My recent running has been going well. I ran 8 x 1000m hard loops at Busey Woods on Thursday. I could have pushed to 12 or even 15, but 8 seemed perfect, it left me feeling refreshed and energetic. Yesterday I ran 16 hill sprints at the arboretum - 100m at 5k speed to get to the base of the hill, 75m up the hill, and then 75m all out sprint going down the hill and 100m beyond. Unlike the Busey Woods workout, 16 was pretty much my limit. I could have maybe reached 18-20, but it would have been pushing too far. I felt the magical mixture of exhaustion and strength after, and realized I am easing into a high mark of fitness.
As I walked the cemetery hill this morning (2 hours 45 minutes) I mused upon the upcoming 100. A proper attitude and outlook is one of the most important things to be in possession of during training and race day. Seeing that every living thing occupies a unique position in time and space, it is obvious that there are no easy ways to obtain this strength and health of mind, because nobody can give a definitive step by step plan - what works for you, won't work for me.
However, there are generalities which can be used as guide posts to help us along the way, and these markers are usually found in religious and philosophical ideas. I gravitate most strongly to the Zen philosophy of achieving the proper attitude toward life. Bukowski's grave stone sums it up nicely - "Don't Try". What this means is not to try for the things which will cause misery - don't try for wealth, fame, the approval of others. If it comes, fine, if not, that also is fine. The thing to strive for is giving one's best efforts in things one loves to do. Results don't matter, or if they do, just as a curiosity and a way to quantify external circumstance.
What brings misery is allowing myself to be controlled by external circumstance. 25 years ago I realized that how I phrase a goal is an important part of obtaining the correct attitude. To state a goal which has an external result as the main focus, will bring misery. A few examples - "my goal is to beat runner x in a 50k"; "my goal is to finish the 50k in under 6 hours"; "my goal is to finish a 100 mile foot race". All of these goals will bring misery, or at best, a fleeting joy. No peace of mind can be gained from them, therefore they are incorrect and need to be rephrased. What I discovered was that if the 4 words " to try my best" are placed in front of the above mentioned goals, it negates the control external circumstance has over my life, and puts my own will as the sole focus of any endeavor. "My goal is to try my best to beat runner x in a 50k", no longer gives control to runner x, and runner x no longer is the main focus in my mind. What I now need to struggle with is my own will to achieve that goal. What is required is to train intelligently, putting in the greatest effort possible, and when race day comes to give every ounce of strength to try to defeat runner X. Regardless of the result, the only thing that concerns me is that I did everything possible to defeat runner X. Whether I defeated him or not does not matter, what matters is my effort.
I find it surprising that most of the running blogs I read are full of goals which create misery in the runner. I was reading a talented runner's blog and found that her DNF at the Big Horn 100 caused her inner pain and misery, which was a result of the goals she set up in her mind. Even if she was the fastest runner on the planet, I would not switch places with her because the things that matters most, the quality of her inner life and how she feels about running and living, was a complete mess. Here are a few lines from her blog :
"I got out of it began to get feeling back in my hands and legs but never came around. I gave myself miles of emotional abuse wondering if I am just simply wimping out and letting myself and everyone else down. Wondering if failure was defining me. The emotional thrashing lasted a really long time. The battle between my body and my mind was intense and absolutely raw. Trying to separate the two and figure out how pull myself around was incredible and frustrating. It was a wicked ride. I gave it all I had."
The final line of the above reveals that instead of being a "failure", she was an absolute success. She was attempting a difficult and awesome thing, and gave it all she had, yet her inner life was constructed so that success and failure hinged upon things which were out of her control - the weather, the weariness and pain in her body, the terrain of the course. Her later blog entries reveal that for weeks she experienced emotional pain because the goal of finishing had not been met. Had she simply placed the words "to try my best" in front of her stated goal, she would have bypassed all of the pain and misery which she heaped upon herself. The results would have been the same, or, she possibly could have finished. She wasted so much energy on emotionally abusing herself during the race due to her misguided goal, that if she had focused solely on trying her best to finish, maybe she could have done it.
In my experience those 4 words, "to try my best", allows me to put forth a supreme effort, and the results, which are secondary and looked at for curiosity, usually surpass my initial expectations. I am convinced that by trying to give one's greatest effort in any endeavor, the best possible results will occur. Failure is not a permanent thing, and when it does occur it resides solely in lack of effort. When a lack of effort happens, it is only for a few moments, and as long as I am still alive and breathing, I can try anew, the failure as fleeting as a passing cloud in an otherwise blue sky.
