GODZone Adventure Race. New Zealand, 2019. Thirty-something teams, hundreds of miles of mountain terrain and an itsy bitsy, tiny rock in the bottom of my shoe.
I knew it was there. I felt it early during a stream crossing—that small, stubborn pressure point working itself into the bottom of my foot. We were moving well. Racing well. The kind of pace that makes you think twice before you ask your team to stop so you can shake a pebble out of your shoe.
So, I didn’t stop.
You know what happens next, because you’ve probably made the same decision in some form. The pebble does its thing. Your skin does what skin does. What started as an inconvenience became a blister on the ball of my foot. Then it spread to my heel. Then my toes. Then my limp became a problem for the team, and now the whole thing had moved from my foot into my head.
That’s where it got dark. I started talking about it. Not to solve it—just to say it. My foot is killing me. I’m slowing everyone down. This is ruining my race.
I was crying and moaning in my soup, and I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to stop. My teammates could hear every word. The pain became the only thing in my mind. The race—the mountains, the kayaks, the miles still ahead—all of it disappeared behind a few angry pieces of skin.
My race buddy had heard enough. He looked at me and said, point blank straight to my face: “Blisters don’t make decisions.”
That was it. No speech. No motivational moment. Just a cold, hard fact. And something clicked.
He was right. The blisters were real. The pain was real. I wasn’t imagining it. I could barely walk. But the blisters had no authority over my mind. They were getting a vote in the conversation, and I had handed them command.
That’s the mistake. Pain is information. Pain is not the commanding officer. It gets a report. It does not get command nor the final say.
That is where a Trident’s Mindset matters—not in the easy moments, but in the hard ones. When your body is barking, your attitude is slipping and your mind starts building a case for quitting.
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Break Big Challenges Into Smaller Goals
The first tool was micro-goals. I stopped thinking about the finish line or how many miles were left. I thought about the next waypoint. The next transition. The next paddle. When the whole race feels impossible, one more bend in the river is achievable. Then you get to that bend and pick another one.
Use Positive Self-Talk to Stay Focused
The second was self-talk. I had been talking myself deeper into the proverbial hole—narrating my suffering out loud like a man who expected someone to rescue him. I flipped it. Instead of announcing the pain, I started describing the mission. Where we were headed. What the team needed. What finishing looked like.
Visualize Success When the Going Gets Tough
The third was visualization. I put my mind on the finish line, not the pain. The kayak on the water. The shoreline. The team walking our boat up together.
We finished that race. We carried our kayaks to the finish line on foot, my feet so destroyed I couldn’t walk back to where we were staying. I had to rent a bicycle just to ride up the hill to our place—swollen, wrecked and quietly satisfied.
That is what enduring persistence looks like. Not heroic. Not clean. Not always some triumphant moment in front of a crowd. Sometimes it looks like limping toward the finish with swollen feet, a tired team and just enough humor left to laugh at yourself.
Sometimes it looks like needing a friend to remind you who is actually in charge. That day, Tosh gave me sage advice I have carried ever since.
Blisters don’t make decisions. Neither does fear. Neither does fatigue. Neither does pain.
You do.
