20 marathons in 20 days - Reflections

I'm so glad I've had this week off to Relax, Recover and more importantly Reflect on everything. 

Too often we rush back to "the real world" after we accomplish something without really reflecting on it, and so move on to answer the question most people ask immediately afterwards..."what's next?" 

Sitting on the beach yesterday I just allowed my mind to wander. Wander all over the place. From thinking about my journey over the last 5 years, to the Run itself, to my favourite place for a chocolate milk, to where I want to take this next.

But instead of going down the rabbit hole of "what's next?" I decided to put all my attention on "what did I learn?"

And with that came a very different thought process and feeling.

I feel like I've learnt a lot about myself over the last 5 years, but in beginning to answer the question of what I learnt I continued to come back to community. To the people that I've surrounded myself with to make this happen.

I'm lucky to have lots of people in my life I go to for advice and support, my dad being my key confidant, but in understanding how to tackle this at the beginning I decided to reach out to some accomplished ultra runners that had done large multi day running challenges before. 

I remember at the beginning I was nervous reaching out to people that to me were superhuman. I thought they wouldn't want to speak to me. But I was wrong. They were all so welcoming, humble and supportive.

You cannot put your hand into a pot of glue without some of it sticking and likewise, you cannot put your mind into the mindset of people that have done great things without some of it sticking.

By speaking to people like Joe, Luca, Kirrily, Ben Hirst, Keith and listening to podcasts from Pat Farmer, Dean Karnazes, David Goggins, Sam Gash, gradually the extraordinary became ordinary.

Now to be clear, this wasn't to belittle the goal, remove any of the excitement, or to think that it would be easy. This was purely to help change my internal dialogue from "who am I to do this?" to "I'm only doing a marathon a day for 20 days." I had slowly brain washed myself into thinking this was "normal". 

And so the biggest learning is that if I can do this with running, surely we can do this with building mental fitness.

My kids think it's perfectly normal for me to run a marathon...or to run 20 of them in a row. If you ask them for their most memorable moment of the trip it wasn't the running! They will tell you how cool the waterslides were at the NRMA Holidays Parks.

My hope is that they'll also think its normal to talk about their feelings. To reach out when they need help. To have real and honest conversations. To know that nothing is off limits. That it's ok to feel happy, depressed, or anything in between. To know that they won't feel judged. There is only love. All else is an illision. 

If we really want to remove the stigma and for conversations around Mental Health to become part of the fabric of our communities we all need to practice it. And practice is the right word because it won't be perfect. Like any change it will feel awkward at first. We might say the wrong things sometimes or feel as though we get it wrong. And that's ok too. It's all about getting that conversation started. 

Thanks again for all your support. I feel truly blessed. 

Big love

Mark

#keeptheconversationrunning