Friday Tri: DNFs and revising your goals

I don't like to DNF (Did Not Finish) at races. I suspect almost no amateur athletes do. After all, we're paying to be in the race. We don't want to go home without finishing it. But certainly many professional athletes DNF at races for reasons that make sense to me. They end up with too many mechanical problems to make up the lost time or they end up getting sick and feel it would be unwise to stress their bodies farther. I try not to make judgements about them being spoiled and all that (thought sometimes I am frustrated at the fact that I ALWAYS carry my own tubes and they seem to expect race vehicles to save them.) Still, they are in a different world than the one I am. Their priorities are different. They really can't afford to waste energy on a race that they're not going to win.

I've had multiple problems at races and finished anyway, including most recently a rather painful and scary crash on the bike at full speed into another competitor. I've had two tire problems (and was only carrying one tube) at Ironman St. George last year. And of course, I've experienced the more general problem of simply not being able to keep going at the pace that I thought I could. I've never, for example, been able to continue running through an entire Ironman marathon. In fact, I haven't even been able to keep running at any half Ironman half marathon. I set a goal to do this, and end up revising my goals on my feet. Sometimes this kind of revision is simply telling myself that if I keep walking, I will get to the finish line before the cutoff time is over, and allowing myself to decide if I will be able to run again later. Inevitably, I end up being able to run again after time has passed.

I have DNF'd once, though. Looking back, I regret the fact that I wasn't in good enough shape the morning of the race to finish it, but I don't regret the decision to quit once the race had started and I had given it a good try. For reasons I still do not understand, I was simply not able to go at the speed that normally would be easy. I ended up taking a bad fall because of balance problems and nursing a shoulder injury rotator cuff injury for months afterward. Maybe someday I will try that race again. Maybe not. But I have been through enough races that I trusted my feeling that this wasn't a race I could finish (there was a cut-off and I was growing increasingly away from the pace necessary to reach it).

What I have learned, though, as I keep at this, is that one of the most valuable things for an amateur like me to be able to do to finish a race is to continually accept that race conditions and my own health conditions will dictate my mental self-talk, and that no amount of shouting at myself or telling myself I'm not working hard enough is of any value at all. I am pretty much always working hard enough. I think I've earned at least that amount of respect for myself, not to doubt. I don't take it easy, and if things don't turn out well, I still did my best. Once the race is over and I've crossed the finish line, there is no purpose in trying to go back and figure out if I could have worked harder. Of course, I always try to think of things I could have done better, usually before the race started, but sometimes during. But it's not about me working hard enough.

This morning, I ran 40 miles on my treadmill in preparation for my annual 50 mile race. I've done it 5 years in a row now, and this year, I was determined to train for it better. In previous years, I have done the 50 miles over two days of running, and while that got me through the course, there was always a point when I hit about mile 35 that I hit a wall. I thought that if I ran more on a single day, I might be able to get over that wall. We'll see whether that was true or not in a few more weeks. But today, I was struggling. My legs are tired because last week, I ran 35 miles, then 15 over two days and the week before that, I ran 30/15 and then did an Olympic race three days later.

I hit mile 25 and realized that my plan of walking 1 minute every mile was not going to work. I was too exhausted. So I changed the plan. I gave myself 1/2 mile rests every 5 miles, and then walked 1/4 mile for every 1/4 mile I ran. Two or three minutes on, two or three minutes off. It was frustrating because it felt like everything was slowing down and I wanted the workout to be OVER. But looking back on it, I am really proud of myself for being flexible enough to change the plan while in the middle of the workout. Instead of giving up entirely (which believe me, I considered over and over again), I found a way to keep going.

There's an important lesson in there somewhere about life. I'm not saying there are never times to give up. There really are. Some things truly are not meant to be. But being able to accept that things might turn out as you expected, but that you still did well--I think that is one of the most human and most laudable outcomes possible. We are tool builders, yes. But more important than that, we humans have this incredible ability to anticipate the future and to mold ourselves because of this imagined world. There is nothing in the world that is making me (or any other amateur athlete) run 40 or 50 miles. I'm not being chased by enemies with weapons. I'm not saving my children. I'm not hunting food for survival. But nonetheless, I do this.

Why?

Because I want to be always improving myself. I want to throw away my old vision of myself and make a new one. Making a new me as I come up against my own limitations--isn't that the most human thing of all?