“I’m exhausted, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I wanted to press send.

I didn’t.

I wanted to box up all my stuff and throw it on the front lawn. “Melbourne Marathon finishers shirt free to good home.”

I didn’t.

I didn’t start a race recently.

I relentlessly argued with myself over it.

I haven’t stopped since the first week of July.

Work stress, home stress, races, training, work stress, home stress, races, training, repeat. 

It’s no one’s fault but my own, falling into a pattern of saying yes to everyone when I should be saying no. 

I had goals that I no longer give two shits about and fun things I wanted to do that I’m now not remotely interested in. Enter negative Nancy! Hi, that be me.

There comes a point when you have to say enough. I guess this is me saying “enough”.

I’m usually pretty good at managing my shit. I don’t know how I found myself in this “yes and…” cycle.

But now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. 

I had a race. I’d booked and paid for the entry and accommodation but to be honest, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to spend all day in the bush by myself. I didn’t want to slam that 5am alarm. I didn’t want to. 

I argued.

One side says “protect your peace, protect your love of it, just don’t go, be like Ruth”

The other said says “don’t be soft, maybe downgrade to the 30k, look at all these folks doing  UTMB…” plus I’m letting my friend down. 

Where is the line between legit reasons and excuses? 

I took the weekend off. I did small runs. My hips hurt, my legs felt heavy, like they were the physical manifestation of the fatigue in my brain.

I felt infected with a serious case of CBF’s.

I took races off the calendar. I cancelled plans.

Something I love, the reprieve, the space, shouldn’t feel like another obligation.

But it does.

I go out every day as a habit. I have breakfast, I brush my teeth, I run, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I thought that maybe I was just fried on the training specificity and needed to pivot. That a quick change over to the roads and finding some fun with something different would do it.

I emailed my coach, we changed the plan, and nothing changed. I still hated it.

So I pulled the pin, hit the emergency stop button.

What I love about this sport is the daily doing.

It’s cheesy and cliche, but the process.

I used to love it. Now I have three race reports in draft, unpublished, a bunch of my favourite podcasts not listened to and a general feeling of annoyance at the apparent “state of the sport” for no general reason but many specific ones.

I did tune in to the Singletrack podcast this morning and something Jeff said really resonated with me. He was talking about not aligning with Ben Dhiman’s robotic approach to UTMB and said enjoying the process is more important to him.

Right now, I couldn’t agree more,

So we reset, we rebuild, we look for the joy, and echidnas!