An 'Other Worldly' Experience...
Anadi and I are sitting in Bar Calypso; I have been eating very delicious ice cream; Anadi hasn’t as he says he is still full from our lunch, but I have a never ending appetite today it seems…! And we have been sharing our ‘stories’ of the day with Dwight…
My upper back is aching a bit, I think due to hanging onto branches as I slithered and braked my way down steep steep trails; and using the ropes provided to haul myself up the other side!
The people of Kassiopi are a wonderful community; as I journeyed today I noticed the work that has gone into carving a pathway through the hills; huge effort has been made to ensure the success and possibility of this race.
The marshalls were so incredible too; a long day for them, in the hot sun, directing us all, feeding us, encouraging us….
And my fellow competitors… It was so good re connecting with friends met on the trail last year – and in September in the race to Pantokrator – we share something indescribable…. Kassios dias IS indescribable!
Suffice to say I discovered that I have made no improvement as a descender!
I was slip sliding my way down one stretch, and I stood aside to let (another) man who was far better than me at going downhill go by… ‘No’, he said ‘I am staying with you to check you don’t fall’ – he went on ‘You need to practice more, and wear better shoes for the trail…’
The first part of the race, I set off with quiet confidence in my fitness, and with a memory seemingly erased of quite how tough this race is – and this year it was a harder course, a longer course and a much hotter day!
I found out that I am fit, and very good at running uphill; and remembered why I prefer to race on the track and the road!
But the race was a meditation, a three hour twenty three minute meditation. It took total focus, total concentration; there was nothing else to do but watch each footfall and keep as a much of a rhythm as was possible…
I feel clearer, I look very well, so does Anadi… He found it similarly hard and similarly meditative… And arrived home nineteen minutes after me, also telling of his cautionary downhill journeying…
He did have an ‘other wordly’ experience in the woods, which was a high point! He describes it as a feeling of complete serenity with all the trees glowing… He said this lasted for a couple of minutes before being plunged back into this world!
My early confidence in the first couple of miles… A fleeting thought… ‘I might win this’ was replaced by ‘survival’ as many runners passed me when I was faced with my nemesis! descents!
I reached about half way in the race and our friend George said to me that I was 7th woman… ‘They’re not too far ahead’ he continued…
Some ‘winning energy’ in me or is it just blind optimism? went ‘Oh, I still could win…’!
I didn’t!
I only had the brief winning thought, because I saw windows of possibility… Winning my own race is about stretching to the best I can be, and today I occasionally saw that that was my best possibility…. But I was wrong…!
I don’t mind being wrong at all… the other women who I was racing were awesome in their fitness, their technical ability and their bravery, as I watched them disappear from me down paths I couldn’t / wouldn’t ‘let go’ down…. I have huge respect for them, and they showed me what was possible…
I love competition because we are all ‘striving together’… Aiming high means that I get much more from myself than I ever would, and there is a freedom for me in striving stretching to win, even when I can’t… I find out more, I keep the child alive within me. I forget how long I have been on this planet in earth years and I believe I am about sixteen, with it all ahead of me…
And this is why I like to clear any feelings of limitation from within, we can only do what we can do in any given moment…
I did my best, and my best was good enough….
I often suggest to my clients that we say to ourselves ‘I am who I am and it’s enough…’ From being who we are, we can only do what we can do in that moment, and if its from the truth of our being, its enough, its good enough…
It crossed my mind at one point that I was supposed to be having an enjoyable amusing light hearted entertaining time…
I allowed myself to admit that I wasn’t really enjoying it a lot!
