Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. I say this all the time, yet seemingly every post I’ve written in recent months revolves around me repeating the same stupid shit, suffering the consequences, professing some profound little lesson I think I’ve learned from it, and then eventually acknowledging that I’ve learned absolutely nothing.

It’s embarrassing.

This past Saturday, I found myself again standing anxiously at the start of the Ultra-Trail Harricana 80km run. My Harricana exploits and failures have been well documented in this blog over the years. This isn’t some local trail race where I could show up, bullshit my way through a few hours, and collect another medal for my wall. This year’s race had been circled on my calendar for ten months, giving me plenty of time to appreciate exactly what I’d signed up for and, theoretically, plenty of time to prepare for it.

Eighty kilometres through the mountains and forests of the Charlevoix. Technical trails, a shitload of climbing, and, if things went according to previous experience, a considerable portion of the day spent in some kind of distress that needed to be managed.

The problem was that life between signing up last November and standing at the start line continued to happen. Work has been busier than ever, and somewhere along the way training and taking care of myself took a back seat to everything else. Runs got squeezed into whatever spaces were available. The long ones weren’t always long enough. Trail runs barely existed. Sleep and recovery became things I’d get around to later.

None of this is particularly unusual. In fact, it’s all too familiar. And none of it is an excuse. I trained. I did the best I could with the time I gave myself. I just didn’t train enough for what I was about to ask my body to do. Again.

I seriously debated not participating because of my lack of preparation. There was a perfectly reasonable and adult argument for staying home, and I knew it. And yet, as race weekend arrived, I was anxious and excited in almost equal measure. Partly because I knew what was coming. Partly because, for reasons I still don’t completely understand, I genuinely love these runs. And partly because my recent history has taught me something that is probably both useful and incredibly dangerous: I think I’m difficult to kill.

That’s the problem with repeatedly surviving your own bad decisions. Eventually, you start trusting yourself to survive the next one. So I packed my gear and whatever fitness I’d managed to accumulate and headed for La Malbaie with Lu as my sidekick for the weekend.

We left the auberge at 4:30 Saturday morning and drove through the darkness toward the start. It was a beautiful, brisk morning, and by the time I stood on the start line, the sun was coming up behind the mountains. There was no more training to squeeze in. No more preparation to worry about. No more questioning whether I’d done enough.

I hadn’t. And I was there. And it was time to go.