Failure is the pits.

Runners are always afraid of “failure”, but what does this actually mean? What does failure imply? Why is it significant, and why do we fear it so much?

Is it because it might elicit the judgment of others? Would the fear disappear if there were no spectators, no one to ask “how’d the run go?”, and no one who had any idea you were running at all? If it were all about this potential judgement, it seems like it should. And while “running in secret” might help a little bit, the fear does not fully dissipate in this scenario. The fear is rooted in something deeper. There’s a part of your internal self that feels it’s being called into question when a supreme effort is undertaken, and that failing at it will kill off this part of who you are. 

“What does failure imply? Why is it significant, and why do we fear it so much?”

For lack of a better term, let’s call this part of us our “runner identity”. It’s the way we define a fundamental, immutable part of what makes us an individual and unique person. Remember when you first realized that you were a runner? It was something you felt--a moment where things just clicked--and it felt good. It felt correct. Your mind takes comfort in having discovered “who you really are”, and this unearthed self-awareness can be significant to the point that it can’t be totally contained within. It bleeds out into your social life, as you are expressive about “who you are” as a person. And now we’ve implicated not just ourselves, but others around us in this identity game.

But it gets more complicated than that. You’re not merely a runner--you’re a certain type of runner. You’re a runner who trains a specific way, lives a certain lifestyle, devotes oneself to a specific work-ethic, and--here’s the kicker--who runs certain times and possesses a certain level of competency at running. And while upholding such an image in the eyes of others does belabor the soul, the real crisis of identity lies within the self.

I had a teammate in college who really didn’t run much in high school, but was good enough to compete on our team nonetheless. He knew very little about running compared to the rest of us, and in some ways, he seemed easily distracted by matters unrelated to running. He would crack jokes during rest portions of hard workouts, as we all huffed and heaved and tried to keep our heads in game. He would stay up late playing video games while we adhered to rigid bedtime schedules. He would eat poorly in the cafeteria, even when we had a grueling workout later that day, or a race the next morning. In a lot of ways, it seemed like he didn’t really care about his running. 

Yet, he performed. And not just performed. He excelled. In workouts, he would grind his way through every interval, never slacking for a second, and, as if programmed, hit the prescribed splits every time. In races, he would redline it from the gun, never question a thing, never lose a final sprint, and would follow coach’s instructions to the T. And he was getting faster all the time. All the time, improving. It didn’t really make sense. It even kinda made us mad. Here were the rest of us, doing everything by the book, and while we would still experience some success, it was usually less frequent, and we all seemed burdened by psychic anguish in a way that he simply didn’t. It was like he just had some sort of edge on us. 

But over time, something tragic happened. He started learning more about running. He, like the rest of us, became consumed by the running enterprise to the point that it was almost all there was. Gradually, he came to embrace the inevitable: that deep down, at the core of his being, a runner was what he was. As this process of self-discovery unfurled for him, a grave trend seemed to emerge. His frequency of sterling performances diminished. He would struggle more often, sometimes almost totally giving up during difficult training segments. His races--while still brimming with effort--appeared pocked by moments of indecision and wavering confidence. It was like his once-raging fire was smoldering. This trend deepened and coalesced throughout the remainder of his collegiate running career, and frankly, never really went away. It was depressing. And at the time, I wrote it off as just another instance of the plateau that all runners experience after they’ve trained for a while--the “law of diminishing returns”, as it were. 

“It was the gradual formation of his mind’s rebellion against his body, in an attempt to “protect” its perceived identity as a certain type of runner.”

But as I’ve reflected on this phenomenon over the years, I no longer believe his plight was physiological in nature. It was, instead, the result of a mental pathogen. A spiritual one, even. It was the gradual formation of his mind’s rebellion against his body, in an attempt to “protect” its perceived identity as a certain type of runner. The mind loves to latch onto an identity. Doing so provides the self with a sense of grounding and stability in the universe. Once it clings to something, it reels backward at the perception of a threat that might wrest it away from its findings.  Early on, so much of his identity was not anchored to being a “certain type of runner”, and at risk of sounding cheesy, he was able to “run free”.

That’s the grand irony--and also the tragedy--here. The more you “care”, the worse you perform. And yet your mind tells you that if you don’t “care” a ton, then you’re doing something wrong. You’re betraying your identity as that “certain type of runner”.

So how do we conquer this scourge within ourselves? Does a solution exist, or is this simply the lot of what it means to be human? If this sounds like your kind of struggle, stay tuned as we delve deeper into the mind-body cataclysm that prevents us from “running free”.