Failure is a gift. 

It tells you how much you care about something. 

It measures your ability. 

It gives you the chance to try your hardest. 

It tells you what you need to do to improve & tees up the opportunity to get at it.

It grounds you to reality.

I ran the Wineglass Half earlier this month and missed my goal by a lot. I slowed down around mile 8 and had to stop a couple times at the water stations. It was brutal.

Reality & Self

I love racing. I probably loved it since I was five. I love it more than ever after getting my butt kicked. It is fundamental to me physically and spiritually.

The feeling of being out there on my own and giving everything I got to see what I got. 

It is all signal, it is all truth and it is a portal to self-definition and improvement.

Planning

Excuses are a reflection of a defensive mindset so I am not going there. I have a fair idea of the things I need to improve so I will focus on planning. 

1. I gotta race more. I’m signing up for a half for next October. I need to run them more often than every 3 or 4 years. I might even do one in May & then October.

2.  I’m going to do more long runs over the winter. And some of those will be longer AND faster runs over the winter, spring and summer. I want my body to be more used to racing this distance.

3. I am honing my electrolytes & hydration game. I have been especially slack on the electrolytes. I still think it’s kinda bullshit but I am the chief scientist & the sole subject of this most important continuous experiment. So I will pay more attention to what elite racers do and then experiment more intentionally on myself.

4. I need a good watch. I am not a fan of watches and so I have just used an old one to train. I need a good one with larger and more flexible displays so I’ll embrace the tech for training and racing purposes despite my misgivings.

Process

I am modeling my process here like this,

Failure As Signal > Reality Testing > Planning > Action

This was a valuable exercise so I shared it here.

Have a great weekend everybody.