I’m participating in the Bandit Trail Run later this month, in appropriately named Rocky Peak Park. After coming home covered in dust, mud and dirt following several training runs there, my wife asked if trail running is mentally more challenging than staying on the road.

Perhaps it was inappropriate to remind her that it’s not the fall that kills you, but rather the sudden stop at the end.

I think what she’s really asking is whether it’s harder to stay focused mile after mind-numbing mile on a flat, asphalt course compared to doing so on treacherous trails. While I’m new to trail racing and still formulating my opinion, Lesley Paterson has certainly made up her mind. Paterson is the reigning XTERRA World Champion, the off-road equivalent to the Ironman World Champion crowned in Kona every October. She’s also an accomplished pro triathlete and runner on the road circuit, having won Mooseman 70.3, the OC International Triathlon, and Scotland’s 10-mile national running championship in 2011, along with several other top finishes throughout her 12-year career.

Paterson reveling in her win/Photo by XTERRA

In Paterson’s world, the path to triathlon nirvana lies past the paved shoulder. “It can be the most magical feeling in the world when it’s all flowing together, like dancing in the forest, and I don’t think you can get there on the road,” Paterson said. “In (road) triathlon, you’re numbing yourself of emotion. You can be in a zone on the trail but you have to have a certain consciousness of the world around you.”

Paterson elaborated by saying that trail runners may have more of a love-hate relationship with the land around them. As a result, that can make trail running easier and harder at the same time. On one hand, just to get up a hill or down a technical descent can help you reach your physical training mark for a particular workout. But if you’re fatigued in the middle of the workout, the terrain may not allow you to let up. “In most cases, when you’re racing and training off road the terrain can dictate your intensity,” Paterson said. “You’re not necessarily pushing yourself, the terrain is pushing you.”

One tough cookie/Photo by XTERRA

Paterson has experienced her own love-hate relationship with triathlon, starting as an elite junior triathlete competing for Great Britain and Scotland to make the 2004 Olympic team. The constant grind of competition, tough-love coaching and organizational politics eroded the teenage Paterson’s confidence and ultimately her desire to race at all. The low point came for Paterson when she missed qualifying for the Olympics and didn’t even care—until she watched the Commonwealth Games from the stands near her hometown. “I just remember spending the next week crying. I had just broken up in my relationship, too,” Paterson said.

The risks of training off-road are not necessarily worse than tangling with the urban jungle…

As is often the case on trails, a valley can lead to a new peak. Paterson changed her perspective and reinvented her life by moving to California to build an acting career. Training took a back seat to marriage, indie films and TV commercials. After a few years though, Paterson regained interest in running and racing. She picked some local events near San Diego and regained her stride, along with something even more important: passion and perspective. “I wasn’t scared to fail,” Paterson explained. “I had grown up with that fear of failure. All my eggs were in that basket. I already went through that failure and came out fine on the other side.”

During her running resurgence, Paterson picked up a magazine and read about XTERRA off-road racing. She experienced the same swell of emotion she first felt when discovering triathlon. Since 2008, she’s claimed 11 XTERRA podium finishes.

Despite Paterson’s string of racing success, she remains busy coaching, developing a triathlon-oriented reality TV series and shopping a script adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” for which she and her business partner (fellow LAVA Magazine contributor Ian Stokell) own the rights. Acting, racing and coaching intertwine, and Paterson draws on her acting experience to devise mental exercises for her athletes to incorporate in their training. (Having a husband who is a trained sport psychologist also helps.) As an example, Paterson will ask her athletes to remember a wonderful moment in their life and all the external factors that surrounded it. Then, whether it’s an item of clothing, a scent or piece of music, she urges clients to make sure those external items are immediately available in moments of anxiety to return to an optimal mental state. “With acting, you get to know yourself pretty well and learn to use your emotions and manipulate them, and that carries over to professional sports,” Paterson said. “There’s so much crossover it’s unbelievable.”

So far, I think there’s significant crossover between off-road and asphalt-based triathlon training. The discipline required to stay mentally present while riding and running long distances on a sometimes lonely road translates well to remaining focused to avoid slipping and sliding in a canyon pass. And the risks of training off-road are not necessarily worse than tangling with the urban jungle—just replace cars with snakes, potholes with gopher holes and anxious drivers with frenzied mountain bikers.

See, honey, there’s nothing to worry about at all.

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Ryan Schneider is an Ironman triathlete and blogger who works in brand development when he’s not swimming, biking or running. You can read his blog at ironmadman.com, follow him on Twitter (@theironmadman), and read his monthly column here at LAVA.