health and fitness: A race to the end: my first Did Not Finish

jeudi 3 septembre 2015

A race to the end: my first Did Not Finish

I always imagined that for my first DNF I’d be on my hands and knees, dragged from the competition. In reality, however, the body was willing – it was the mind that had ceased to push forward and I was in too dark a place to continue

Dragged kicking and screaming into the back of an ambulance, crawling along on my hands and knees or passed out on some distant, lonely trail in the pouring rain: that is always how I imagined my first DNF would be.

In reality, I walked up to a UTMB race official at the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) and handed over my number with a shrug of the shoulders and an awkward smile. The body was still more than willing, it was the mind that had ceased to push forward, the heart that had lost the desire to continue.