Great Southern Endurance Run DNF

Distance: 100 miles (made it to 58)

Date: Saturday, August 15th

It’s almost two months since the DNF and I’m still processing things. I was very excited going into this – a 100 mile journey through Atlanta starting at Kennesaw Mountain, going through downtown, up Stone Mountain, and then back to Atlanta proper. I knew going into it my feet would pose a problem. I keep learning lessons about how my feet react to walking vs running and I seem to get blisters when I walk more than about 7 miles – running 50 has posed no problems, but walking? Blister factory. I am fairly certain shoes are a big part of it and I also think that strategic taping could also help and that’s something I need to solve before Badger 2021.

Though in all honesty, I did not DNF because of my feet. They may have been cause for me to DNF later, maybe even as soon as 5 or 10 miles down the road from where I stopped, but when I stopped at approximately 58 miles, it was because of my mental state and not because of my feet. They were just really good scapegoats for the mental beating I was giving myself.

I’ve heard many people say that running and ultrarunning are very selfish sports. I agree a million percent and one thing I hate to do more than anything is inconvenience people or ask for help. That event involved both. I somehow got my husband and my dad on board to give up time to travel with me up to Atlanta. The plan was to get in to Atlanta midday, relax, go to sleep early, and then start at 3am on the top of Kennesaw. Only that’s not what happened. There were several wrecks on I-75 and a 6 hour drive turned into an 8.5 hour drive.

At 8pm I was attempting to fall asleep and I got the call from Trena – there were going to be protests at Stone Mountain the next day, which meant the entire area would be closed to visitors. In an attempt to be able to do the whole route, we had to push the entire endeavor from a 3am start to a 9am start so we would go near Stone Mountain when hopefully any violence/protests would be finished. This meant that we would be getting no pre-dawn reprieve from the sun and we would be finishing much later on Sunday than anticipated; both my husband and dad had to be at work on Monday morning so the finishing time was important.

I started with that weighing pretty heavy on my head and it only got heavier and heavier as the day went along. Yes, my feet hurt, my pinky toes turned into giant blisters and burst in my shoes around mile 26 – when you have a group of 4 people you only go as fast as your fastest person and I didn’t want to be the one who held us up with a foot problem so early. Also, we basically didn’t run at all after about mile 10 which stamped my ticket into BlisterLand. Going through areas of downtown Atlanta were cool, I really enjoyed the belt line and all of the art along the way, definitely my favorite section of the run. Despite the blisters, I was in a good mood for the most part.

I think my mental state really started to shift when nighttime fell and I started doing the dreaded ultra math. I kept thinking, “We’ve been at this for XX hours and we still have at least XX hours to go if nothing goes wrong and we don’t slow down (not likely). That’ll have us finishing at XX, which means we still have to drive home and then dad and Tom won’t be able to make it to work tomorrow and I did this and I made them come and I bet they hate me for making them hang out and sleep for an hour at a time in a car on random streets. Why did I do this to them? Why am I such a bad person? How could I be so selfish?”

I felt so damn bad that I was doing this to them and slowly wrecking my feet over the miles. Every single step started to hurt. I think my brain amplified my foot pain to be much more unbearable than it actually was (evidenced by the fact that I ran the next day. Although a month and a half later, my blisters were still healing, so my poor feet definitely did take a beating).

Again, even though I had a physical issue, I stopped because my mental game was weak. I didn’t want it bad enough. I couldn’t stand the idea of inconveniencing my people and making them miss work to crew my dumb ass. They never once complained and only wanted to help me finish, they were in a great mood and were having adventures of their own.

I know some people regret races after they DNF them - I’m two months out and I still think I made the right decision, but I made it for the wrong reasons. I saw what I needed to see on the journey and I had a great adventure. Quitting at 58ish miles is okay with me, but I hate the fact that I quit because my mental game wasn’t strong enough and I was too worried about things outside of my control. We started 6 hours later and I let that screw with my head. Now I know I have a huge, gaping hole in my mental game, and I hate it, but glad to know it’s there so I can remedy it in the future!