Back yourself. This was the advice that stuck with me from the briefing session on Friday night, the day before I was to undertake the biggest physical challenge of my life.
There were many opportunities to get lost (or feel like I was lost). The course was marked but not every step of the way, there were times when no mark would be seen for quite a while. The decisions around where to place markings was pretty simple, around decision points (i.e. where the track splits). Now, I’m normally pretty confident when it comes to directions and the nature of trail running is that you’ll get lost (that’s part of the fun). It’s having the confidence that it’s OK and confidence in your ability to find your way back on track. It’s all about making a decision to the best of your ability, given all of the information you have at hand. It’s the same in life, many times I question the path I’m on and many times I’m given a marker to confirm I’m on track (it’s normally a dragonfly but can also be a sequence of numbers, i.e. 11.11). It’s important to be open to markers, the more you look, the less likely you are to see, relax and trust.
Anyway, why’s it so bad to be lost? That’s when you learn the most. If you follow the path of everyone in front of you what have you learnt? That you can follow someone else’s path? Where’s the growth in that? A similar thing goes for driving, when I was new to an area I would get lost on purpose to learn new streets and more often than not the getting lost actually connected two familiar areas. It’s like pieces of a jigsaw, the more pieces you have the easier it is to see the picture. My view is that society views getting lost as a mistake and mistakes mean you’re not perfect. The reality is that no one is but most of us pretend to be.
So, back to backing yourself. It’s about trusting your gut. Everyone said I should use hiking poles, 90% of the field had them (it was a no brainer). But I wasn’t comfortable with them, hadn’t trained with them and didn’t know how to carry them when I wasn’t using them. I decided not to use them and I was happy with that decision. And it’s not about needing to be right either, it’s about doing what’s right for me.
My Inner Self 