I had been steadily building since 2017, which meant by late 2018 I could perform consistently in all races. Race confidence had become so normal to me that I did not even have to think about it coming into the 2019 racing season.
The erosion of my race confidence seemed to happen suddenly, but really it occurred over a five month period. In late April I had a peroneal tendon and achilles tendon injury that meant I raced the Picton Beast in May injured. I was in a world of pain that race, but had to complete the course to complete National Series and make sure I qualified for the World Championships. I came 4th which is the worse placing I have ever had in a Beast. The injury meant I missed racing Ultra-Trails Australia 22km, Australia’s most competitive trail race and the 4th largest trail running event in the world, which I had been wanting to race for years.
Spear throw at Picton Beast. Concentration required takes away focus from tendon pain for a few seconds.
In a world of pain racing 21km with tendon injuries at Picton Beast.
In the last week of June I got a very bad case of patella femoral pain after I had returned to training too quickly after being in bed for 1.5 weeks with norovirus. It was four weeks until I could start return to running program. For another three weeks I could only run very short distances on the flat and only every second day. This gave me two weeks to prepare for the Spartan Asia Pacific Champs. In that time I sustained an overuse injury in my right foot which had taken on extra load when my left knee was injured for 7 weeks. I raced APAC with the inflamed ligaments. Although I came second, being injured and having to race injured for such a long period really shook my confidence. Racing for me used to be a really exciting experience to challenge myself and test my fitness. Now it had become a stressful game of “will I even be able to run properly on race day”. When I returned to Australia I had four weeks to train for the World Championships. It was very stressful because training was still modified to prevent my knee injury recurring and help my foot inflammation calm down. Using all my annual leave to travel to Lake Tahoe and then not finishing the race (as a lot of elite women did), sucked out my last remaining confidence.
Spartan Asia Pacific Championships at Thaiwoo Ski Resort in China had 1,300m elevation gain in 21km.
Podium presentations at Asia Pacific Championships
By October I was severely anxious just thinking about racing. I knew I had to do something to fix this, because my confidence had been getting worse for months and seemed to be on a downward trajectory. After my DNF at the World Championships I read The Brave Athlete by Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson, which deals with the 13 most common mental health issues that athletes face. I found the chapter on racing under pressure particularly useful. I understood from building race confidence previously that it is something that is built over time. It requires more than one good race. There is also nothing like a real race to practice the techniques I had read about in The Brave Athlete.
Three days after returning from the US I ran the Majura Two Peaks 20km trail race in Canberra. I was extremely nervous I would get another DNF and I would never finish a race again (irrational but this is how low my confidence was). I remember at the 10km mark I started to believe I could love running and racing again. It was such a relief I was happy crying down the Mt Ainslie descent. The supportive trail running community in Canberra also made me remember that people are one of the best parts of this sport and I need to surround myself with support more often. The journey to rebuilding race confidence had begun.
Rebuilding race confidence at the Tour de Ridges 21km trail race.
Rebuilding race confidence at the Spartan Canberra Urban Sprint.
On 26 October I had my first Spartan race since World Championships. I really questioned whether my heart was in OCR anymore. Being a 4.2km flat race I was far outside my comfort zone already, with injuries meaning I had not been able to do much if any speed training since June. It was a close race, and although I had a very slight lead to the finish, I missed spear throw, so came in second place. It was such a relief to have completed a Spartan race. My positive racing experiences were starting to stack up and I was getting solid training in. The Bright Trifecta weekend on 16 and 17 November was a major turning point because I showed that I could win competitive Spartan races not just local trail races (if you would like more information refer to my race recap on Bright). To top the year off I had a solid race at the Tour de Ridges, a 21km trail run in Canberra. With only 550m vertical ascent it was super fast (aka not an ideal race for someone who prefers mountains with super technical terrain). I came third and added an extra brick to my race confidence wall. It has taken three months of rebuilding confidence through racing to even start feeling normal about racing again. I will be racing during pre-season in January and February to help continue to build race confidence.
Entering a new decade in 2020 we all have a choice as to what we bring with us. I am bringing:
1. The awesome and supportive friends I made racing in 2019;
2. Race confidence to build on; and
3. The lessons I have learned from 2019 which build on lessons from 2018 and 2017 racing seasons.
In deciding what to bring to to the next decade we can also make the conscious decision to leave certain things behind. I hope I have chosen wisely and wish you all the best in making the choices that will set you up for the start of the next decade.
Race results 2019
Date | Race | Type | Location | Length | Vertical gain | Time | Result |
20/1/2019 | Kowen New Years Resolution Run | Trail | Kowen Forest, NSW | 21km | 745m | 1hr 53min | 2nd |
9/2/2019 | Spartan Urban Sprint | OCR | Olympic Park, NSW | 5km |
| 29mins | 1st |
2/3/2019 | Spartan National Series Tooradin | OCR | Tooradin, Victoria | 6km |
| 34min | 1st |
6/4/2019 | Spartan National Series Sunshine Coast | OCR | Maleny, QLD | 13km | 550m | 1hr 40min (including 5min time penalty) | 4th |
13/4/2019 | Buffalo Stampede | SkyRun | Bright, Victoria | 20km | 1,450m | 2hr 23min | 1st |
4/5/2019 | Spartan National Series Picton | OCR | Picton, NSW | 21km | 781m | 2hr 34min | 4th |
1/6/2019 | True Grit NSW | OCR | Dargle Farm, NSW | 10km |
| 1hr 6min | 1st |
25/8/2019 | Spartan Asia Pacific Championships | OCR | Thaiwoo Ski Resort, China | 21km | 1,400m |
| 2nd |
29/9/2019 | Spartan World Championships | OCR | Squaw Valley, CA, US | 21km | 1,350m |
| DNF |
13/10/2019 | Majura Two Peaks | Trail | Mt Majura Vineyard, ACT | 20km | 650m | 1hr 42min | 1st |
26/10/2019 | Spartan Canberra Sprint | OCR | Canberra, ACT | 5km |
| 24min | 2nd |
16/11/2019 | Spartan Bright Super | OCR | Bright, Victoria | 14.2km | 347m | 1hr 27min | 1st |
17/11/2019 | Spartan Bright Beast | OCR | Bright, Victoria | 21km | 914m | 2hr 27min | 1st |
15/12/2019 | Tour de Ridges | Trail | Canberra, ACT | 21km | 550m | 1hr 53min | 3rd |
Go Mon! Thanks for sharing. Look forward to running with you again soon. Far too brief unforts.
Hope we both stay injury free and have consistent 2020’s.