And Now I Ask You...For a Little Luck

Very soon now, those of you that peek in on my wee little website here, will start seeing race previews, gear reviews, and race reports for all my upcoming and various endeavors.  I look forward to later this Spring when I can let you all in on my Badwater "Heat Training", or what I'm doing to prepare for the rocky Massanutten course.  I enjoy recording and sharing my training/running/hiking ups and downs.  I spoke last year about how one of the biggest reason I keep this journal is so that I myself can go back and remember various high and low points of my life too.  Surely this Summer will be full of challenges that will undoubtedly have unique stories that come out of them.  Yes, very soon now, my full 2012 season will kick into gear and I will be swapping war stories with many of you about various excursions.

But not today.  Today, I go off the grid for a little while...to tackle something else.  A little soul-search, as it were.  Something that I've decided to keep to myself.  There are those challenges and events that we all have that we are eager to share with the world, laugh (and cry) with others about, and swap ridiculous stories about.  But then there are those that we do for ourselves, so that maybe we can find something within (as selfish as it may be).  This is one of those times for me.  

For those of you that have landed on this page anytime in the past two months you'll know that I have been training harder than I have at any point in my life.  While I have documented and shared this training, it has been mostly as a record for myself.  If I don't write things down...I won't remember.  Especially with training.  I suppose I could have started a private journal...but it was just easier this way.

I have physically trained as hard as I could have, without injuring myself...and have tried to prepare myself mentally.  I have lived, trained, eaten, and slept very little else since January.  This morning I have finally found myself in a calm place and will go forth with this calm at my side.  I realized the past few days that as much as I've dedicated myself to what awaits me, there are other things....greater things, that are so much more important.

So, I will be back soon.  No matter what happens and no matter the outcome, I will have given it my everything and know that I put all that I possibly could have into it.  I will also come back with a part of me changed forever.  Of that I'm sure.

So please, send me a little luck if you can spare any.  Luck to keep the extreme weather away, luck to keep my legs working, luck to keep me hydrated, luck to keep me focused and driven.  I will need it.

hike on my friends,
-j

"We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of providence, determined still to do our best to the last..."  

- Robert Falcon Scott