At the beginning of this month, something happened that deep down I knew would eventually happen:
I didn't meet my goal.
I believe the risk of failing is one of the things we have to consider when we set goals for ourselves. My goal seemed simple enough: a sub 2 hour American River Parkway Half Marathon. I had completed a half marathon in late March at a little under a 2:03, so shaving off 3 minutes didn't seem that impossible.
I finished at 2:10:32. It was the first race I have ever done where the thought of ditching the race midpoint was tempting.
My time for the Silicon Valley half-marathon in October last year was 2:10:50. Not only did I fail at meeting my goal, I was only 20 seconds faster than I was 7 months ago. Let me remind you that this was before my crazy training.
As I crossed the finish line-- barely making eye contact with the clock that clearly showed my shortcomings---I felt the weight of defeat on my shoulders. Let's make one thing clear---I am not going out to win the gold, silver or even place in the top 10 of my age group. I run for a different reason, which is to beat one person: myself. I go in with the mentality of hoping to beat whatever time I did before, because that must mean I have improved. But what does it mean when 7 months go by (2 1/2 of which were fairly intense training) and I only improve 20 seconds?
The disappointment I felt in myself brought a thought that I tried to push aside: why bother working so hard if the payoff isn't there? This thought is what I call being in the dark place of running and teetering so close to the edge where drooling over running shoes doesn't seem as important as being a couch zombie zoning on reality TV. I feared that my tendency to not finish what I started would come back because I know my personality likes to take on things quickly but lacks the drive to follow them through.
Luckily I snapped out of being a whiny baby and just accepted the fact that some runners must face eventually: it just wasn't my race. This realization is a sort of sporty version of "He's just not that into you." There are a ton of excuses I could list ranging from unexpected muscle problems, the stress of getting lost on the freeway before the race, not having coffee...but making excuses won't make those 10 minutes and 32 seconds disappear from my time.
So what is a girl to do? I forced myself to adhere to the needlepoint wisdom of learning from my mistakes and acknowledging the positives. So I didn't beat my time, but it was the first half marathon where I didn't have tummy issues. Yea! I also had to remind myself that this wasn't even my big event. My big triathlon is in August so getting all worked up about this race isn't going to help me at the half-iron man. Now I just look at Sacramento as a tiny blip on my running radar. It was merely a training run that got me and my husband out of town for the
weekend for a much needed getaway.
I know someday I will be under two hours. Just not that race--- and that is still fine with me.
1 comment:
You know how much I've raced this past year and this year... I went through a string of consecutive PRs. Most recently I have set a PR on every road marathon I've ran 4) and every trail marathon (2) and had ran a PR on every 50k until last weekend (4), when I ran the Quicksilver 50k (well it was suppossed to be a 50 mile race, so ooppps), where I came in 7 minutes slower than my previous trail 50k time. But I was ecstatic because I learned the most and ran the best that I had ever done to that point.
So no PR at Quicksilver, but the trade off was much better.
You'll get your at the half... I know it.
And by the way, I came here looking for your Uvas Triathlon report and it wasn't there! Instead was a half marathon report from a while ago... Hmmm...
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