The only way you can truly fail during a race is to walk off the course, hang up your shoes and never run another step in your life.
As a runner, you will spend time overtrained, injured, mentally burnt out or all of the above. You will have bad workouts and races. Sometime you may have several bad races in a row. You may spend multiple years without seeing a single personal best, but you can choose now to be unshakable. Challenge yourself to see past the failures; they are there so you can appreciate the success.
Being Well-Rounded is Key
Dedicated runners are busy people. The demand of endurance sports not only requires tens of hours devoted to working out each week, but also can limit participation in other activities due to fatigue and the need for downtime to recover. When everything else in life takes a back seat to running, there is inherently more pressure to succeed, which sets us up for mental hardship when running comes to a halt. The excess pressure we place on ourselves leads to worse results because we try to force success, instead of letting it flow naturally.
It is important to have other interests and passions that leave us feeling fulfilled should running no longer be possible, even if it is something as simple as having more time to spend with family and friends. Balancing running with the rest of your life brings improvement in all aspects of life as skills are refined, new perspectives realized and synergies developed that can be leveraged across activities.
If all we do is run, life can be pretty boring. We only have one opportunity to live life as happily as we can, so it is important to not take running, or ourselves, too seriously.
By Chris Robertson. Robertson races competitively for Chicagoâs Fleet Feet Nike Racing Team. He holds a marathon personal best of 2:24 and is the Beer Mile American Record holder (4:46). He is currently training with the goal of qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon and defending his 2017 Beer Mile World Title while working full-time as a Technology Consultant and pursuing additional entrepreneurial endeavors.
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