The Value of failure

I awake with a start. Slightly disoriented. Sore, stiff, and crammed into the jump seat in the back of a stranger’s truck in Lake Tahoe. Back where my day started…after bailing, yet again... halfway through a 100 mile run. I reached the mile 58 aid station after a death march of a half dozen miles; throwing up constantly and sitting down to let dizzy spells pass every ¼ mile. Things had started off well enough in the early part of the day but the heat, the altitude, the relentless toil of the effort revealed the truth of my ready state and I arrived in the aid station only to collapse and beg for a ride back to the start line and my car. Low – the only thing hurting more than my feet is my sense of self-confidence. In time, lessons will reveal themselves, but for now there is nothing to do but accept and sit with the disappointment.

Distance running is a lesson in failure… it’s your constant companion. One can get Pollyanna and talk about how it’s all lessons, which is true, but that also casts aside the very really experience. No one likes to fail. No one likes to return home and explain to their friends, their partners, their self that after all that effort and time invested, they failed to accomplish the task… that it was too big, too painful, that they were too scared, that they had not trained enough… Doubt, fear, pain these are the gatekeepers to the 100 mile realm. One of the beautiful gifts of running is that we learn to dance with these forces. Engage them in a back and forth and invite ourselves to step beyond binary vision into a world where multiple truths can be held all at the same time.

Humans love things that are easy to digest. Did you finish the run or not? Did you win the race or not? Was it easy or hard? But running by its very nature, especially big ultras, defies such binary classification. So much happens during a 24-hour race that it cannot be understood in such simple terms. There is not a simple answer to the question “how did it go?” My day in Tahoe was a failure from one perspective, no question. I did not accomplish the goal I set forth. I did not return with a good feeling or any sense of pride. But, from another perspective I gained something even more valuable that day – data – as the soreness receded over the following days, I was able to analyze what had worked and what had happened as the wheels fell off. I tore into the nutrition to see what upset my stomach so I could avoid it next time. I reconsidered the training and acclimatization I had engaged in before the race looking for things to be adjusted before trying again. But more than anything that day, once I was quiet and honest with myself, I noticed that there had been a nagging voice telling me nonstop to quit. That this was hard, and I should just throw in the towel, grab a beer and eat some BBQ with my friends… I had tried to stuff that voice down all day with no luck. It continually seeped into my will and drained my batteries. I realized that I had heard that voice before… that I often heard it during big runs… And I realized that my relationship to it needed to change.

And so the dance began and my relationship with myself took a turn toward the deeper. I have learned to make friends with that voice, to ask him questions more than follow his lead, to invite him to join me when he shows up during a long run. He is still in there with me, but now he sits in the back seat instead of the driver’s chair. Now, I consider him an old friend and find myself smiling when he speaks up. I know his tricks and I don’t have to let him push my buttons anymore… Success doesn’t teach us much beyond what it feels like to feel good. I am thankful running is always there to show us the tough parts we need to work on. What a blessing…