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Reap what you sow

Comeback Kid

Kasabian

Now you may be identifying a trend with the song lyrics and british alt-rock kicking-off my posts instead of Greek philosophers and I have two things to say about that: 1.) You’re welcome for the song recs 2.) I think that they still capture the essence of stoicism 3.) It’s my post, so I make the rules. In my last post, I shared the pressure to be fast instead of having fun; I stopped comparing my efforts with my current best effort and was instead comparing them to my previous efforts and those of people around me.

The struggle to quantify effort through pace & distance is something that keeps me away from most “Social” running apps that are out there (MapMyRun, Strava, etc.). I struggle enough with sharing my training and what I’m learning without the pressure of seeing other people throwing down faster times and longer distances than I could dream of. Maybe I’m biased in thinking this, but I think it’s healthier – for me at least – to compare effort as opposed to speed. If you run a 2 hour half-marathon and knew that on that day you could have pushed and gotten a 1:30 are you “better” than the 3 hour half-marathoner that left it all out there on the course?

Obvious answer: Yes. But who fulfilled their potential that day? And should that be taken into account? Some of you might be saying: “Well it is a RACE after all. The less time you have the better.” and I’m with you… but I think it fails to capture the challenge that was overcome by each athlete. Should success only be measured by what we can capture and compared to what is relative to another? Or should we measure it by comparing it to what it could be relative to ourselves? Pierre de Coubertin did say that:

The important thing in Life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.

Why then, is it so difficult for me to ~feel~ that way?

Shame is the Name of the Game

Something worth addressing as I come down my effort v. pace soapbox, is that there is some shame wrapped up in my thoughts here. I struggle to call myself a runner, triathlete, swimmer or an even an athlete. I was never the “fast kid” in any of the sports that make up a Tri growing up. So now that I’m doing half, and training for full-distance tri’s, I feel some shame bubbling up, because I look around and it feels like the entire world is “outperforming” me – so who am I to suddenly call myself any of those nouns?

For every runner that I know who runs a sub-10 min mile as their warm-up, I feel myself retreat further and further away from the label of runner. For every swimmer that… you get the picture. As I’m writing this, I’m also realizing that part of my struggle is that I don’t have anyone readily available to compare my performance with – not too many 6’3, 200+lbs endurance athletes out there believe it or not.

It feels as if now that I have completed a few 70.3s, the label of “athlete” has been thrown on me and my impostor syndrome is rejecting it like a bad organ. I truly think that most people – in good to great health – could complete the race. To me it’s simply a matter of nutrition and how much pain & discomfort you can withstand for the length of the race. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic or perpetuating my own negative self-talk and impostor syndrome taking over, but it’s how I feel. So while I am proud to have accomplished one of my goals, I feel shame about parts of it as well, like my times.

So, what should I do?

All I Do Sometimes is Win (win win no matter what)

It’s so easy to remember the good as great and the bad as monstrous. Some training sessions are great, some are bad, some are miserable, and others transcendental, but I think that the aggregate of them will show that they are fair – perhaps they were not the training session that I felt I deserved or wanted, but they were fair. It’s hard to consider the positives while you’re riding the “this sucks” train straight to “I’m not good enough” with a quick stop at “I hate training” junction; however, it’s equally tough to consider the places to improve while you’re having a phenomenal session.

All that to say that I believe that the sessions that I commit to experience for their highest of highs and lowest of lows are going to be the ones that help me the most – physically and mentally. Maybe the answer is to focus on the moment and all the moments that make up those moments. If I stay in the present, give the best I can give in that moment, maybe I can stop caring about how my paces and efforts are perceived by others?

Is that what it means to be confident?