You trained for months. You imagined crossing the finish line. You pushed through every cold, early morning, spent time away from family, friends, work, ran your heart out…and then…You didn’t finish.

A DNF can cut deep. It can shake your confidence, your identity as an athlete, and your trust in your own body. I am no stranger to DNF’s – just check out this post a few years back and this podcast. But I’m going to tell you, DNF’s are not the opposite of success. They’re opportunities to rebuild self-belief from the inside out.

Every endurance and mountain sport athlete knows the moment when their legs burn, their stomach churns, and their mind screams to stop.

We work arduously to rid ourselves of these distractions - of these annoying thoughts and feelings that push us towards quitting, but to no avail. They keeping coming back. We can push them down, ignore them, sometimes we try to ‘reframe’ them – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing - if it works. But like flies on shit, they keep coming back.

For those of you who were following along. I didn’t finish Lead Challenge. Once again, I was cut-off on the bike, this time at sixty-three miles. Then cut-off on the run a week later at…sixty-three miles.

While I felt ‘stronger’ on the bike I wasn’t faster. For three years in a row, I came into the forty-mile mark at the same exact time – literally, you can’t get closer - four hours and seven minutes exactly. The run was a bit different. I was significantly faster and stronger but fatigue from the races slowed me to a crawl once I was on the big climbs. A big sign that durability was a problem.