Hills pay the bills

I haven’t written anything in a while, but I’ve been working on a project together with my housemate Cristina. Mindful Outdoor. It’ll entail lots of different aspects with 2 thing that will always stay central to the philosophy; mindfulness and movement.

Photo by Mark Adamson

I’ll share more on that later, but as I’ve started writing this I’m in Wales, ready to crew Christian in his first appearance at UTS (Ultra trail Snowdonia). We’ve been here since Tuesday, enjoying the local trails. We’ve been extremely lucky with the weather. It’s been warm, without a single drop of rain. As I’m out here running back in the mountains, my joy for the trails is coming back. I honestly became a bit scared of running TDS this summer. As I was coming back from injury most runs were on the flats and I was gaining some speed again, but anytime I went into the hills at home, I had to work twice as hard. Especially compared to how I felt at the end of last summer. Obviously this was after 12 weeks of training in Chamonix, it’s fairly normal that my mountain feeling would not be the same anymore.

The Welsh mountains

After this week of doing only uphill or downhill, I’m very keen to get back going and trying to become as strong as I can by the end of august. I’ve rediscovered the slower movement of mountain running and I like it. For the first time I also want to try and cut as many flat running as I can. I’ll give myself one threshold session on the flats. Everything else needs to be either in the hills or in the mountains. In the past I’ve always kept quite some flat running, mostly for the easy runs or speed sessions. This year I just want to become less scared of the 9500m of elevation gain in TDS. The closer I can bring my baseline volume towards this massive number, the better.

The new normal, hills pay the bills.

Reflecting back on this, it just doubts about myself and my abilities as a runner that made me unsure about the idea of acing TDS. I always like to set audacious goals and running under 21 hours on TDS is definitely that for me. And it scares the shit out of me. Just to accept the doubt, but not letting my actions be guided by them. Trying to do as best as I can, is all there is to do. After all, I’m the only one here putting this pressure on me. And probably also the only one judging here.

So just getting out there and putting in the work towards that goal, is all there is to do. The rest is out of my control.

Love, N.

And thank you Christian for taking me along on this epic trip to Wales!