Good races and bad races are often measured by others from a simple metric. If you run fast, it's good; if you win, it's good; if you lose and run slowly, it's bad. That's a pretty simple definition and measure for many people to gauge success.
By that measure I just spent my last year failing. I did, but not for THAT reason. I don't think of success or failure that way. Success can come by way of the process. By that measure, Twin Cities Marathon, Houston, and Brighton triple marathon build-up was actually a success. I really think of it that way too. The work I did isn't erased from my muscles memory because the clock didn't agree with me that day. All of those good workouts don't vanish. I didn't get “unfit.”
I got burried! That was my biggest failure. My second failure (arguable which caused which) was that I lost focus of why I was out there racing in the first place. That's the one that killed my year.
A good friend of mine from college called me after Houston and shared a powerful third party observation. I lost my purpose. I was running only for myself lately. I haven't been running for that “something” bigger than me, whether a team, a coach, a school, my family, anything! I suck at that because I am very comfortable with who I am and what I've done. Then he reminded me that he wasn't satisfied and that I represent him as well. I felt like a bad teammate, but he was absolutely right.
I never settle for mediocrity. I never accept complacency. I hate people going through the motions.
That became my running. I ran 2014 scared. I was no longer the 22 year old just out of a D3 school taking all of the big D1 heads in major races. I was not longer the guy I was when I got to where I am now...and I mean that in the worst way possible.
At the same time as my friend was calling me out on my recent goals and motivations, I began reading a new (okay, a really old) book called Psycho-Cybernetics. My college coach recommended it to me about 15 years ago and at least a dozen more times since. I found it sitting on a bookshelf at my girlfriend's house over Christmas break and started tearing through it on the flight home. It felt like the book was written directly to me.
One message in the book is how humans are goal-striving beings who can't drive themselves into discomfort without goals. Another message is about how a series of negative experiences can be difficult to offset until you accept that there have also been a series of positives among them. The mind has to relearn how to focus and channel into the positives and look at the negatives as anomalies. The author calls it the success mechanism. I found myself wishing I had read this book over a decade ago when it was first recommended. Somehow I felt like it was serendipitous that I found it just when I did.
I have found my goals again. I have done something lately that I haven't done since 2010 when I first moved to Colorado. I redefined success. Workouts don't need to be faster than race pace or longer than race distance for me to get a benefit. I'm at 6000+ feet of altitude on hilly terrain for crying out loud! A lot of benefit can come from a sustained 5:20 pace tempo up here. The improbable thing that came along with it was that I am running FASTER now instead of slower. I don't fear failing workouts and so I run more comfortably at a faster pace. I run free now.
Matt Gabrielson responded to one of my tweets last week when I said I lowered the bar for my success and now I exceed every measure. He said that he had the same experience in his own training and racing. “Running free” as my college coach would call it, has been incredibly liberating and now I'm excited every time I get out for a workout. More of these positive experiences are now dominating my training landscape and my confidence is back! I've decided to reconnect with the North Central College Track Club and use that positive energy to power my training through the next 5 weeks. That's my measuring stick now. The guys from my alma mater still love to see each other succeed. Our little D3 school of 2000 people now has 2 marathon trials qualifiers and we have more that should get it before next year. I feel like we're a team again. I can work myself to the bone again for that bond with those guys. We're back, North Central! I won't let you down, men!
