Falling in love with the process, not the outcome

You probably heard this before: “Fall in love with the process, not the outcome.” or “Falling in love with the journey, not the destination.” When I first heard this, I didn’t truly understand what it meant. It took me a race cancellation, followed by a deep low and ultimately a friend’s advice to truly understand it.

When I started my trail running and triathlon journey a few years ago, I always had a specific race date in mind that kept motivating me and pushing through the training. My focus was on crossing that finish line on that day. Only then I’d have achieved something - at least so I thought.

Because of Covid the races were all cancelled obviously so I just kept on training. When they finally got rescheduled, my appetite for the challenge day was at its peak. The plan was to run an ultra trail run challenge with a friend in March 2022. I trained a very long time for this race and I truly trained harder than I race. I remember one Saturday in 2021 when I was doing a race specific training session when I got hit by a car door in the first 5 km of my run. Yes, the driver didn’t look and simply opened the door with full power and slammed it into the left side of my body. I was so shocked that I just kept running, well, swaying for a few meters, hearing him screaming after me because he wanted to make sure that I was ok. I had a few bleeding cuts on my arm and as I found out later a big, extremely colourful and hurtful bruise on my left hip. Luckily, nothing serious happened. I guess, most people would have stopped and get it checked which is the reasonable thing to do! But I kept on running finishing my remaining 35 km of that training session.

You might ask yourself: What does this have to do with “Falling in love with the process, not the outcome”? What I’m trying to bring across is how badly I wanted to run this ultra trail run event with my friend. A car door couldn’t stop me but unfortunately a chest infection only 3 weeks prior to the challenge did stop me. It was impossible and irresponsible to attend this ultra with a chest infection. I tried everything in these 3 weeks leading up to the challenge. I rested for a few days, then got back on training again which wasn’t a smart thing to do because my body wasn’t healed. I couldn’t even finish a 30 minutes easy run. I got so upset with my body that I even hit against the treadmill in the gym once. I am certainly not proud of this moment. This frustration ate me up and I kept on beating myself and body up. Why do I have to get this infection NOW? And WHY at all? All the training and pain was for nothing if I can’t run and finish the race! Also, I’m letting down my friend who has to do it on her own now! My thinking was very negative and it got me into a really low mood. I didn’t know how to get our of this thought spiral at the time until my friend sent me the following message…

“Although everything looks bad and hopeless at the moment, I would like to remind you that this is just one race. Yes, one that you really, really wanted to be part of but still, it’s just a race. We will have plenty of opportunities to run together. […]

Priority right now is to look after yourself and get healthy. Breathe, let it go, love your body. Soon you’ll be running again. I promise ":) “

Wow. Breathe, let it go, LOVE YOUR BODY. That hit me. This changed something in my thinking. She was absolutely right! Instead of hating my body and resenting it for fighting a chest infection, I should love my body and do everything possible to let it heal. It’s not like my body was doing this on purpose trying to interfere with my races. Actually, I was abusing my body for beating it even more up when all I needed was rest and self-care.

I guess the fact that these words came from my friend who is also an ultra trail runner and we wanted to attend this event together, made the impact of her words even greater. I can’t thank her enough for this message because this was when I started to rethink my approach and when I started to understand “Falling in love with the process, not the outcome.”

Once I started to let go and let my body heal, my recovery was really speedy. So I was back on the trails only 1.5 weeks later and that feeling when putting the first step on the trails again was magnificent! I felt an electric current running through my body which filled me up with pure joy, energy and gratefulness. That was the point when I truly understood the meaning of falling in love with the process, not the outcome:

All I wanted to do was spending as much time as possible running on the trails! It didn’t matter if I’d be running on a specific date that some event organizer set out. All that mattered was that I can go out every weekend and do what I love to do: Trail Running!

The following weeks and months were incredible. I spent so much time in nature and started doing long back-to-back trail runs. My training evolved on all levels and in dimensions I didn’t even know were possible. From now on, it was all about loving the whole journey leading up to a race and not only the event itself. And you know what: The next ultra trail run challenge I participated in, was one of the best days in my life! I enjoyed every single second and step of the 60 km and 1,600 m elevation. My cheek hurt more from smiling than my legs from running! I am not joking! And when I crossed the finish line, all the incredible moments of the whole training journey that lead to this moment ran through my mind and fulfilled me with pure joy.

PS: The race organizer were very kind and transferred me for no extra cost to next year. So I’ll get the chance to run this event in March 2023 :)