CONTRIBUTION THE BOLD AND THE BRAVE BECOME THE AUDACIOUS

The car door shuts loudly in the still of the early morning silence. That will be the end of any feeling of warmth over the next few hours. Trudging heavily straight up the mountain, breathing hard, steam rising quickly in response to the -4 degrees…what on earth am I doing here?

Would it not be easier to lie in bed and let the world pass me by?

I turn up the volume on my earphones, music blaring in an otherwise silent world. If I can just drown out the pain, maybe it doesn’t exist anymore. Onwards I move, trying desperately to hold onto the pace of my husband James. I used to push him in training, but not now. It was the reality for me in this moment and it was hard to accept.

I didn’t like being the one behind…ever. But it didn’t matter. I was here, and that’s all that did.

Six months earlier, I’d developed ‘a hip niggle’ while training with a select group of athletes en route to the Valley Ultra 54km in Craigeburn, NZ. As an ultra runner, I had developed over many years, the ability to drown out pain. The absolute requirement, in my opinion, of being able to be in my chosen sport. And I tried to –that is, to drown it out. I was running faster than I ever had and in the height of that momentum, I had pushed too far. Who knew the line was so thin.

Six to eight weeks on crutches, countless hours lamenting over my predicament, a full lost season of racing, nothing to talk about or do with friends or my husband. You see, they were all ultra runners themselves. Battling to do anything so immobile which included looking after my non-verbal autistic son, who suddenly decided one day that ‘runners’ were fun!

A few days after my diagnosis, an inferior neck of femur stress fracture had become apparent on MRI, I received an email –365 days to go to ‘The WILD’, a 100 mile mountain race expected to rival that of Hardrock. It would start at the top of Coronet Peak in Queenstown and cover big back country mountains with lots of offtrack difficult terrain. An epic course that only the most capable of mountain runners could withstand and only few would finish.

The ridiculous thing in that moment, as I hobbled around on my crutches was...I was entered…and intended to be at that start line.

SO IT BEGAN, THE LONG ROAD BACK

With big goals ahead, I forged on, step by step, trying not to think about how far I had to go or if I would get there, a skill I had learnt from running ultras. Jogging for one minute, walking for one minute, on repeat, then a day off…it would seem preposterous to think this is how you start training for 100 miles.

But it was and it was a start. I rejoiced in the fact I was able to move again and could have been happy just with that.

However, as I progressed slowly the voices in my head became ever more vocal.

You’re doing too much. You’re not doing enough.

There was no happy medium where I could sit and just be happy. Strava began to tell me I was getting faster and doing better as were friends and family. But I continued to ignore the positive signs, because in my opinion I was nowhere near fast enough. Instead, it felt like I was in a deep hole trying to dig my way out. I watched as my ultra friends continued to perform with such tenacity and spirit, out there, living their best lives.

I began to feel like it was no longer a life I would be a part of and had slowly switched off, no longer looking at social media or Strava where daily adventures and performances were posted.

As a teenager, I had made the NZ rowing team. One of the youngest to do so at elite level. In that environment, I grew up obsessed with numbers. Everyone knew what the world record pace was and they were expected to train and hit those numbers six days a week. If you wanted to become an Olympic champion, that was what it would take. We all knew it. Numbers were regularly posted on the board in the gym with percentage rankings of each crew of comparative prognostics. There was nowhere to hide.

When I had started racing ultras, this obsession became useful. I knew how fast I had to run to be competitive and knowing this and trying to hit these targets had helped. However, when returning from injury, this no longer served me well and was a constant reminder of how far behind I was.

As I began to run and climb mountains again, the effects of being injured started to become more apparent. I had lost my confidence in technical terrain and was terrified of running downhill at any sort of speed…even though I knew it was okay to try, my brain had other ideas.

The significance of this was most apparent when I went snowboarding for the first time that winter season. As I stood up on my board, I was unable to adopt my usual goofy stance and instead only able to turn my board on my non affected side. My brain simply refused to go in the other direction as if it no longer existed.

As soon as I became aware of this, it became my mission to change it. I had to face the fear of loading my leg. Having such an epic goal as The WILD made this possible. If I wanted to be at the start line, I had to be prepared to take the steps it required and for me that meant I had to face the fear that something might go wrong.

Easier Said Than Done

Slowly and progressively, I started to push more and my leg held. As I did this, confidence grew, I got stronger and I began to believe, my goal was possible. I strived ahead into what I called ‘the great abyss’, the place where all my effort would go without having any clue what outcome it might have. It was a surprisingly powerful place to be.

Soon after I gained this momentum, my hometown of Wanaka was hit with one of the biggest snow dumps it had had in 40 years. Temperatures plummeted and our local mountain became that much harder to climb in heavy snow, just as our vertical gain goals started to increase towards The WILD.

With my newfound confidence and James by my side, who was also entered in The WILD, we forged ahead with training, hitting climbing with a vengeance, often the first to cut new tracks in the snow in the early hours of the morning or late after work in the dark. James often referred to this, as beast mode. We were also super happy at this point, to get the support of Tailwind NZ and Rab NZ.

As our capabilities grew, so did our audacity to try to climb new peaks, head further into backcountry mountains and off-track terrain. We were back pushing the limits and there was no other place I wanted to be. I didn’t know what it took to race 100 miles over backcountry mountains, but I was sure audacity was a big part of it.

And then it happened. One day, after picking up the kids from school, I got an email. Reading it at first didn’t make sense. It was like an out-of-body experience; surely this email was not meant for me. The WILD had been cancelled.

And just like that, a rug was pulled from beneath us.

In the days and weeks that followed, everything felt like a blur as I tried to figure out what to do with this. But unlike many of the other competitors entered, what emerged was something entirely unexpected. I was grateful. I had been so motivated by this event, that without realising it, it had literally pulled me from a dark hole and given me reason to get up again and start pushing. I had a seat back at the table and was no longer the spectator.

I guess in the end, the moral of the story is this. If you’re recovering from injury and feel like the end is nowhere in sight, just take the little steps forward, whatever they are, towards your goal.

But make it bold, make it brave, make it audacious.

Be aware of the fear that is helpful and protects you and the fear that stands in your way and stops you from reaching your potential. It became incredibly important to understand the difference over the course of recovering from my injury. In the months that have followed, James and I have continued to push the limits of our capabilities and look forward to some big audacious goals we already have planned for 2023 including of course, The WILD.

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE: Rachel is a Wanaka-based mountain ultra runner who is obsessed with adventuring in backcountry mountains and pushing her own limits. A wife, mum (and stepmum) to four children, Rachel lives life in the way she races – hard off the start then reining it in just before she physically dies to then barely hold on for the usually pretty crazy ride.