NOTE: I swear sometimes. Probably a lot more than I should when speaking, but also in my writing. There will almost certainly be some curse words in this article, because I am writing stuff that I get passionate about. I mean no offence, it’s just how I talk/write. It’s up to you how you take it…
Sunday, September 29, 2019
On yesterday’s Valley Vertikiller 25K Clinic training run, I failed.
Right around the 15K mark of a planned 20K distance (with 1,100m of climbing!), my legs fought back against my will with a vengeance. Excruciating cramps in my hip flexors, quads and adductors literally brought me to a standstill, and I had to will my muscles to relax enough to keep moving forward. Every step from that point forward was an exercise in suffering and anger.
There were other reasons beyond the physical that this was an absolutely crushing defeat for me that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that, being as competitive an individual as I am, I was extremely frustrated and embarrassed to be THE reason that my fellow clinic participants / leaders were stuck on the mountain so long (it took us nearly 4-1/2 hours to finish), and that I was nearly an hour and a half late attending a VERY important family function afterward.
In fact, I was so angry and disappointed with myself that I thought I needed to wait until today, after I had some time to calm down and look at this “failure” objectively before setting my thoughts down in words. Here are the things that came to me from this experience.
You Cannot Find Your Limits Without Failing
I fail A LOT. Because of the kind of person I am, it sucks for me every time. I am my own harshest critic, and it is a constant battle with my own negative self-talk. The fact that I’m frequently, uncontrollably, hyper-competitive, even with stuff that doesn’t matter, means that I struggle with this almost daily.
Thankfully, I am much better these days at recognizing when that’s happening, and I can usually move through that stage and get to a more objective analysis of what I need to do to improve reasonably quickly. What used to take days or weeks for me to get over now takes hours or mere moments most of the time, but I still FEEL that “Dude, you SUCK!” feeling way more often than I should.
Like many things for me, it’s a work in progress.
If I’m so hard on myself when it happens, why do I push myself to failure?
“Oh, I’m just not built for that.”
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“I’m not a runner.”
“I have X medical condition, so I’ll never be able to do that.”
“I’m just not flexible.”
“I don’t want to get bulky. Girls shouldn’t lift heavy weights.”
“My X hurts, so I should just rest.”
“I just don’t have good cardio.”
“I’m too old.”
“Girls just don’t have upper body strength.”
“I just don’t have the willpower like X does.”
“He/she is 20 years younger than me – of course they can do it.”
FUCK
THOSE
EXCUSES
I’ve said pretty much all of the above to myself at one time or another, except for the ones related to being a girl, which…well, you know…I’m not…LOL. I’ve used those as excuses to do less, do something easy instead, or do nothing.
We spend so much of our lives these days chasing comfort and seeking the easy road. We “stay in our comfort zone”, give ourselves excuses why we “can’t do it”, and do only the things that we’re good at because we don’t want to stick our neck out and fail. We don’t want to “put in all that work for nothing”.
If you want to improve in any arena, not just physical performance, STAYING COMFORTABLE WILL NOT GET YOU THERE. Staying in your comfort zone is a road to nothing but continued mediocrity.
Don’t fear failure. Failure is NOT a bad thing. The only people who don’t fail are those who don’t really try their best.
If I hadn’t risked failure yesterday, I never would have gotten to experience this view!
Is this a CAN’T, or a WON’T?
When you feel close to failure and you want to quit, ask yourself, “Is this a CAN’T, or a WON’T?” (Thanks to Bobby Maximus for that nugget).
If it’s a CAN’T, congratulations, you’ve found your limit at whatever you’re doing! You now know exactly what you’re working with, and you can move forward to improve for next time.
If it’s a WON’T, and you just don’t want to do it because it’s hard, or uncomfortable, or you just don’t feel like it, that’s when you build some fucking character by working through that shit and finding your CAN’T, or you stop and stay just inside your comfort zone and stay mediocre.
I’ve suffered that agony between my WON’T and my CAN’T, literally, for HOURS. My crew that ran that first Spartan Sun Peaks Beast with me in 2015 knows the suffering I went through, dragging my ass up and down that mountain for nearly six hours with the same kind of cramping / seizures I experienced yesterday. I’ll be honest, the only thing that kept me moving forward on that day back in 2015 was ego, pure and simple. If I were on that mountain by myself, I would have quit at WON’T a half-dozen times or more, but I was the idiot that made the rest of the team sign up and run that race with basically zero preparation. Being the “leader”, my ego simply would NOT let me be the one who quit. I was forced to dig deep and keep moving forward even when I thought it was impossible.
That experience was MIND BLOWING and LIFE CHANGING for me, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it.
You really discover some deep down, who-you-really-are kind of shit in that space between your WON’T and your CAN’T. If you keep stopping at WON’T, you’ll never get there.
Since then, I’ve taken myself to that space many times. I’ve run up against my CAN’T and discovered that even when I get there, I can just stop for a few seconds, sometimes minutes, to give my body a chance to adjust, and then my CAN’T goes away, and I can keep on going.
Pushing myself physically to that place has also trained my mind to tolerate, work through, and even thrive upon other challenges in life. To paraphrase David Goggins, I’ve “callused my mind” through the crucible of physical suffering.
Now, I’m not by any means saying that you should push through legitimate injuries, or that you need to train to absolute physical failure every workout. Push till you puke, day in, day out is just plain stupid. In training, most of the time you should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60-80% effort (in certain, specific instances, even less) to ensure that your make progress without unnecessarily risking injury.
But how do you know what that 60-80% really looks, feels and tastes like? You need to be willing to exceed your limits and fail from time to time to figure that shit out, otherwise your “80%” might really only be 40% or 20% of what you’re really capable of, and that will get you nowhere.
You need to test yourself regularly to know what your actually capable of so that you can scale your training appropriately.
So What Now?
So, I failed. I was not up to the task of 20 km / 1,100 m elevation, so there is no way I’m going to be ready to run a 25 km / 1,500 m elevation race in three weeks’ time. I know that happened because I didn’t stay consistent with my training through the summer. No excuses, I just didn’t get shit done, and it showed in my results.
That self-knowledge was hard-earned, bruising my ego and giving my legs a hellacious beat-down. I’m still quite sore and stiff today, and I anticipate being even worse tomorrow.
I could just say screw it, and not run the race at all. I could sit here and say, “woe is me, maybe next year.”
Instead, I’m going to swallow my pride and bump myself down to the shorter, 16K Vertikiller distance because that’s right on the edge of what my body is capable of right now.
I’ll do what I can in the next couple of weeks to help ensure that I have a good chance of finishing that race strong, and come up with a plan to train for a longer distance for my next event, the Spartan Race Big Bear Beast in May 2020. If I can succeed there, I’ll consider signing up for the 25K Vertikiller next fall.
The Take-Home Message
KNOW YOURSELF. Find that space between your WON’T and your CAN’T. Discover what you’re really capable of, and what kind of stuff you’re really made of by being willing to find your limits and fail.
FAIL FORWARD. Don’t let failure just beat you down. When you fail, you’ve found your limit FOR NOW, not FOR EVER. Use that knowledge to come up with a plan, and keep moving forward.
---Coach JP