Natalie Gallant is a Macpac ambassador and a true trail badass. Natalie is a mountain lover and endurance athlete, passionate about exploring the rugged playground Aotearoa has to offer. In 2020 she ran the length of New Zealand and has been doing epic things since.
“Weather Anything” is Macpac’s tag line – weather any weather, any activity, any terrain. The idea is easy to grasp considering their gear is high quality and you can trust it no matter what, especially for a multiday expedition race like GodZone. This year “Weather Anything” was my motto. Rather than the physical challenge, it was the mental challenges I found hardest to endure. From the most limiting injury I’ve ever had, to the worst post-race adventure blues, GodZone Chapter 11 was a wave-train of emotions that no amount of training could have prepared me for.
Was it one of best things I’ve ever done?
Yes.
Upon reflection, the last six months have taught me about overcoming those feelings that suck. Feelings like frustration, hopelessness and loss that can have you teetering on a tightrope toward depression. Feelings that can overwhelm your rational brain, leaving your emotional chimp brain to take full charge. Yet those uncensored feelings are 100% valid and I learnt that when you need too, it’s ok to just let them rip.
Let’s rewind six months. I’d been asked by a friend of mine to be their fourth team member in GodZone Pure Fjordland, home to this year’s World Expedition Racing Championships. GodZone is a self-navigational race that has you pack rafting, trekking and cycling across some of New Zealand’s most rugged terrain for nearly 600km. With minimal sleep, winning teams take around 4 days while the slower ones you can double that. My answer? Absolutely, without a doubt, yes. But then the doubt crept in. Am I fit enough? Am I strong enough? My teammates were all weapons, and at that point I didn’t even have a mountain bike. Maybe it was my drive to prove to myself, to give my insecurities and self-doubt the two fingers, and even more so I didn’t want to let my team mates down by being the weak link, that I threw myself into training.
Photography: KarnChristianGZ11-29
My cycling onslaught resulted in a cartilage injury to the back of my patella and a beauty of a bone bruise. Even with a painfully swollen knee I was in denial there was anything wrong. Classic me. I couldn’t run, cycle or even climb stairs for months and about as fast as my quad muscle withered so too did my hopes for competing.
Anyone who’s ever had an injury and normally thrives on activity will know that when you take away that regular shot of endorphins there’s potential to go to a very dark place. With this cloud cloaking your judgement, realigning your mindset can be tricky. Aside from speaking to a counsellor (which I had never done before, but now can totally recommend!), I did the only thing I knew and got my ass in the gym. I had to move somehow, in some way to keep me sane. My hard work paid off and by Christmas I found that I could run before I could cycle. Que new years, and I was back on the team. I felt having something taken away from me just fueled the fire and burning desire to succeed, so I funneled this energy back into training. My knee was still healing so I paid attention to it and trained mindfully. With only six weeks to go I got the thumbs up from the sports doc and did what I could, including buy a mountain bike and shaping some hulk-like quads.
Photography: KarnChristianGZ11-87
As bizarre as it sounds competing in GodZone itself felt like the easy part. Once you’re at the start line, there is nothing to do other than focus on the task at hand and put one foot in front of the other. What will be will be. Turns out my knee wasn’t the problem, more my lack of ability to stay awake at night in a pack raft!
My teammates were incredible, and we completed the race without getting short coursed, an awesome feat for a new team and one that we were all proud of. Especially considering I didn’t even think I’d be making it to the start line and then still felt I’d winged it by the seat of my cycle pants.
When you spend 24/7 doing epic things with epic people, drip fed by a consistent cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, cortisol and dopamine, you know there has to be a come down at some point. I can only liken post adventure blues to a surf break – the bigger the adventure the bigger the wave and the more intense the potential wipe out. I felt like post GodZone blues had me pinned under for a while.
As elated as I initially was, during the following weeks I suppressed a sense of loss and despair, feeling the need to battle on with a brave face. I’d tell myself that I’d just done a really privileged thing, do I really have the right to wallow in a bath of self-induced pity? My body held up well, but my brain was fried. My chimp brain ran riot – think nude streaker at a rugby game kind of riot – my rational brain could not keep up; chimp was off and gunning for it. Precisely one week after resuming life where I’d left it, I could no longer suppress how low I felt and had a complete snot filled melt down. To my benefit and partly their shock, a friend caught me in this point of emotional nakedness. Nothing really needed to be said, I just needed a hug, and a really, really long sleep.
Photography: James Hustler
So my advice to anyone who has ever felt similarly is to weather any challenge. There will always come the day you can look back and laugh. And while we do have a natural talent for forgetting, that’s what makes us sign up to something all over again, right?
With that in mind, here are my tips to weather any post-adventure blues:
Photography: KarnChristianGZ11-87
- Don’t shut out your emotions. Listen to them and allow yourself to have the feels, the more you recognize them and talk to them (and friends, family or professionals about them) the quicker they will move on.
- Be patient and kind to yourself, the tide will slowly change, just try to be at peace with riding it out for a while.
- Eat well, sleep well and get outside whenever you can.
- Take time to reflect on your achievements before thinking ‘what’s next’, our brains need some processing time. “We don’t learn from experiences; we learn from reflecting on experiences.”
- Spend time with friends who make you shine. True friends won’t mind you borrowing some of their shininess until you replenish your own.
