Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Queenstown Marathon
On my refrigerator there lives a magnet. A plain, flat, unremarkable square slapped onto the front face of my appliance, looking back at me each day when I open the door in my daily scavenge for snacks. The magnet is totally black except for a nine-word quote stamped clearly in its centre:
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Now, I'm not one for trinkets. I hate clutter for clutter's sake. Yet, for some reason this little guy caught my eye as I wandered directionless in a Canadian gift shop. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred I would have moved past it, yet fate had decided that this was the one time I didn’t. The phrase spoke to me. It found a thread to pull and turn my head. So on impulse I purchased it, brought it home and slapped it on the fridge where I could see it each day. I looked at it proudly. The words etched themselves into my eyes. I smiled. I knew that this was the mantra I wanted to live by. As a newcomer to a foreign land, this was the perfect time for it. I would live the advice that the magnet was providing.
I would find the edge of my comfort zone.
Days later, though, the magnet and its importance fell away to the back of my mind. My life continued as it always had. It started to blend in as just another part of the kitchen and evaporate slowly from my consciousness as Marty McFly did in 1985. I paid the magnet little thought from then. I bypassed it on each snack hunt. Eventually it settled on the unfortunate fate of being just another forgettable knick-knack in my kitchen.
Until, a couple of years later, it wasn’t.
The Marathon Through The Mountains
I was three marathons into the Hundred City Run and I could feel myself changing. With my mind’s eye I saw the ceiling of possibility cracking slowly around me, and new perspectives on old things started peaking through the gaps. I was starting to believe in myself a little more. The self-denying Voice in my head was dulling. I was proving myself wrong.
So, what else had I been wrong about in the past? What else could I go back and rethink with this new lens? As I flew into New Zealand, the forgotten fridge magnet came to mind for the first time in years.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
I smiled as I looked down upon the unfamiliar sight of my next marathon. I was certainly there.
Queenstown, sitting on the northern-eastern bank of Lake Wakatipu in the South Island of New Zealand, is surrounded by some of the most glorious mountain ranges you could ever imagine. From the airplane window, the lumps and bumps of snow-capped peaks looked like they stretched deep into the island from the shore: the Remarkables, Walter Peak & Cecil Peak lying along the south with Mount Crichton and Ben Lomond Peak bordering the north framed a brilliant portrait of natural beauty. But it was something else when I landed. From the ground I felt the breathtaking beauty of the natural world. An aeon of shifting rock towered down upon me. I was now in Middle Earth for real, simply walking my way into Mordor.
In the days that led up to the run, a new feeling appeared within me for the first time. Butterflies emerged from their cocoons and fluttered around in my gut. Uncertainty pulsed through my veins. For this run, the terrain was uncertain. The hills were menacing. The cold was biting. I had no knowledge of this place, and no clear route I could just follow from my experience. Toronto, Hamilton, and Melbourne – three flat, city-based marathons – all seemed more comfortable than what I was suddenly seeing around me.
The fear of failure had returned. I was a long way from home. If I failed here then I couldn’t just try again.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
I remembered the words. They calmed me.
This feeling was the right feeling.
Now, it was just time to run.
I set off up towards Arrowtown, a former mining town from the days of the gold rush. I had loose a plan to follow a series of connected walking tracks shared by humans and horses alike. The gorgeous Lake Hayes stretched out to my right, and the mountains loomed over us both to frame a picture-perfect tableau.
Immediately, I felt the impact of the hills. For the first time in the Hundred City Run it was my quads doing most of the work, pushing me up and supporting me down. I focused on my breathing, accelerating up the incline, and then relaxing down the other side, a technique I had employed for short runs in the past, but nothing ever this long. Seven kilometres in and I came upon my target town, but this work on the elevations left me surprisingly hungrier than I had been before at this stage. I could barely stomach the gels I had brought so I paused my watch and popped into a bakery on the main street to quickly chow into a pastry. I just hoped that this would sustain me, but at the same time I could sense an Eye of Sauron watching me from a distance…
The Wall that had tormented me in Hamilton was threatening to appear once again.
I was now about 35 kilometres away from Queenstown, which meant a run back down to the city centre a run to the finish line. It seemed simple, right? Stick to the trails, follow the hills, and you’ll be there in no time. Apart from the hills it was simple, right?
It seemed too good to be true.
And it was.
Five kilometres later and I found myself backtracking along windy country roads, hugging the grassy roadside, utterly lost in the rain. My fingers slipped on my phone as I tried to navigate, but the maps functions were struggling amongst the rural fields and the shoddy weather. The heavy rain tumbled down around me and obscured my vision to the potential cars in front and behind. My heart thumped nervously. I felt well out of my depth. I still had not hit the walking track that I thought I had spied from Arrowtown. I continued this way past the halfway mark, just finding turns that would keep taking me south.
I certainly was far from comfortable.
My leg muscles started seizing, protesting angrily against the hills and the lack of proper recovery since my third marathon in Melbourne just a week ago…
I cast my mind to anything other than running. Quitting was not an option. I had find this track. I just had to…
And then, over an hour later than I thought I would have, I spied it: a gravel track heading south. With relief I turned left, climbed tiredly over a hill…
And gasped.
The mountains stood strong, bold and magnificent before me. The rain had dissipated, and the sun found a gap or two to peak through. In a moment of calm serenity, I felt my heart pump with excitement and a connection to the Earth at the bottom of my feat.
I was alone in the world with just my breath, in a moment I will cherish forever.
I surged on with a new mindset; an intention to just absorb the experience around me. Though the pain continued and the Wall eventually did return, I crossed the Shotover River bridge, passed through Frankstown, and trundled along Lake Wakatipu with a heart that felt full to the brim. I may have been back to walking in increments, but I was far from Toronto and a very different person. I knew I would finish, no matter how slowly, and so when I sat down finally on the boardwalk of Queenstown I had pain on the outside, but nothing other than joy within.
I had found it.
I had found what began at the end of my comfort zone.
And I now knew, without a doubt, that it would all be worth it.
Reflection
Nothing had prepared me for the challenge that came to me in Queenstown. I got lost, hungry, cold and sore tackling the hills, but it was something I would have never tried if I hadn’t sought the edge of my own boundaries.
So where is the end of your comfort zone? What makes you feel a little scared? The next time you are there, embrace it. Soak it in. Hold on to that feeling. Use it to remind yourself that you’re not at the end of your limit, but at the beginning. It’s a thrilling, amazing thing, destined to help you grow. All it takes is a small step forward in a field to go farther than you’ve ever been before.
I revisited this post and it has been two years now since I ran that marathon. I no longer have the magnet…
But I think about it now more than I ever did when it sat upon my fridge.
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