Vera Alves is training for the Riverhead Backyard Ultra.
Vera Alves is training for the Riverhead Backyard Ultra.
Vera Alves is training for the Riverhead Backyard Ultra, the first last person standing trail event in New Zealand, which will take place in May.
I went for three runs the other day so, naturally, I'm bragging about it on the internet.
They weren't long runs and they weren't tough runs. I ran 7km each time, to a total of 21km. I stopped for about 10 minutes in between each 7km run, to try to simulate the flow of the Backyard Ultra, which is now only a couple of weeks away.
On one hand, running 7x7x7 definitely felt easier than running 1x21km, even if the end result was the same distance. Telling myself I was going out for a "7km run" was a lot easier on the brain than the idea of heading out for a half marathon, even if that's what I ended up doing.
On the other hand, the stop-start structure of this kind of training, and the backyard ultra, brings with it a whole new issue I'm not used to dealing with: the constant opportunity to quit.
For maximum laziness - I mean, convenience - each 7km loop started and finished at home, the ultimate aid station. After the first loop I had about 15 minutes so I sat around eating a biscuit and drinking a can of Coke (sure, it was 9am, but I'm not here to be judged). After the second loop, I had some more Coke and swapped for socks that didn't give me blisters.
Running the same trail over and over again and pretending to like it.
Both times, as I sat down at my dining table, I felt very tempted to not head back out again.
In that, I think, lies one of the main point of difference in the challenge of the backyard ultra, compared to other ultrarunning events. In the backyard ultra, each completed loop is an opportunity to quit.
So how do you keep going when stopping is such an easy option?
More than training for a long run (or even several shorts runs), what the backyard ultra requires is training for the mental toughness to handle the boredom of repetition and to fight the urge to quit at every opportunity.
Sadly for me, this race also requires a decent degree of physical fitness.
On what would otherwise have been a lovely day, the organisers of the Riverhead Backyard Ultra revealed the 6.7km route that runners will take through Riverhead Forest for each loop.
The map itself was fine. Pretty forest tracks in one of the coolest parts of Auckland get no complaints from me. There was just one minor issue: the massive hill right in the middle of it.
Over 170m of elevation over 6.7km might not sound like a lot, but over the course of a few loops, the compounded vert will start to hurt - and the walk up each hill won't leave me much time to hang around.
This threw a bit of a spanner in the works. The race I thought was perfect for me because it requires only stubbornness turns out to also require a little bit of speed - something I've never been known to possess.
I'm pretty confident I won't get very far in the race (so confident that I'm actually going to sign up for the team relay the following day, in the very high likelihood my solo race is done and dusted by then).
So why bother?
That's a good question and one that I've asked myself many times over the past few days. But I think I actually do have the answer.
The spectacular failure I'm about to embrace in a couple of weeks time will be good for me.
I won't get the satisfaction of crossing the finish line that other races give me. Instead, the moment I stop will come either because I took too long to finish a loop or because I decided to quit. Either way, it'll come as a failure, rather than an accomplishment.
Dragging myself around that forest knowing that only failure awaits will be tricky, especially as I am notoriously easy to talk out of tough things. The glory in this race, if there is any, won't be at the finish, like it is in most others. It'll be in the keeping on keeping on, something I've come to realise I'm not very good at.
All things considered, and despite my hourly complaints, my life is pretty easy. Despite Pinterest and internet memes continuously telling me to "get out of my comfort zone", the truth is I never really do.
Life is pretty sweet, what with remote-controlled everything, Uber Eats and same-day delivery of just about anything our hearts desire.
Modern living has made me weak - and I don't mean just physically. I've noticed, over the last little while, that I just don't have the will to persevere through tough stuff. Or even just mildly inconvenient stuff.
I've lost patience for anything that requires any kind of effort. Netflix has robbed me of the patience to sit through ad breaks or wait a full week before the next episode of a show I like. I can have it all and I can have it now. Uber Eats means I never even have to get up and cook my food if I don't feel like it. If my bus takes too long to arrive, I open the Uber app (and get a little annoyed if a taxi is more than 4 minutes away).
I've got myself to such a comfortable level of average white girl middle-class living that I, hand on heart, don't have to work all that hard for anything. I don't even go to the shops anymore, I just order my groceries online, just to really take my bourgeoisie up a notch.
If anything takes a bit of effort, these days, I can just quit it. If a book is boring, it gets tossed to the side, never to be picked up again. I skip so many songs in albums I would have listened to from beginning to end before. I skim-read everything. I recently paid extra for same day delivery on something I didn't even need straight away.
For most of us these days, anything that requires a bit of effort can be replaced with something far easier. Modern conveniences have shrunk my capacity for resilience. My "comfort zone" is same-day delivery (preferably with free shipping) and a Netflix binge. Anything else goes in the "too hard basket".
The Riverhead Backyard Ultra is not just a run. It is my attempt at changing that, at training my brain to withstand boredom and repetition, to get through tasks even when they seem hard. Every loop finished will be an opportunity to quit but it'll also be an opportunity to train the brain to keep going when the going gets tough.
I reckon we could all do with a bit more of that in our lives.
The dirty details
What: Riverhead Backyard ReLaps Ultra and Relay Where: Riverhead Forest, Auckland When: From midday, Friday, May 3 Relay option: If you're not up to the last person standing event, you can enter a relay team with a friend or more and just run laps for a set time. You don't even have to do them within the hour, just take however long you want and the team who runs the most laps wins. It's the ultimate running party!
