Reflections on achieving a big self-defined goal
Having ticked a big goal off, how does it feel?
In a post from a few years ago, I remarked that one of the biggest differences between university and working life is that the future is shaped almost solely by our own efforts. To this end, I have been setting myself goals to accomplish, both personal and professional. Some of these are fairly run-of-the-mill goals: reading a certain number of books per year, saving a specific amount of money, and learning about various topics. The other category consists of more long-standing goals that don't fit neatly into a quarterly check-in.
Within this category was my goal to run a half marathon. When I originally set this goal back in 2020, I couldn't run for more than 15 minutes at a time - and even then, at a pace I would now consider absurdly slow. This was also my third attempt at training for one: the first attempt was in late 2022, but I caught COVID a week before the race. The second attempt was in early 2023, but I rolled my ankle twice in two weeks during training.
In October 2023 I actually accomplished this long standing goal of mine, and now having completed the race below are some of my reflections on the process.
Ninety-five percent of success is just showing up:
Once I reached a baseline level of fitness, my training plan was 12 weeks long, incorporating an easy run, an interval run, and a long run each week. Occasionally, a second easy run would be added to prime my body for the extra mileage, but the mantra was three times a week. Twelve weeks is a long enough period that the vicissitudes of life can interfere, and training becomes a juggling act. At the end of it, though, what really matters is ticking off the sessions. At my stage of running (i.e., as a beginner), the priority was more to finish and avoid injury than to run at a specific pace. This meant that just by getting my shoes on those three times a week and getting it done, I was contributing to my success. There were obviously suboptimal sessions, or ones that didn’t go to plan, but the point is the work was put in, and that is only a good thing.
One of the biggest mental adjustments I had to make was getting over the fact that every session had to be perfect. It can be demoralizing to put effort in and not see the outcome you wanted. But the lesson I took from it was that any outcome is better than no outcome.
To quote Brad Pitt in ‘Moneyball’: “It’s a process”.
Learn to love the suck:
When starting a new endeavor, there is a natural enthusiasm that pervades how we approach the task at hand. We think a bit more, take our time, exercise correct judgment. Then, time’s arrow strikes us, and that enthusiasm wears off. What we originally attacked with so much vim and vigor now seems a tad chore-like. The start is far away, the end is far away. We are stuck in the middle.
For me, I hit this around weeks 5 - 7 in my training. But as nauseating as it sounds, I’d take my time in these weeks to hype myself up. I knew I had to get out there; I just needed to figure out a way to jolt myself into action. I knew once I was out of the door I’d be happy and satisfied.
The corollary of being stuck in the sucky middle is that when the end is in sight, there’ll be a reversion to a more positive demeanor. Learning to love the suck isn’t about putting up with a tough situation for the sake of it. Learning to love the suck is about acknowledging it will inevitably come, but more importantly that it will pass. If you stay in the game long enough, then once it passes, you are primed to finish strong.
There’s a time to tinker and a time to stay the course:
Having a plan for any large endeavor is essential. However, as with all things, the plan can be flawed. We often overestimate what we can achieve, but equally, we might underestimate what is possible. Neither are optimal, but there is a fine line to tread.
The first time something is done is often the worst. Our lack of experience, knowledge, or tact accounts for the bulk of this (seemingly) poor performance. And I think at the start of a new endeavor, we are acutely aware of this. The problem is that this often leads to a sense of inertia, a fallacy in our minds that no action is better than poor action. This is where the lesson of ‘staying the course’ comes in. There needs to be miles on the road; the pavement needs to be pounded enough times before we take a step back and reflect on what went well and how we improve. It is fine to do something poorly as long as we learn from it for next time. The sin is not the poor performance but failing to learn from it.1
My takeaway from my half-marathon was that I trained in a very sub-optimal way. I would do my long runs without water or any form of top-up food (gels, sweets, trail mix etc.) once I was deep into a session. This led to me hitting the wall and finishing with some slow running times. I only caught on about two weeks before my half marathon so could refine in time for the race. However, now the whole thing is done and I can compare all my long running times, I know what approach to take for the next one.
I plan to continue my stint of half-marathons by embarking on the SuperHalfs challenge. Six half marathons within five years across Europe. I am planning to run two this year taking the lessons learnt from my first half-marathon.
There is also the caveat that life happens and sometimes things just don’t turn out well and there isn’t some grand intellectual explanation for it.