Finding resolve when the well runs dry.

It was a moment that I won’t forget for the rest of my life. I am lying in bed at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 7th and my alarm goes off. I wake up in a haze. For a brief moment I forgot what I was currently putting myself through and was disoriented to a point where reality was a blurred line. Almost like I was still dreaming, maybe I was. Then it hit me like a heavy blanket of despair. I am sure many of you know that feeling when you are so dejected that you feel pain in your lower gut, just sitting there, weighing you down.

I HAD to get up and run another 4 miles in the wind and cold after already completing 32 miles in the past 32 hours.
I HAD to force my body to move even though I hurt everywhere.

There was no one there chanting my name. There was no one motivating me to get up. There was no one keeping tabs on me to make sure I completed the 9th leg of the 4x4x48 challenge. There was nothing to motivate me but my own personal resolve…. and my resolve almost failed me. There was a voice screaming in my head saying, LIE DOWN, THIS ISN’T WORTH IT, YOU AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH, WHO IS GOING TO KNOW YOU QUIT IF YOU DON’T SAY ANYTHING.

I listened to that voice, got under my blankets, closed my eyes… and right as I was dozing off something amazing happened…

I want you all to keep in mind that this mental and physical anguish was all self imposed. I didn’t HAVE to do anything.

Last weekend I chose to do the Goggins 4x4x48 challenge. This was to test myself and to raise money. The task was simple enough: run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours (that’s 48 miles for those of you doing the math). I first saw the challenge on David Goggins’ Instagram page about a year prior. At first, I didn’t give it a second thought, if you remember from my last blog post, I could barely run a mile before last April.

Around February of this year my thoughts molded from there is no way I can do that to I wonder if I could do that? Immediately, I was hooked. This thought of not knowing if I was capable of overcoming this challenge dominated my thinking for the next couple of days. I was proud of where I had come physically and mentally in the past year. Running four miles was a regular workout for me...I would just have to do that 12 times. Couldn’t be that bad, right? Boy was I wrong haha…

Fast forward back to my defining moment during this challenge. I was in my bed, ready to doze off and it hit me. Even though in my head I could imagine no situation in where I could feel worse than where I was in that exact moment, my mind teleported me to the future tense. When the body aches and pains subsided and I was well rested, how crappy was I going to feel knowing that I quit? Was I going to face the music or would I lie to others and myself about what I did?

I got up like a bat out of hell and got dressed and ready to run before I changed my mind. Got out the door and started running. That leg was actually one of my faster four mile times out of the 48 believe it or not.

What did I learn from completing the 4x4x48 challenge?

The thought of thinking that I quit when I didn’t have to put me in more pain than any physical or mental challenge ever could. I could deal with having to tap out if I was injured or in serious bodily harm to myself. I could not deal with tapping out just because I was extremely uncomfortable.

For me, to find resolve when the well runs dry requires knowing that whatever trial you are going through, self imposed or not, will not last forever. Are you the type of person that is okay with knowing that you left something on the table? Or do the what ifs eat at you? We by nature don’t give ourselves enough credit and that often derails us. You will surprise yourself by how much you can accomplish if you just take that first step.