Life Lessons at the Falmouth Road Race

This past weekend I, along with several friends, went down to the Cape and ran the Falmouth Road Race.   After a fantastic day at our friend Steve's house exploring, fishing and enjoying an absolutely beautiful day in Brewster, we all woke up early for a long and traffic-full drive to Falmouth.  For anyone who doesn't know, the Falmouth Road Race is huge, and runs along some of the most scenic seven miles of the Cape Cod coast line.  After all of the great things I had heard about the race, and on the heels of two races that I had run very well, I was really excited for this one.  When I woke up the morning of the race, though, I was acutely aware of the fact that the feeling I had had the morning before the race in Stowe, that "I'm Ready" feeling, was not quite there.  It wasn't that I was unprepared, or that I didn't want to run, I just didn't quite feel right.  

Anyways, I started the race, and I knew after 3 miles that this was not going to be my day.  I felt so awful that I had to walk for a little bit, and, as I walked, I started to contemplate my options.  I could, 1) just keep running at a respectable pace until I passed out- which, honestly, I don't think was far from happening at that point; 2) slow down my pace and focus on just getting through the next mile and a half (there was a Dana-Farber cheering section at mile 5.5 where some friends were); or 3) walk the rest of the race, which honestly I don't think I would have allowed myself to do anyways, but I considered it.  I decided to go with option number 2 and I told myself that if I just jogged the next mile and a half, I would be okay.  The first mile went by quickly, but the half a mile after that seemed more like 10.  As I got to the DF cheering section though, I heard my friend Lindsey yell out "Go Lauren," and I decided to keep trucking along for the next mile and a half to the finish.  That last mile and a half sucked, to say the least, saved only by the cheering crowd and the light breeze that broke up the brutal heat every once and a while.  There was a monster hill in the last half mile, and I willed my legs to do their best attempt at a run up the entire thing.  On the downhill to the finish, I didn't even have it in me to speed up, I just focused my sights on the finish line and forced my body to carry me to it.

When I crossed the finish line, all I wanted to do was cry.  I don't know if it was because I was so tired, or if I was disappointed in my run, or if they were tears of joy that I had even finished the race at all, perhaps it was a combination of all three, but when I found my friends waiting after I had finished, it was all I could do to hold back the tears.  After getting some food and cooling down a bit, we got to talking about having bad races and the best way to use your feelings from that in some constructive way.  I have to say that I've typically been one of those "Beat yourself up over it" types.  I take all of the frustration and disappointment from a badly played game, or a badly run race, and I berate myself with it until I'm more frustrated and disappointed, and then I use those feelings to force myself to get better at whatever it is that started the frustration and disappointment to begin with.  It's a viscous cycle, and one that isn't exactly constructive, as I usually end up burning myself out when forcing myself to get better.  While it may seem obvious that this is not the best way to handle things, it has taken me nearly 25 years to come to this realization.  I think that years of basketball and soccer coaches in my youth, yelling and having us do drills until our legs nearly fell off whenever we made a mistake, firmly embedded this response to disappointment into my head.  But now, I think I'm finally starting to get it.

In the car yesterday, my friend Angie mentioned that she had read something that said when you have a bad run, you should write down all of the things that went badly about it, and then draw a circle and write all of the things that were in your control on the inside of the circle, and all of the things that were out of your control on the outside.  The idea seemed silly to me yesterday when I was still stewing over my bad race, but now that I've had some time to think about it, it makes perfect sense.  While I didn't literally write or draw anything, it's easy for me to see that I don't think there was much I could have done to fix yesterday's race.  I was prepared to run seven miles, even seven hilly miles; I was prepared to run in the heat, I have been doing it all summer; I was ready in pretty much any way I could have been, it just wasn't my day.  So, instead of locking myself in the gym for the rest of the week, and running my legs to death around the river to beat them into submission, I'm just going to continue running and training like I have been, and enjoying it like I have been.  I'm not going to let one race that didn't quite go my way throw everything off track.  There will always be more races...