It’s here. T-minus 36 hours.

I’ve spent this weekend in a haze, a fearful haze. Its the calm before the storm is the anticipation builds. I feel like I’m standing on the blocks of a relay race, and I just watched as my teammate flip turn in front of me and come racing back towards me. The world fades as he comes closer and closer and closer with each stroke and there’s nothing I can but wait to dive in and give my full effort. It’s this moment spread out agonizing for days. Like I’m trying to sleep before Christmas, but Christmas is the acceptance of a hard task, knowing that you are prepared for this and that you can feel it knowing that the culmination eight months of planning, preparation, training, injuries, sweat, blood, tears, and a good chunk of money comes down to this moment. A moment that is not forced. It’s a moment that I have willingly subjected myself to. I doubt myself, my ability, my preparation. The shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Yet here it is. With each stroke it comes closer. it’s no longer intangible, not a thing of months, weeks, or days but I now think in terms of hours. I’m supposed to go to work tomorrow and focus and do work yet I struggle to find any other thought then this hike. I have invested so much effort and so much emotional stock is this if this fails I will be crushed and humiliated. Every failure mode courses through my head, as here I sit nervous and scared. It is a pointless activity. There is no goal there’s no competition there’s no enemy but myself, but my past self and his hubris and pride. Pride that I now strive to validate. This nervous energy will just grow with every mile I come closer to that hole that ground. that beautiful hole in the ground.

It’s OK to be afraid for things that in the grand scheme of things don’t matter, but yet those are the things that matter the most. That’s what scares me: That this doesn’t matter but this matters so much.