Running Towards the next goal involves falling....alot, and often into mud.

I went off radar last weekend, unplugged and completed the Mourne Mountain Marathon, a 45km Mountain run/orienteering/survival test over 2300m in ascent. This isn't your average mountain run, completed over 2 days in teams of 2, carrying mandatory tent, stove, kit and rations for 2 days on the mountain. The course planner is renowned for a possessing a sadistic side that involves him pitting his course against the competitors, the more retirees, the better he did! This man is trying to break us, physically, and mentally.

This year was my second attempt and didn't resemble my last experience at all. It was much, much worse. The terrain was a plethora of carefully chosen ankle breaking peat bogs, holes that swallowed legs (and at one point half my partner), head height jungle ferns, grassy clumps that gave way under weight to spin you off into another looming leg eating hole. Like most mountain races, it had its fair share of slimey slippery river crossings, steep lung-busting mountain climbs and an unnerving scattering of bones that I only hoped were sheep remains and not previous years' competitors.

So what on earth would make anyone in their right minds sign up for this ferocious test of endurance and mental resilience? Over doing various adventurous, perilous or difficult challenges I have found it pushes me down two avenues I don't successfully reach in daily comfort, avenues with opening doors to places not frequented often.

Deep insightful introspection is the first of these ultimately beneficial avenues. I'm not particularly introspective by nature, as an extrovert I embrace self learning but I often move too fast to pay much attention to my inner-most voice. That's to say, I hear the same doubtful, fearful negative narrative as everyone does, I just choose not to let it get a grip on me, but I don't usually ponder the depths of these inner beliefs. On a long arduous, hellish run however, when every iota of my strength is seemingly pre-occupied with just taking the next breath, these sparks of understanding, insightful inspiration flow more easily than the wheezing breath through my lungs.

Perhaps it's not the gruelling run at all, but the peace, lack of distraction and time that allows one to connect with themselves more deeply. However, relaxed walks around the lakes or up the mountains with my dogs does not induce the same reaction that is released from doing something tough; that really hurts. What is it about pushing beyond our comfort zone that allows us to connect with the deeper self?

Pushing myself beyond my known limits, in turn pushes my known limits. This seems simple and a sure-fire way to develop yourself and perception of possibility. It pushes us beyond what we assumed or imagined we are capable of, our boundaries stretch to new lengths and heights and this has has a profound affect on what we perceive to be possible, from ourselves and from life in general. The result - Increased Mental Resilience.

(Disclaimer, I don't look anything like this glowing happy strong image when I run, like most sensible people I forbid photo's of my red blood-blushed face. To be frank I looked like I'd been dragged through a bush backwards with torn, scratched legs and covered in mud. The below image is Not indicative of ANY runner I have EVER met on the mountainside in Ireland).

The Second major benefit is of course Endurance, but other than long distance running, when do you need endurance?

That's something I have found to be particularly useful when trying to solutionise, facing problems, in work, in family or wherever life is hard. It's exhausting to keep battling against a problem you don't understand or can't find the root cause of.

Working in a particularly technical field I've had plenty of experience flexing this endurance muscle. Digging for answers in server logs - or chasing the 'tail -f', for those who understand the I.T world of servers, can require levels of endurance and focus rarely encountered in other jobs. Having the endurance to try multiple different variations of the same code block, iterating line by line to find a white space or syntax issues requires effort not to quit.

But our endurance muscle is something we are losing, unable to flex long enough to listen to a full Album, we quickly flick between songs, playlists and genres. Gone are the days we waited a week for the next episode of a TV series. We used to have the ability to endure waiting 20 minutes for someone to turn up to our rendez-vous point, now we text them if they're 1 minute late demanding to know where they are. Nowadays, we stay tottering on the verge of quitting.

Endurance, sticking out an unpleasant or difficult situation, without quitting is becoming a lost art. Endurance will stop us giving up, on difficult relationships or tough races but it's mental resilience is what allows us to endure in a way that is positive, with behaviours and mental processes that promote ourselves During the endurance, and this is where long horrible, heinous runs really do come into their own.

As, out on the (ankle breaking) course I did see most of the field were able to endure - only 20% of my field quit. But of those remaining 80%, very few were smiling, joking, making pleasantries with passing competitors or for that matter their team-mates, and that was the introspective moment I realised, endurance isn't enough, it's my behaviour during this suffer-fest that is defining me.

So how did the race actually go? We came last out of pretty competitive field, but we danced over the finish line proclaiming we had won. And we had, we had won by our standards, on our terms. We had laughed and cajoled with all the teams we met. We went off track to help some teams who were lost. We had a giggle fit when we realised one of the tents we packed didn't have poles or pegs. We sang stupid songs wading through brown mud water and we completed the race within the rules (not everyone did!) and before all the cut-off points. We endured, we didn't quit, but we endured with uptmost style, positive joyful Irish standard of good humour and giggle fits.

After the race I remembered what my daughter had said before I went off to run over multiple mountains : "Mum, you guys will be the best team" - I looked at her frankly and declared there was no chance in hell we were going to win, to which she laughed "No mum, the best team isn't the one who wins, it's the ones who have the most fun".

Shame it took me 2 days of self flagellation to figure that out for myself!