Have you ever been afraid of failing and of fearing you won’t be able to get back up? Have you ever been afraid
of making a mistake and thinking you will not be able to fix it? Have you ever been afraid of believing that the stress you feel when faced with choices, is holding you back?
We’ve been taught that it’s better not to take risks, that it’s far less dangerous not to try, that mistakes are forever, like a stigma, that if you fall down it will be hard to get back up…
Well, fortunately, those who spoke these words to us were wrong.
The bib number 317 of the GTC100, Gran Trail Courmayeur 2022, 100 km 7900m d+, maximum time 33 hours
This narrative starts at the end of the story, much like a flashback.
But let’s start in chronological order, I was at my practice, I was hanging my bib number on the wall, there where I put them all, between my running bike, treadmill and desk. It is the bib number 317 of the GTC100, Gran Trail Courmayeur 2022, 100 km 7900m d+, maximum time 33 hours. A somewhat puzzled voice behind me asks, “but why are you hanging it up, it’s not like you’ve finished it,” yeah he’s right, because I withdrew from that race, according to my watch at 84.82 km with 5574m d+.
It was about 8 p.m. on July 8, 2022, I was panting, gasping for air, one of those moments you just can’t take it any longer, when everyone overtakes you, I had reached the top of the Skyway Mont Blanc in Courmayeur… there and then, that was it for me. Quite confidently, I decided to call it a day. Then there were these two kind eyes who said to me, “but you’re almost there, 20 km to go and you’re done… you’ve already made it to 80”.
But I was familiar with those remaining 20 kilometers; night had fallen. I had run that route many times before, I had been training for that race for several months. Every Wednesday, I would drive up from Milan to Courmayeur to try part of the route, at night mostly, to better my time and squeeze in some work, as well.
That night, the fatigue, a lingering Covid that had settled there on my back, or rather in between my bronchi and lungs, and kept me from breathing properly; but most of all, the knowledge that more kilometers, while breathing so poorly, would have jeopardized all the months of training to come, made me decide to drop out.
Sadness and a feeling of defeat swirled through my mind; there is no point in denying that those feelings will indeed run through your mind, the word withdrawal would unsettle any runner; crossing the finish line by the way, would have brought me closer to perhaps signing up for the Tor Des Geants, and now I could see it slipping even further away; what would have my teammates, friends said… but that was my choice, to stop at 80km of a 100 km race.
Camilla Pietrantonio, psychologist
I almost forgot to introduce myself, my name is Camilla Pietrantonio, I specialize in the field of dealing with stress, I am a clinical psychologist, who also happens to run; a keen ultramarathon enthusiast, for the past couple of years I have been collaborating with the psychiatry department of San Gerardo hospital in Monza, where among a number of various activities, together with my colleagues, I take a group of patients to the mountains… trail therapy, if you like; At the Institute of Penitentiary Police, I teach prison officers course in stress management; I run my own private practice as well…but that’s a whole other story.
Back to the hanging number bib, amongst a few others I have collected as a ‘finisher’, few in number, but then again I’ve only taken it up recently… that one little bib has every right to have its spot up there. Because being able to pull back, to stand still, to give yourself time, to get back up, sometimes, is braver than just carrying on; albeit harder in emotional terms.
Being able to rise up to a challenge, emerging from it stronger than before and sometimes transformed is not why you may call resistance, it is not a battle won, it is not defying the odds but rather something entirely different: adapting…the famous resilience.
Rest assured, for starters, it is not for a select few.
Studies in the field of neuroscience on psychological resilience in the last few decades have placed a great deal of emphasis on its “ordinary normal” character. It has been proven that through neuronal plasticity, the human brain has the capacity to cope, effectively, with an array of stressful events. All this would make resilience a trait that potentially every human being could possess and by no means an extraordinary phenomenon. All it takes is to simply nurture it.
The Gran Trail of Courmayeur, Mont-Blanc
But how do you go about it? you might wonder.
There are certain elements that can have an effect on a resilient response, ranging from personal and individual factors, i.e., those traits possessed by the individual that can come in handy such as:
- Optimism: which does not mean downplaying your problems
- Self-esteem: how I talk about myself, how I see myself, how I think of myself
- Problem solving: the ability to solve problems and communicate
- Sense of humor: not in the sense of making fun of traumatic events but taking some distance and clear-headedness from such events; sometimes poking fun at them helps
- Empathy: the ability to feel things from within, to feel the emotions of others
- Attitude to experiencing positive emotions, such as gratitude, compassion, grit
- Life skills: cognitive, relational and emotional skills
- Commitment, control and sense of challenge, commitment is the level of involvement of the person in significant goals; control is the belief that we can control events and not be at the mercy of them, the sense of challenge that allows to have a vision of events as opportunities for growth rather than as threats
The environmental, social and relational factors, that is related to the context in which the person is inserted, understood as the affective and supportive relationships that can be tightened over the course of life.
And now let’s go back to today, in my hands there is the inscription for the GTC 2023…looking at that pectoral hanging and smiling aware that when you fall you can get up.
For the “TIPS FOR WHEN YOU FALL, how to move from resilience to realization” to the next article…
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