The shame in all this is that those finish lines are often arbitrary. If you complete 5 kilometers in the context of a 5K, you’ve succeeded. But if that’s as far as you run in the context of a half-marathon, that’s a failure. If you run 13.1 miles in the context of a half-marathon, that’s a success, but in the context of a full marathon, you have failed. And successfully running 26.2 miles becomes a failure if you were attempting an ultramarathon.
