Finally facing my Waterloo!

by Natalie Ashdown

This is my short story of my journey to complete the Oxfam 100km walk - a walk (or run) that covers 62.1 miles (100kms) in 48 hours for charity. In 2010 I had formed a team of 4 people to complete the event.  We had spent hours and hours training, and raised $5000.00. 

We started the event early in the morning at 7am with the brilliant sun-rise which promised a crisp, great day and importantly no rain.  We walked through the morning, through the afternoon and into the night, stopping at checkpoints along the way and meeting our crew for peanut-butter sandwiches and energy drinks. 

At the 45km mark we decided to stop and sleep – it was 1am.  We fell into the make-shift tent, with 4 people, we begged some students to tape our blistered feet, but no amount of taping could keep my feet warm from the cold night which promised nothing but a challenge.  I put my head into my sleeping bag to let my warm breath warm the bag and my body and willed myself to sleep counting backwards from one-thousand.  999 inhale, exhale, 998 inhale exhale.

It was not yet morning but 21 hours into our journey, I got up at 4am as promised, I would not let the team down.  Ploughing on with a spirit in my step and being grateful for being alive, and for the opportunity to achieve something that I had set out to achieve months and months before.

I had a new relationship with health and what was possible, and now as I climbed the latest hill and crossed the dirty, dry grass, willing my body to get to the checkpoint with my personal trainer herself pushing me from behind we were headed for 37.3 miles checkpoint (or 60kms).

I had walked over some of the steepest hills, taking in the breath-taking scenery as part of the journey.

Then I heard a voice saying “perhaps you should call it a day”.  But it was not my voice.

I looked across to the checkpoint and all the support crew had already packed up.  The white tents had been pulled down and some where flapping freely in the breeze having one last dance before being stuffed into their carry bags and now, only the banging of steel poles could be heard as one by one the structures where dismantled.

Two people remained to check us in, encouraging us by saying we were not the last group to cross the line, but that they were worried about us because they couldn’t contact us on the trail.  Water was all that they could offer us, not even the energy drinks that we had grown accustomed to filling up on.

“Perhaps you should stop.”

It was not my voice.

“You’ve come this far, I’m worried about you.”

It was not my voice.

He cared for me, my husband, I could see the pain in his own face, and in his body.  He was one of the team members and going strong on the trek, but doing it hard.  His face was as muddy as his shoes and his energy was as grey as his unshaved whiskers. 

He cared for me.

Never had I considered stopping, not ever.

Until now.

It was not my voice.

It was his voice.

A voice of pain and caring, of not wanting to see me suffer.

Yet I was not suffering. Not really.  Not until that point.

I collapsed on the ground with my peanut butter sandwich.  Willing the energy from this squashed white bread, flattened beyond recognition, to come into my body, yet it seemed to refuse to give me the lift that I needed.  Betrayed by a poor excuse for a peanut butter sandwich. And some berry flavoured energy drink that drained out of my body as quickly as I could put it in.  Berry flavoured. I preferred orange.  Orange would give me energy.  But orange was not available.

Then my head filled with new voices. I was letting the team down by continuing.  I could continue but at what cost to the team.

I told the team I was thinking of stopping. I looked at my blistered and worn feet.  I willed them not to hurt, I willed the strapping upon strapping upon strapping to prevent my toenails from coming off.

And then the deed was done.

I made a decision.

I would stop, for the benefit of the team. 

I was slowing them down. 

Better that I stop and let the team finish, than to hold them back. 

A mercy killing on the side this pathetic road, in the middle of an abandoned soccer field, that nobody had cared to play on for many years now. “Take a bullet for the team” said the voice, and it was my voice.

The tears flowed now, pouring from my eyes uncontrollably and stinging my face in a cruel salty twist. And my nose joined the blubbering mess I was becoming.

“You’ve done the right thing”. Said a voice. It was not my voice.

“There’s no shame in stopping”. Said a voice. It was not my voice.

“You’ve achieved so much, you can be so proud”. Said a voice, it was not my voice.

Words of comfort, but not from my voice.

The team carried on, they finished the journey, a remarkable feat of physical endurance, crossing the line at 3am with a massive crowd of 3 people cheering in the darkness as a beacon for them to follow and the sounds of Abba’s Waterloo blaring over the PA system to anyone who cared to listen.  Just my team.  Waterloo – I was defeated you won the war.

It has been over 18 months since the event finished. Yet my voice would not let me fully appreciate my journey.  What it takes to be able to walk 60 kms (37.3 miles non stop), what an achievement.

My voice called me a failure.

My voice said I let the team down.

My voice said I didn’t achieve my goals.

My voice said “how could my husband do that”.

My voice said “how could my team do that – leave me behind”.

My story said “that’s not what team members do, they should never have left me, we agree to cross the line together, the team sticks together, they don’t let each other down, they cross the line together”.

My voice, my story, would I have my happy ending? 

The words of the song, they are calling me now, beckoning in a new story.

Waterloo – I was defeated you won the war.

Waterloo – promise to love me forever more.

But how could I ever refuse, I feel like I win when I loose.

To feel like a winner, when you loose?

What did I loose? – nothing!

I gained so much from this journey and there is so much more to come, so much more that is possible because of the journey.

So much to learn, so much to celebrate, so much to forgive.

A new story to write.

Promise to love me forever more.

Now I’m a runner!  Just completed my first 5km run!  What a buzz!  Aiming for 10km and going strong.

Promise to love me forever more.

Footnote:
Oxfam was spurred on after a team member my business development manager had a heart-attack and nearly died.  My voice said I was a bad boss, I caused the heart attack, I put her under too much pressure. None of that was true. She had a generic heart disorder and naturally very high levels of cholesterol. Her mother had died at the same age that she had had the heart-attack. It didn’t help the voices. 

Promise to love me forever more.

How Much Fairy Dust Is Too Much Fairy Dust?

With a lovely story about "fairy dust" I discovered that just because I am trying to make things "better", doesn't make them so!

By Natalie Ashdown.

I had a lovely coaching session recently where I had the opportunity to reflect on a situation that I rather regretted.  A team member gave me a copy of an article that they had written for a blog and asked for some feedback.

I was in a bit of  a hurry and didn’t fully digest the article and wanted to be able to read it quickly and then post the blog. I was having an extremely busy day.

Anyway, as I was reading it I could quickly see how improvements could be made, so I asked if I could quickly type my thoughts in as I went.  She agreed.

What happened however, was that I was quickly re-writing the whole article – cutting and pasting and chopping and changing.  I rewrote the heading, explaining as I was going along what I thought it needed to be and say. 

I wasn’t doing any coaching and didn’t ask her anything about what she was actually trying to achieve.  I just got it to the point where I thought it was better and I felt that I was being really encouraging. Her work was a really great effort, really good thoughts, but I wanted to make it better!

Then I couldn’t do anymore, so I turned to her and said “by the way I’d cut that paragraph out too!”

The look of horror on her face.

“That’s the paragraph I liked the best”, she said.

“I’ve killed it, haven’t I,” I said and then tried to explain what I thought it should look like by showing her one of my blogs.

It was her first ever article.  First attempt at really writing and documenting something that was important, from the heart.

I had done more than killed it.  I had stomped, squashed, splattered and destroyed it.  So I quickly saved it and emailed back to her (in front of her) with a sort of line like “So anyway, you get what I mean!”

When I debriefed it with my coach, he asked “what role or character was I trying to be in this story?”  I said that I wanted to be a fairy - sprinkling fairy-dust over things to make things better.  But that I had totally destroyed the story and I was more like the King ordering “off with her head!”

How much fairy dust is too much fairy dust?  What was driving me to sprinkle fairy dust anyway?  Was I a good fairy or a wicked fairy?  All good questions!

Then I had this image.  I had sprinkled a little fairy dust, sure. But then I up-ended a whole bucket of fairy dust on the team member and her article. I had this vision of a little person smothered in fairy dust and trying to dig her way out saying “Ah, hello, anybody? Kind of suffocating here! Dig me out…anybody?”

Poor little person!   Too much fairy dust can smother a person!

So it was a good reminder about how important coaching is! Fancy the coach forgetting to do coaching!  Shame on me really.  And also a good reminder that you can have all the best intentions in the world and they can back fire if you go in too hard, too strong, or even inappropriately.  I was fixated on fixing the article, rather than thinking about the person who wrote the article and how she might feel – until the damage was done.

But it’s only shame if you don’t learn the lesson and I certainly did. I was a bit embarrassed.

I pulled the team member aside the next day, explained my positive intention and the fairy dust story and really gave her a heart-felt apology.  I wanted her to know the mistakes that I had made and the lessons that I had learned. It was a terrific conversation and we both got a lot out of it. 

We have cleared the air and everything is terrific - not that it wasn’t great beforehand, the rewriting of the article had knocked her confidence a little, but she understood where I was coming from and thought everything I was saying was great.  By the way, that’s no excuse for my behaviour, just because she’s ok with it!!

However, funnily enough, I do not feel that the story is finished because she hasn’t finished writing her article, and the article hasn’t been posted.  I killed the story!  I killed the opportunity!  So now, I feel that I will feel unsatisfied until it is actually resurrected and posted.  Oh I do hope she does it soon so that this story can have a happy ending!

What have you learned about "making things better"?