Like most runners, I pretty much sucked at other sports as a kid.
Baseball, basketball, football … all horrible. In retrospect, it might have been that I never got a strong itch to practice my ass off for any sport, and instead just approached the games and practices as just another “something to do.” I was pretty bad. Bad to the point that it became a point of humor for other kids and bit of shame for me. I stole second base one time when someone was on it – prompted by another kid who wanted to see me look stupid (it worked). Relegated to “no one ever hits here” right field in baseball, one was hit there and when I went to catch it, it popped right off my forehead. A more athletic centerfielder has sprinted over and caught the bounce off my head for the out. I laid on the field on my back with a nice knot on my noggin’.
In third grade, my elementary physical education teacher, Ken Collins, put together this map of the US in the lobby of the school. He then drove a project where kids could jog the perimeter of school fields, and thus contribute miles to “run across America.” Everyday we could see the miles we had run, and a big red line slowly extending across the country from Connecticut, eventually to California.
It got me jogging. Even after the cross country run, I’d put on some sweats, an old hoodie and go jogging. I’d even do the little punches in the air because I had seen it in the movie “Rocky.” I remember coming home and saying to my Dad I had run three miles that day. He challenged it, saying it was 3 miles to Rockville. “Could you run to Rockville?” I had traveled to Rockville from South Windsor in a car a lot and it seemed like a lot farther than the 12 quarter mile laps I had run that day. I guess not.
Then in junior high, yeah we called it junior high because it was grades 7-9, we ran a mile in PE class. Looking back I am pretty sure it the 5:10 I ran was short, but it didn’t really matter. I had beat all but one other kid. That lit a fire I guess. I was not bad at this. Maybe with the other sports success had not come easy enough, and the flames were stoked a bit because I found something I was sort of good at that did not require a lot of coordination.
About the same time, I was making a gradual exodus from all other ball sports. I just fell farther and farther behind in skill and performance. Rather than be motivated to practice more to bridge the gap to my team mates and competitors, I grew less enthused and began to dread the events. Baseball was the last sport that I left – probably because it provided the longest place where a person could suck and not get cut (basketball) or hurt (football). But as we aged up into the teens, kids were throwing faster, pitches were suddenly no longer just a lob to the plate (and heck Steve Morse had a curve ball that came at your head!). I struck out a lot. I hoped for the walk and it showed as was in the box. I recall a mantra of not wanting the ball hit to me when in right field because I knew the expectation was just to catch the ball. That was just what you did without fanfare. And for me, it was going to be a pretty lucky thing to do that. If I caught it, it seemed like a minor miracle. If I flubbed it, the team would groan disappointment.
Of course, I wanted success in the ball sports, but I was not ready or willing to sacrifice for it with practice. With running, it initially appeared a bit more easy for me to have success, and so I gravitated towards that. I guess some of that is natural, but admittedly some of it is lazy and selfish. Whether that early success came because of some natural born predetermination or the nurturing of Ken and Sylvester Stallone combined with failure at other sports, I really don’t know. Even in practice, I was on somewhat even footing with others when I took up XC in my freshman year – so I was not fighting from a lacking position.
But I wonder if my failure in those other sports was partly because of the dread of expectation and not being able to step up to it. When faced with some expectation of adversity, rather than embrace it, I grappled with it … tensed up and blew chunks with it. I didn’t want the ball to come to me, and if it did I was so damn worried about the outcome rather than turning off the brain and just letting the catch occur that I almost predetermined an error.
Fast forward 30 years of running and racing later … in the broader running sense, I am a mid packer. I certainly have had a degree of success greater than most who run, but I have never been real good or even good (there may be benefit in that actually in that it keeps the fire going). if you wonder what I mean by not being good, it was ridiculously obvious to me when I saw the Club Nat XC meet a few years ago when 108 guys ran under 32 minutes for a muddy 10k … almost all you assuredly will never hear of. All of those guys would have beat the winner of the masters race by the way. Those guys were “good.” And better than I ever was. Anyway, while I thought I could be that good at one point,I know that I won’t be and have come to terms with it as I have aged.
This week’s unraveling at Pikes had me doing much of the typical post race over thinking of what the hell happened. I had a bad day, but I wanted to know the root cause. 30 years of running and I can’t really see a root cause. But maybe it is right there too easy to see.
I have demonstrated over and over and over that when I have high expectations for a race – I am more likely than not to blow it. That could mean a mental error by going out too fast. Or it could mean an “unexplained” bad day like Sunday. There have been exceptions of course, but I am sure if I did the math, the races where I indicated a high focused desire to do well would spit out a craptastic result at least 2/3 of the time … probably more like 4/5. The alternative also appears to be true. When I go into a race with low expectations, I not only tend to exceed those, I blow em out of the water by A LOT. Want more, get less, want less, get more.
It is almost as if my focusing on a race is the prescription to sabotage it – despite actual fitness. That is a bit maddening. Basically it means that if you were picking a team for a race that we wanted to win, even if I was the fittest in the bunch by a bit, I’d have to suggest you not pick me because I am more than likely to choke. However if you did not tell me about the race and we just showed up on some Saturday to do it as some fun event, I’d probably do fairly well by my standards.
Why is that?
Be glad your next and only meal in the last three days is not dependent on me having to chase down some animal in the savannah. When I look at this problem through this lens, it suddenly becomes a hammer to ever nail. I see it everywhere. Not just in running but at work, in relationships, in study, in all sorts of aspect of my life. I realize such a thought might be just a bit too easy of a solution for me on all things, but I can’t deny there is some merit to it.
In yesterday’s post, I was trading comments with Jerry on Pikes and the cramps. How can I explain cramps an hour into a race – and on a course that I had done before at even a greater intensity? I had a dozen runs in the 3 months before where I had climbed, ran hard, descended … all without cramps. All without folding. Why this time? Why when I was so much more fit than 2012 did I suddenly feel so much more weaker?
In 2012, I took a different take to all my races. It was racing for fun – no focus, no concern. When I felt a desire to perform well in a race rise up, I’d squash it – reminding myself that it didn’t matter, that I was just there to enjoy it (this works usually until the last few miles but then at that point is sort of doesn’t matter). In many regards, 2012 was my most successful year … 2 pack burro racing wins, a solid Pikes, prize money won Europe … pretty dang good for NOT caring about racing.
I declared early in 2013 it was ALL about Pikes. The results speak for themselves.
I don’t know if this means something at a chemical central governor level. Maybe. Probably. Do I set myself up with some sort of hormone chemical imbalance when I care too much about something that essentially makes it happening as likely as putting the two like poles of a magnet together? And how can I really succeed at something when I don’t care about it?
I don’t know really I guess. But I do know that my mind needs to change more than my body if I am going to expect to race better.
