The jungle running changes you. I can’t quite put it into words, but when you think that you physically and mentally cannot go on, and the heat is unbearable to say the least, you have run out of water and not sure how long the next 5km will take for you to get more…the jungle then gives you the tools to carry on.
Hallucinations scare you, the sweat and tears keep falling, but somehow you carry on.
A butterfly appears with more beauty than you can put into words, the jungle chorus gets louder and louder until you can’t hear your own heavy breathing anymore….this is what gives you the energy and power to continue. I too have wings, I just need to trust them.
The nausea can be unreal, but somehow it feels ok to carry on when in other races you would stop and pull out.
How we carried on through such brutal terrain, heat and hours and hours of feeling so ill is unclear, but the reward throughout and at the end is monumental.
It wasn’t about medals, times, pace or positions….it was about taking one step at a time, becoming a better person and runner along the way.
We were woken every day at 3am, I was so ill with diarrhoea every morning it was unreal, the fatigue was great, but even that wake up call filled me with adrenaline and endorphins that nothing else can match.
Once I started running every morning I was full of both extreme fear and excitement. The lows were the lowest and the highs were higher than I have ever experienced.
I left a part of me in the jungle, Yet I’ve taken so much more away.
I miss it now, I woke early this morning and felt somewhat lost.
Now is to recharge, reboot and reset and pass on this gift that I feel so privileged to have been given.
100 runners from around the world get to stand on that start line, only 65% finished this year. Why was I one of them? I’m yet to figure that out.
I think this will take a while to totally understand and maybe I won’t be able to ever fully answer that question, but what I learnt along the way I can use daily.
What we learn we breath out, to pass on.
Breath in love and breath out peace.
It can be a snowball effect, or at least I hope is the case