With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, we have teamed up with Mental Mountains project. In this post, Keith (the founder of the Mental Mountains project) opens up about his experience with mental health. Keith talks about how imperfection in endurance sports can take a mental toll. But how showing up time after time creates resilience, knowledge and strength.
In the world of endurance sports it’s easy normalize the remarkable. This creates a sense of imperfection in endurance sports. Run a marathon? Someone else is running a 50K. Run a 50K, and you elevate yourself into a room where everyone is talking about running Bad Water or Hardrock.
The Culture of Imperfection in Endurance Sports
So, you climb your bucket list peak only to learn the fastest known time was in a fraction of the several days you spent giving it your all. Guys like Killian Jornet can make you feel like you’ll never be the inspiration you want to see in the mirror when you head out the door towards your next adventure. In the age of social media, comparison can plague us with feelings of not being enough. So much so that simply starting the journey becomes an act of grit and belief that we, too, can belong.
Why chase perfection in a world where perfection is unattainable? The mountain is ever changing: we’ll never encounter the same trail twice, with the same conditions. Mother Nature will never bend to my will. We are the mercy of the conditions each day presents us with. Never was that more present last month as I rode out 5 days of tropical storms on Kona without power, waiting for an opportunity to put a years worth of planning, permitting, and training to use and push up the world’s most challenging cycle-climb up Mauna Kea.
When Imperfection in Endurance Sports Feels Personal
It’s easy to feel rejected by your goal when we encounter failure to reach them. Feeling imperfect in endurance sports, and carrying that constant sense of not being enough, sent me into a tailspin of depression, anxiety, and eventually crippling panic attacks. Rejection and the fear of failure prevented me from even trying. In the world of sports, panic attacks stripped away every athletic part of who I was and who I wanted to become. For instance, some days I couldn’t even bring myself to get groceries, let alone run around the block without dropping to one knee.
I wished for normal every day, not what I believe myself capable of today, but just being able to take care of myself. That’s the point in many stories where your character arc changes course. When your pain is too great to accept your fate. My world shrank so small that I had to make a decision that would change the course of my life: stop living in fear of rejection and start showing up to dance with the pain.
Choosing to Show Up Anyway
Showing up has become my super power, and the reason I chose and fell in love with mountains. As someone who couldn’t summit a flight of stairs – mountaineering was the likeliest path to failure and total rejection. It also became the most asymmetrical bet I could place on myself. To forever be in a dance with failure and success. I accepted that imperfection in endurance sports go hand in hand. The only guarantee I could make, ever make really, was to show up in spite of failure. I could aways make that decision, over and over for forever.
Lessons from Mauna Kea
That’s how Mauna Kea turned into one of my proudest moments yet. A younger me would not have appreciated the knowledge gained through the experience. Planning, contingencies, equipment and mental fortitude. After a week stuck inside our four walls, we heard the official word from authorities.
The 2′ of snow at the summit, and wash out of our gravel section at 11,000 would leave the road impassible past our visitors section at 9,200.’ I made a decision with my crew that if we have one final weather window we’re going to get as far as we can. So, one a rainy Tuesday morning I showed up. I remembered the truth of imperfection in endurance sports and made a decision. To grind through the imperfection the Big Island gifted me that week, knowing there would be no summit. But I still needed to live by my creed.
Eight hours later, coming down from the visitors center having learned more about myself, there was no defeat. Instead, Mauna Kea had stood tall in the face of the storms that devastated the island, and the choice will always be there to dance with her again. It just takes the decision to accept imperfection in endurance spots (and life) to show up again for myself.
May Miles for Mental Health
Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, the Mental Mountains project is raising money through the May Miles for Mental Health challenge. To do this, pick a monetary value to reflect the movement activity you choose within your community. These funds stay in Dane County to support those in need of mental health treatment who would be otherwise unable to access it. To learn more, visit the Mental Mountains project website or watch the video below!