My Untold Story Behind the Numbers

There are certain aspects that I share less about here in my blog and in social media in general.

I don’t talk about my personal struggles or issues that much; I like to keep them to myself and solve them on my own or with my trusted friends and peers.

Though one of the better pieces of advice that I ever got about this was the notion that we can “share scars, but not open wounds “.

Meaning that when we have learnings and lessons from the stories and struggles, we can share them with the world since others can benefit from them better that way.

I recently completed my longest trail run to date, La Transtahitienne , 37,5km across our beautiful Island of Tahiti. 1100m of a total vertical climb which many roughly count as the equivalent to 11km of regular road running added to the total.

So, one could say I ran almost 50km in 4h and 8min.

The Process

What you don’t see behind these numbers though is the fact that some two years ago I was not able to run 1km without getting cramps in my calves.

Getting to 5km was a great achievement that I felt proud of.

As I started to train for this island crossing about a year ago, both my knees and ankles have told me multiple times that maybe it is better to quit.

I have also told myself the same with a fair amount of conviction that my running days are over...

I was almost sure that my old injuries in my left knee would stop me from running any long-distance runs.

What I always had though, was the burning #Passion for the pursuit itself. I live for the outdoors as this is my #Lifestyle and Identity more than anything else!

So, every time I had a setback, I somehow got myself back up and tied the shoelaces One. More. Time. just to give it a try.

I had to find out more about my #Potential in these types of conditions!

Slowly but surely the muscles around my knees and ankles grew stronger. They were able to bear more load and I was able to increase the distance of my Sunday morning runs slowly to 10km, to 13km, to 15km, and soon up to 20km+ in single runs.

Today I’m up in this level quite comfortably that was a distant dream not even so long ago…

And to be very honest, I often had lost belief in myself and if I can ever run the “La TransTahienne“.

Yet as we know,

“The Goal determines the Process “

And so, when we set powerful Goals for ourselves into the future, we MUST also upgrade the process that will lead us there.

Many times, I relied more on the process than I believed in myself. Trust the process they say, Now I utterly understand what that means.

In the absence of belief, fall deeper into the Process.

And lastly, I must admit that We ALL have a Warrior inside of us.

When the Goals seems too far away or you enter the “pain cave" as I did during the last hour of my run, we connect with this warrior spirit inside of us and find strength from a VERY different internal space.

If you think and feel that you are on the right path, then by all means Keep pushing. And even if you lose hope or belief just tie the shoelaces and get out the door to try!

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We got this,

Tuomo

PS. Now, will be the time for me to start upgrading the other two pillars of our general fitness & health: Strength and Stability...

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