Mental Ultra Endurance - it hurts

The must have attitude to success

I have been sick for over 5 months. With a tooth, that was root canal treated. We call it devitalized in French. Actually that tooth was a little more sensitive time to time than the others, but did not bother me at all. Probably the doctor missed a nerve, so I still had a minimal sensation in the soft tissue on the inside. Actually when my body had inflammation, like after long runs or hard training sessions, it often flared up for one or two days, but we talk about very minimal discomfort. However through out the years, just like any other problem in the body, it grew. I developed a minor cyst. Basically a gunk knot of dying, infected tissue. This was invisible for the x-ray. Fortunately the actual inflammation was so present that the x-ray had a total white-out on on the right side of my head. I was not just inflamed in the tooth area, not just in the sinus cavities, but in my entire right head. Including brain, throat, all the cavities, everything. I think I had a minor sepsis. Yes this can be life threatening. I was spitting blood for 5 months, I was having fever, energy issues, extreme fatigue. I contracted mononucleosis or kissing disesase, COVID, seasonal flue. Caught colds, hurt myself, in case of joints or muscles multiple times. 

In the meantime, I picked up a new job as a workshop technician. We started organising our moving to a high mountain region. I also engaged in an online course to get certified as an IT Technician. My daughter got 5 years old and entered a difficult period. The era of saying no and resistance. This is a period when young ones test. They don't really question yet. Just resist to develop their own power, their own ides, their own rules. It is crucial to stay calm, to stay normal and to not to explode.
Waking up often at 4 or 5 am to learn for my course was obligatory. That did not help with my sickness either. After chaining together for 5 or 6 days with early rising, I was even sicker than before. Fever every week for 5 months ! Headaches due to chronic sinus infection every 2nd week. Nose cavity rinsing with disgusting results every day. 

Never give up

I however, somehow never give up. Never given up on my training. I kept a very low level body maintenance routine. When I started falling sick at the beginning in September I never thought about a chronic 5 months of journey.
I was in brutal great shape. I had a couple of great races that last year, I was doing amazing and brutal workouts and my recovery was just unbeatable. My routine was simply 1 or 2 minute uphill intervals, like 20 x 2 or 10 x 1 min and at the end I did downhill intervals of 400 / to 1000m on the road. Once or twice a week. That simple routine paired up with mobility and mild strength training gave me everything for every distance. When I travelled anywhere around France, I was able to take down flat, up or downhill strava KOMs. I placed in first 10 or podium races. I won 2 races last year.
Than the first sign came. Out of nowhere. I broke to big KOMs in the Pyrenes on vacation. I took two days off. Did only mobility and the daily little hikes with the family. I wanted to run on the third day. I had a minor tingling on my right hip, but I was also slightly under the weather. No issues, I was on holidays, the season was over, I took the day off, but did my mobility. The tingle got worst hour by hour. After 2 hour of final travel, when got out of the car in the evening, I could not walk any more. Literally could not walk. Right hip was totally off.

When I healed it after a week, my health issues started. Dry cough, and cough crisisis, minor fevers, headaches, stomach bugs, nose bleeding, throat bleeding, swollen glands around my neck, left side, right side, more headaches, more fever. Blood tests showed a little possibility of past mono, but full results had zero inflammation markers.

The one

All of this, is just to show you, that there might be nothing good happening in life. Crap can doom on you. The longer it does, the easier it becomes to get the habit of being in a bad place. The old saying goes: Most would be better of having it worse ! Because that triggers action. I did not need triggering. I was looking. For answers. 

My diet is okay. I started doing cold showers in November. It was getting me sicker at the beginning, but kept it up, as it reduced inflammation in my sinuses. I was doing my morning breathing routine, mobility, breath holds, wim hof. I started integrating one day of 24h fasting on Mondays. My body was burning up a lot of calories to combat the sickness, so I got back on the gluten wagon as I needed fast and quick burning calories. Some pasta, some sandwiches time to time to not to waste away. No cheap stuff, but organic breads and pastas. Not a lot, but 2 or 3 times a week. 

My good friend was constantly asking me, what race will I do next. I was always responding the same, that I am in such a mental and physical state, that nothing excites me. Till it does ! I found one event, what was one of the first races I ever did in France. They did a 100km format on a way. Despite that I did not know yet how my health will turn out, was sick and tired I signed up for a 100k event, knowing that in the last 4 months the only real training I was doing is working on my mental fortitude. Knowing that my CV system, heart and lungs, blood vessels, lymphatic system, all are totally smoked. 

Training and knowing

While I knew and know that training to get fit in 2 months is not possible for a possible 15hour event, it is also impossible to do so for a 24h event. On the other hand, training to minimize the fatigue, to minimize the impact, to minimize the breakdown is possible.

Of course, nutrition and hydration is crucial for recovery of not only the body, but the mental state too. You go undernourished with 2L of water and 2 days of training is out the window. When you have two months only, that is in-acceptable. Missing 2 days of training because you are so busy, that you literally don't have 2 minutes, is not diminishing your fitness, but on the contrary, makes you hungrier for a great training session. Missing two days being under the weather is missing two days ! I made sure that I drank at least 4L of water every day. Salt, minerals, bicarb, lemon juice to absorb it. I also took at least 40g of EAA every day, to keep up my recovery and building precesses. 

I know that the quickest way to build up CV fitness is high intensity interval training. Also know that the quickest way to build endurance is to eliminate the word "quickest". It is a tough gruelling long time investment. No way around it. From couch fitness to ultra endurance you need 3 years. Not 8 weeks.

My first week after the 29th of January, the tooth removal, was interesting already. I did a lot of short training sessions of 10 to 20minutes. My core needed to be brutally strong. There are a couple of areas in the body that you can massacre. Because you use them constantly, 24/7. It need to be battered and it recovers like nothing else. One is feet the other is postural muscles, both contributing the balance. The third one is breathing and muscles working for it. The great thing is, that you can train all together at once.
The very best ever, ever, ever training method I found, learnt and still learning, is FT, Foundation Training by Eric Goodman. Since I have been introduced, I did not miss a day. I made sure that I do at least 5 , 12 minute routines, but also include some movements in the warming up or cooldown of my other trainings weekly.
Then I knew that I needed muscle. But not just squat quads and bicep curl arms. Using walking poles for 20hours and doing 5000m of elevation gain and loss, needs muscle. Grip strength and ham/quad balance. Calf strength.
Simply I did 2 TRX sessions a week, including a loads of skipping roping for recovery.
Kettlebell training with 8kg and 16kg bells, going up to 9000kg s week. That is still, very low, but for a broken body, that is a good sort of shock.
Sprinting routines mixed with body weight strenght training all with VFFs
Uphill Lunge protocol starting with 5 x 1 min and going up to 10 x 1 min.
Body weight spine protocols daily. (#backpainacademy)

What I did was very special, very personalized, not duplicable and developed for me, my current state and my current mental fortitude. My long runs were 1,5 to two hours, hard and difficult walks. Not hard physically. I walked like 2 hours with 600m of elevation gain. I felt like crap and it was just not getting anywhere. Slow and swollen.
However, my mixed routine approach of getting stronger, and increasing trianing volume by a lot of micro-sessions, I was able to pull off 3 x 5h long run-hikes and a final day of 7hours of mixed training consisting multiple runs and bike sessions with lifting. 

At the end...

Finally, I completed a race, with thousands of questions and doubts in my head. I had a lot of pain. The sort of mental pain that completely overtakes the entire body. I also did not say yet, that my wife went on to security check training for pro mountain equipment, so I was staying with my daughter. She is only 5 so she need human contact when sleeping. She is moving around like a baby goat all night long, kicking, pushing, slapping, asking for water and the doudou. I slept like 6hours in 3 nights. I was in bed, but turning, twisting and laying with open eyes. The last night before the race was a disaster. I woke up like 10 times, my wife also arrived at midnight, I could not sleep after 1am and woke up at 3am to prepare. Not the exact race circumstances for a beginner ultramarathoner. Yeah I ran a lot of ultras un my life, but never that unprepared and nothing comparable in the last 5 years. 

My final answer and final thoughts for all the goings in my head was: what would Musashi do ? Would he give up ? Would he look forward to more to come ? Would he break ? Would he continue ?
The answer was always: it is not so bad. Others are starving and dying. I am here on my own terms. I paid. I want to break down, I want to cry, but there is no point. This is easy sh.t ! Nobody is shooting at you. A couple of blisters and bleeding toenails are nothing to anal about. Musashi would look forward for the teaching, the knowing of beyond, the information. He would be wanting to know, that whatever he learnt was useful or not ? 

I have no doubt that my training approach and all the books I read on the mental space brought me to the finish line. I also know, that there is so much more to be done. I have to push the uphill lunge protocol up to 20 x 2,5 minutes. My KB training up to at least 15.000kg a week this year. I have to integrate the 45min FT burner weekly. I also must do more pilates and more focused to smoke my abdominal belt. I ran around 40km weeks. I have to be up to like 80 to 100km. I am a big I need muscle and also have to maximize time efficiency. I already have tried running 200km weeks and it works, but when doing so, I don't have energy for nothing else. I do crappy work, I am not kind with the family and feel battered. When my muscle volume is up, I am better suited to hard ultras. I need a lot of training in the VFFs, more jogging around. I also need some good shoes. While I liked the Catamount, I would appreciate more general platform and wider forefoot. The zero drop is kind of a must for me. 

The finalize my thought process. Mental training mixed with training intelligence can be a way to succeed and realize goals. I have giant life projects going on for the next 10 to 15 years. These little ultra marathon steps will guide me through the rough patches. I can do everything and anytime. I am ready. I have the spirit and the force of the mind. 

One mantra that came into my mind when my brain went to crybaby:
" This is who I am, this is what I do ! "

 If I quit, I would be a quitter and a coward. Not because of quitting, but quitting for no reason ! If I felt that I would be causing damage, like peeing blood, vomiting bile, itb syndrome, snapped tendons or something like that, I would be stopping, no issues there. It would be still my fault, my problem, caused by myself, but it would trigger more future action. Quitting because it is HARD, would trigger doom and questions, with multiple weeks of doubting and self torturing. 

That is for this today...

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