News from Jules | 05.01.2023 | The Undoing
What I remember most about that day was summiting Mount Hood. I was slowly turning, looking around the soft grey clouds framing the 360-degree view of Oregon and southern Washington, hearing the snow crunch under my crampons, and feeling the brisk air toss my tears into the wind as we did with my Mom’s ashes further down the mountain years ago.
I wanted to hold onto that moment a little longer so I kept my eyes shut tight even as my doctor told me it was all over.
Summiting was what my mind conjured up on that day last November when the doctors in New York used local anesthesia, then inserted a five-inch needle into my right butt cheek to biopsy the softball-sized fluid mass in my pelvis that had grown after my abdominal surgery.
I needed an out-of-body experience to get me through the fear and the pain. Something just as difficult, but also doable and rewarding.
Fast forward six months as we transition to spring, most major winter storms have passed, the winds are dying down and the temperature is warming up, but there’s still a solid base of snow. It’s now officially prime time for climbing Mount Hood.
While many people have been climbing the harder routes since January—which requires more technical skills in ice and rock climbing—snow melt will once again make the summit unreachable to anyone but the elite by mid-June.
So, it’s a pretty small window.
About 10,000 people attempt Mount Hood each year, the second most climbed mountain in the world—or third, depending on which list you look at—and the majority will do it this month.
How am I feeling about it?
I’m intimidated.
For one, my #HoodorBust journey is five years and counting:
I committed to the goal in 2019, but quickly realized it was unrealistic with my 80-hour-a-week corporate gig.
Soon after I started Mazama’s Basic Climbing Education Program (BCEP) in March 2020, it was canceled.
After graduating from BCEP in 2021, we attempted Mount Hood but had to turn around some 200 feet from the summit.
In 2022, multiple opportunities to climb Mount Hood fell through due to poor weather before I had to hit the road from Oregon to New York in early May. Each time friends and teammates posted summit photos in the coming weeks, I cried happy/sad tears. Happy for them, sad for me. I knew I had to be back in Oregon for the 2023 climbing season.
For two, I just counted 15 rest days in April due to overexertion shoveling snow, strained hamstring while rock climbing, traveling, allergies, and being sick. A rest day means little to no activity besides regular walking around. My target is four per month; I average eight. January, February, and March also had above-average rest days due to travel, sickness, and minor injuries. And of course, there were two whole months off post-surgery in November and December.
My mind thinks my body is unreliable.
Every ache is amplified, every training decision is questioned, every variable is analyzed. And I think it doesn’t add up. That I don’t add up. And yet, I always do.
My body senses my mind is unreliable.
This is the internal conflict that arises right before it’s time to face every enticingly ambitious goal that I set for myself. This happens almost every time* and yet somehow it always feels like the first time.
I realize this is the pattern and I’m still learning how to overcome it.
A few years ago, I shared my feelings of intimidation, insecurity and doubt about an upcoming 45-mile backpacking goal with my friend, a former personal trainer and yoga teacher.
“Oh yeah, performance anxiety is super common,” she said, nodding reassuringly.
I definitely didn’t have any physical symptoms like sweating or vomiting, but boy did I have “thoughts of negative outcomes and perceived failure,” like I read about later online.
That was the first I’d heard of it. I’m not sure if “performance” was even in my vocabulary yet. Or “anxiety” for that matter.
I’ve played sports since I was 10 years old, then started endurance training* at 20 years old, but it was always just for fun. I was on Junior Varsity (JV) or intramural teams—well, with the exception of that one season when I played Varsity Golf because they didn’t cut anybody—so it wasn’t very competitive. Nor was the coaching very skillful. The coaches felt more like practice coordinators. By the time I did my first endurance training challenge during college, it was just me, self-coaching using plans I found in running magazines and training on my own.
It was still just for fun, but also to see what I’m capable of.
*Counting all endurance training since then—and I have to count because I forget about so many of them—I’ve completed 17: ran seven Hood-to-Coast relays, one Cascade Lakes relay, and two 1/2 marathons; rode one Seattle-to-Portland race; hiked the Timberline Trail twice; and climbed four mountains (Mount Hood, Unicorn Peak, Mount Adams, Mount Saint Helens) so far.
Through it all, I thought of myself as a “completer,” not a “competer.”
And perhaps that’s part of the performance anxiety.
Not recognizing myself as a performer because I’ve never won anything, even though I’ve always finished. And not recognizing all the swirling anticipatory thoughts as anxiety—casually known as worrying and disguised as self-protection, but actually rooted in fear and the cause of extra suffering—unlike actual pain.
When I blew out my IT (iliotibial) band in my right leg and proceeded to run six excruciating miles unassisted through a private forest. When I ran 13 miles in another relay just four weeks off crutches after a knee contusion from a biking accident. When that same IT band injury flared up, but we hiked 19 miles in a day to get ahead of a weather front.
These moments of actual pain and suffering were bearable. And temporary.
Something I realized again and again in the hospitals last fall and felt oddly prepared for due to all of my chosen endurance training. I relearned that my body has a high tolerance for pain. And my mental persistence is actually my strongest muscle.
This is what I’m telling myself.
Yes, I’m clinging to a dream.
Yes, it’s a small window.
Yes, there’s a ton of build up.
Yes, there are aches and pains.
And let’s just see what happens.
This will not be my undoing. This is a pattern I’m undoing.
May you persist instead of resist this week.
Love,
Jules
Photo Credit: Teresa Dalsager