Mental Weakness/Mental Toughness

Mental Weakness vs. Mental Toughness

A few years back we adopted a saying around our house called "mental weakness". This term is used in our household in many situations. For example, the whole house gets a stomach bug except one person, well the sick people are just mentally weak. Can't talk yourself out of a nice warm bed on a winter morning to exercise then you are mentally weak. We pride ourselves on avoiding mental weakness at our house and frequently challenge one another by calling them mentally weak. So this past weekend when David and I decided to tackle the hiking trail at Torreya State Park we were having no part of mental weakness talk. We had read that this trail was the closest you could come to Applaichain Trail conditions in the state of Florida. Great, we're up for it. David's sister had done this trail and told horror stories of the difficulty of the trail. Surely she was just mentally weak. Well let me just say I was wrong. There was a river of mental weakness flowing off my body while we hiked this trail.

Torreya State Park has two hiking trails. One is a 7 mile loop and one is a 5 mile loop called the Torreya Challenge. David and I were drawn to the challenge loop like a moth to a lightbulb. It had the word challenge in the name so it had to be hard right, RIGHT. We missed the trailhead where the maps that had mileage were located so using a posted map we found an connector trail to the main 7 mile loop where we then hiked to another connector trail to the challenge loop. Of course we had to reverse this process on the return trip. No problem it doesn't look that far. No mental weakness for us.

Well 5 1/2 hours later we finally emerged from the trail. Challenge was an understatement. This trail was up and down hills all the way. You would hike down a long trail into a ravine and then hike back out of the ravine only to do it all over again. I was doing good for the first 3 hours and then all these mentally weak thoughts started creeping into my head like "what are you thinking?"; "just think how hard this is going to be when you are carrying a 40 pound pack on your back!"; "are you crazy, you can't do the AT"; "are you sure you even want to do the AT?" and it just went on and on as my legs got weaker. After 4 1/2 hours I really hit a wall and just had to stop, sit down and drink a lot of water. I was so hot and tired that I just thought I would die. MENTAL WEAKNESS!

But guess what? I didn't die! I took a deep breath, a long drink of water and told myself to get my butt off the ground and get moving. I can do this, I want to do this and I will do this. It won't be easy...if it was easy everyone would be doing it! MENTAL TOUGHNESS!

It takes mental toughness to make it through life. The mentally weak see themselves as victims. The mentally tough see themselves as survivors. This hiking thing is about getting out of my comfort zone and pushing myself to the limit and coming out on the other side stronger and tougher!

In the end we calculated we hiked 10 miles in 5 1/2 hours. Now 2 days later the pain in my calf muscles is finally easing off and I am left with a stronger sense of mental toughness and memories of the 7 deer we saw while on the trail. We may just drive to Torreya this weekend and do it again!

Happy Trails!