Every unsuccessful workout I had where I didn’t reach my goals taught me that you need to push at maximum when it is the right moment because feeling sorrow afterwards it won’t change a thing. You can’t fix the past. Once the water in the river flows over a stone, you can’t make the same water flow back. You have one shoot at each workout and if you are not 100% focused when you attempt it, you’ll fail, and you can’t fix it afterwards. Funny enough, thinking about the bitter taste of the previous times when I gave up makes me keep going when it is getting difficult…once you know the taste, you find more energy to stay away from it. It seems you need to be weak before getting strong and you need to fail before succeeding. Failing during your training will make you succeed when the real things happens. Not falling during your training might make you too weak for the real thing.
There are so many examples of incredible people who were not able to make their adventurous dreams come true at the first attempt, but they kept going. At least four names from the TED talks and podcasts come into my mind: Diana Nyad, Lewis Pugh, Tori Murden McClure, Minda Dentler, Pete Ripmaster…The bitter taste of not being able to do it first time made them push the limits even more the second one. Don’t want to ask myself what will happen in my case.
One shot to the summit. One day to remember for the rest of your life in a sweet or bitter way. Most of the days fade out or melt in the memory continuous flow, but some stick out and you re-live them over and over again. The day of the summit push is definitely going to be stuck with me forever. Depending on how many times I will re-live it afterwards, it could in fact mean weeks or month of my life.