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I didn’t always think of myself as a competitive person.
I felt uncomfortable tying much of myself to competition because in my eyes, I wasn’t good enough to claim it as part of my identity. I felt I lacked the bravado or ability to put myself out there. Competitive people were just born different, with the easy self-assurance that comes from being the kid in gym class that could do 16 pull-ups during the President’s Physical Fitness Test, not the kid whose best event was the Sit and Reach (I am good at sitting).
Who did I think I was? Competitiveness is for people who are good at competing!
Then, I started running trail races.
My first trail race was a sh*tshow. A technical 10k on winding Ozark mountain bike trails. I wore road shoes and fell so often that I walked away with bloody hands reminiscent of the Stigmata. Each kilometer was excruciating. It was a cycle of redlining, then falling, scraping myself out of…
