Perfect Is The Enemy Of A Great Race

This is your one big chance.

ou got in the lottery for a big race and you’re determined to make the most of it.

Everything has to be perfect.

You’ve got to train right, eat right, race exactly right…do everything right.

But that’s where it goes wrong - needing to be perfect.

Because here’s what happens.

With perfect, the best you can do is meet that high expectation. Anything else falls short.

Which dials up the pressure and sucks every speck of enjoyment out for weeks, even months, leading up to the race.

Your best probably won’t be good enough, so you expect to fall short and disappoint yourself.

Perfection is such a tall order that in training you lose motivation and procrastinate.

On race day, you show up frustrated your training is less than perfect.

When the race starts, you get mad about even little mistakes.

You’re so tense you can’t think how to solve simple problems.

You waste time hesitating to make decisions because…what if you get it wrong?

And fear of a DNF unnerves you so badly you make even more careless mistakes.

You’re likely to drop just to make the pressure go away and even if you finish, you end up far from perfect…and also far from your best.

What you need to aim for instead of perfection is your best.

That’s how I ran Massanutten 100 last week, even with a huge deal like my 20th finish on the line.

Perfect doesn’t interest me - too restrictive - but doing my best does.

And doing my best naturally gets me close to perfection. With my best, there’s no way to fall short.

I was definitely up for an exciting game of, “How close to perfect can I get this time?”

It felt irresistible to put my best out there, and I couldn’t wait.

I didn’t worry about ‘right.’ I trained harder than I had been because I wanted to set myself up for a fantastic race but also enjoy the training progress for it’s own sake.

On race day, I felt ready to go.

In the race, I made some mistakes like starting dehydrated. It took me a while to figure it out but no big deal, mistakes happen. I kept moving and fixed it.

I was focused but relaxed, so solving even a serious headlamp problem was easy.

Decisions - like how hard to push a section and what to do in an aid station - came easily because they only had to be good enough, not perfect.

A DNF wasn’t going to happen so I didn’t even think about it.

And no way was I going to drop, because I was running strong and wanted to see what I could do.

I ran my best, which felt great, and finished. If I’d been trying to run a perfect race, I’d still be waiting on my 20th finish.

All you need are skills to run your best, like learning how to plan a race, focus on what’s important, solve the right problems, get out of lows and run unstoppable.

With those, you don’t need perfection.

Your best is stronger, better, and more reliable than perfection.