Expanding Your Limits: A Story

Imagine you’re alone in the middle of a dark, windowless room.

You’re essentially blind.

You don’t know how big the room is, but walking into a wall would hurt.

You also don’t know what else is in the room. You could trip over something and fall. That would definitely hurt and you could get injured.

The best way to avoid tripping or walking into a wall is easy - sit where you are in the middle of the room. You’re already here and you know this spot is safe.

So you stay put and successfully avoid tripping or walking into a wall.

But…

If you’re willing to risk it, you can explore your way across the floor in slow baby steps.

When you whack your knee on a table, it’s painful and disappointing. You could decide you’ve learned your lesson and you’re going to stay where you are and never explore again.

But if you’re willing to risk moving around the table and taking more slow baby steps, you can make it to a wall. 

You’ll be tempted to stay there too, but if you’re willing to risk feeling your way along the wall, you’ll eventually reach the door outside and free yourself from the dark, confining room. 

The story ends happily - the risk was worth it and you have a whole new, exciting world of races to explore.

Now, go back to the beginning of the story and imagine the middle of the room is where you are in ultrarunning.

You know what it’s like to be here. It’s familiar and comfortable. Races take normal risk but nothing big. Finishing and hitting your goal is pretty certain.

It’s easy to slip into a routine of doing the same things and running the same type races that got you here.

Especially because doing something different raises the chance of a DNF.

The walls are your current limits. If you go in search of your limits, you could run into all kinds of unknown problems you literally can’t foresee, like whacking your knee on the table. 

But you can’t stop dreaming about that challenging race.

To run it, you have to step out the door beyond your current limits.

Which means you first have to trip over problems and hit limiting walls. To fail time after time to find the door.

Because finding out where the door isn’t is the way you find where it is.

You can’t expand your limits until you’re willing to risk hitting them.

That’s what I did recently at Zumbro 100. 

With an injury, I didn’t know where my current limits were - but I wanted to. So I started the race, very unsure I could finish. I whacked my knee on a couple of tables and found my walls…and that’s as far as I got. My race ended in a DNF.

But finding those walls told me where to find the door and I have my hand on the knob.

I’m far better prepared for my 20th Massanutten 100 next month than I would have been without the DNF walls at Zumbro. Now, instead of hitting walls at Massanutten and DNFing, I might be able to open the door.

You have the same opportunity.

You can stay safely in the middle of the room and do the same things the same way.

You can also risk leaving the safe middle to find the door beyond your current limits where races you dream of are possible.