Holding On To Your Hard-Won Finish

Imagine you’re in race like Javelina 100 that’s five loops and you’re starting your fourth.

The most grueling loop.

The first two loops are easy. The third, halfway loop feels worth celebrating, and last loop is the icing on the cake you’ve been working for months to build. 

But the fourth is the grim, nameless loop between celebration and icing on the cake where it seems like you’re giving it everything you’ve got…and getting nowhere. 

Runners have been dropping down to the 100k, finishing the 100k, or dropping out altogether, so loop four seems like a ghost town. You have to keep reminding yourself you’re not the last runner out there.

You try not to think about the loop. Head down, get it done.

Which works ok until you hear suspiciously brisk footsteps behind you.

A runner pulls up alongside you and with a cheerful tone asks The Question: “What loop are you on?”

You know what lap you’re both on. And you’re pretty sure he knows too.

All the frustration you’ve been shoving down during the race boils over. 

You take a measured breath and answer, “four.” He delightedly reveals he’s on loop five (surprise!) and offers a breezy, “Good luck - you got this,” before pulling away, leaving you in depths of despair you weren’t in two minutes ago.

Despair, because you’re dirty, sleep-deprived, exhausted and you’ve been working your hardest for almost 24 hours but have so freaking much further to go.

All you want right now is to be done like he is, headed to the finish. 

You’re not even close.

The conversation leaves you feeling so much worse about your race and chances of finishing, but very little actually changed.

You’re still basically at the same mile, moving the same way, with the same time on cutoff you were before the conversation. 

What changed in those two random minutes was the way you see the distance you have left. 

Now, you don’t have two loops to go, you have his last loop…and an entire, immense, extra loop he doesn’t have. And a loop takes hours. 

You started the race together and he’s a 15 long miles ahead of you - 15!

You’ll still be out here shuffling along while he and everyone else are congratulating each other and packing up.

You try to stop thinking about it…but it’s all you can think about.

Finishing seems so far away and hopeless, like another continent.

Why are you even here??

This is where you decide you’re done. You don’t care any more. You’re going to walk it in and drop.

Except there’s an easier, better-feeling way out…that also gets you the finish you want.

Instead of giving up the finish you’ve worked so hard for months to achieve, all you have to do is change the way you see the remaining miles.

No matter where he is in his race, you only have 30 miles left out of 100. You have most of the race - 70 miles - done. The finish is achievable - it’s no longer a continent away.

That feels way better.

You don’t have to walk, quit or even slow your pace to change your thinking like this.

You only need to learn how to look at the same situation - same mile, conversation, time on cutoff - from a more helpful, positive angle without lying to yourself or being an overly-positive Pollyanna. 

As you run your race - on the fly.

This way, you get right back to the business of finishing your own race…in a stronger mindset than before the conversation.

You know 100% why you’re here. 

Nobody’s going to talk you into giving up your hard-won finish.