During the first few miles of the Brooklyn Marathon this past Sunday, one line kept looping through my head: “It was an unmitigated disaster.”
My body was trying its best to run the 6:50-minute miles I needed for a 3-hour marathon, but my mind was prepping for failure – in this case, the failure of going to work on Monday and telling my coworkers I quit the race early.
If your mind is as hyperactive as mine, then you can imagine how often this loop replayed in my head. I told myself to think positive, but my new failure mantra kept sneaking its way in:
“It was an unmitigated disaster – I tweaked my back the day before the race, I had shin splints in the first few miles, I did no speed work training leading up to it and I idiotically thought I could will myself to break three hours.”
Two miles into the race, and I was focused on quitting well, not running well.
No amount of reasoning, insulting or begging could quiet my negativity and keep me from sabotaging myself. As Lori Gottlieb says, sometimes “you are not the best person to talk to you about you right now.” My mind was misinterpreting a whole bunch of signals – shin splints, humidity, soreness – and telling me to quit. My mind was acting crazy.
Only by zeroing in on a single mile could I make it through.
I made each mile its own race, with its own goal: Get as close to 6:50 pace as I could. Unable to squash the mantra entirely, I caught it halfway and rebranded it. “It was an unmitigated f- success.”
Each mile got progressively worse. You get what you train for, and despite my optimism in the weeks leading up to the race, nothing about my training indicated I could break three hours. But the miles ticked by, and before I knew it I’d hit the halfway mark, then mile 20, and then I was done. The unmitigated disaster – while certainly not enjoyable – had produced a 3:19:33, one minute faster than my previous best at the Hamptons Marathon in 2018 and a long way from my goal for the year.
Looking back on Sunday, I see a familiar pattern:
- Reach for something big (3 hours)
- Avoid the hard work (no speed training)
- Hope for luck (willpower)
- Flinch at difficulty (shin splints)
- Prepare to fail (unmitigated disaster)
How often do you prepare to fail?
Any goal worth pursuing should be challenging, and by all measures this one is: Only about two percent of marathoners run sub-3-hours. Yet I’d convinced myself I could break three hours with sheer willpower. I wanted to reach my goal so I could quit my goal. I didn’t want to have to sign up for another marathon in the fall and embark on a harder cycle of training. So I went into the race expecting to run 6:50 minute miles, and when it became clear early on that there was no way I could keep pace, I crumbled.
The purpose of training is to prepare – whether practicing for a big interview, studying for a big test or training for a big race. And while it’s tempting to think the right mindset will lead us to over-perform, the reality is that most people accomplish great things with great effort.
I had trained, but not to break three hours. Rather than racing towards an unrealistic goal, I would have been better served racing towards the one I’d prepared for: Setting a new PR, benchmarking my fitness and figuring out what I needed to do for the fall. Instead, I hoped for the easy way out.
But good things are hard things, and the easy way out is never as good as it sounds. If I’d broken three hours last weekend, I’d be left wondering: What am I really capable of?
And that’s the question I set out to answer in the first place. I wanted to improve as a runner. I wanted to accomplish something I never could have imagined back in 2016, reading Hal Higdon’s Marathon in preparation for my first big race. As Brené Brown says:
“I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage, or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both.”
The Brooklyn Marathon kicked my ass, and reminded me of the hard work to come.
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
Risk Assessment – Robert Glazer
“In some cases, the outcome might be very severe (like a plane crash) but the probability is so low that it renders the risk very low on an absolute basis. In other cases, there might be a very high likelihood of a negative, but not fatal, outcome. In these instances, the overall level of risk is actually higher, even if it feels less dire.”
Unearned Confidence vs. Humility – Brenden Leonard, Semi Rad
“Male Answer Syndrome, Ace explained to me as we hiked along, was when a man is asked a question, and despite not knowing the correct answer, starts talking anyway, instead of just saying ‘I don’t know.‘”
Bike-shedding: When trivial tasks ruin your day – Khe Hy, Rad Reads
“Instead of tackling the guilty culprits (screen time, work boundaries, caffeine and alcohol) we go straight to the Shiny New Toys. We research thousand-dollar Chili Pads and $400 Oura Rings. We know the answer to our sleep issues, yet we “bike-shed away” the solution on trivial toys that won’t ultimately move the needle.”
What I’m Watching:
Severance – Apple TV+
Holy creepy.
WeCrashed – Apple TV+
Bye, bye, bye, bye bye!