by Joey Schrichte
“How you are now, is how you will be.”
I was at a weekly group meditation sit and the guest speaker said this during his talk. My first thought was “if only I had heard this a few days ago when I was slogging through the Bryce 100.”
How you feel right now is how you will feel in the next moment unless you can recognize the feeling and make the correct changes that you want to make. So if you are feeling anxiety in this moment, you will feel anxiety in the next. If you are feeling absolutely miserable, as I was when I reached the mile 62 aid station, you will feel miserable the next moment.
I have no idea what happened. Physically, I felt great and I was on top of my nutrition and hydration plan. But for some reason, my mind checked out on me. All of a sudden I didn’t want to be there anymore.
That state of mind didn’t leave me until after I walked 22 miles the entire night and after three naps, two on cots in the aid stations and one on the side of the trail. It wasn’t until after my last nap that I felt refreshed and ready to run the remainder of the race into the finish.
I was aware of my misery during my death march but since I didn’t do anything about my mindset, each proceeding moment was the same. It’s easy to look back at the experience and know that I should have changed my thoughts, but in the moment it felt like the worst experience and it’s easy to dwell in the discomfort.
On the other side of the finish line, usually the suffering never seems as bad as it did when it was happening. Knowing you could have done better is what a lot of runners think soon after a race. That’s just how I felt. My mind failed on me and I had to learn the hard way on race day to learn that changing your thoughts does change your world.