Pride and Pain

I am now two weeks removed from the Yeti 100, and I’ve never felt such a mix of emotions about my running as I do now. 

It’s a whirlwind of pride as a coach to disappointment as a runner to hopeful as a human being. 

Let’s not bury the lede. For the first time as a coach, one of my clients completed a 100-miler, and I helped get her there, not just as a coach but as a runner and friend. 

This was at the same Yeti 100 that I dropped after mile 52 because it was obvious to me that I didn’t have the speed to keep up with the looming cutoff at mile 67. I may have made it, but it would have been close, and I was holding back my client. So I dropped.

I came up with a game plan, as coaches will, for the 100-miler. My plan was to run 4 mph for the first 20 miles and then I’d only have to average 3.1 mph the rest of the way. That was my thinking. I was wrong, and so wrong, in fact, that if I had suggested it to a client, I’d refund her money. You have to take into account the stops you make as an ultrarunner, and make no mistake, you DO have to stop.

We were in and out of aid stations, sure, but those take time, and we also stopped for 25 minutes or so after the first 50K to get ourselves right again. We popped a blister and bandaged it, ate some food, changed our socks, etc. That’s 25 minutes well spent, but it’s also not moving. 

So I had to face some hard truths. And here they are.

I need to lose weight. I’m working on that right now, as we speak, and so far, it seems to be working. I was once 155 pounds. I’m now 205. I don’t need to be 155, but I also don’t need to be 205. Let’s say 185. Weight-loss decisions are personal, so don’t ever think this means I think clients need to be thin in order to be successful. I’ve run many ultramarathons at 200 pounds. But the 100-miler is a different deal all together. 

I also need to get faster. I’ve upped my daily runs and run them faster, and I’ll continue to do speed work over the winter. 

This leaves me hopeful. I think I’ll be a better runner as a result of these changes. I’ll also feel better about myself.

It’s embarrassing as a coach to admit that I believed I was trained for a 100-miler, I actually wasn’t, and that I needed to make some changes in order to be successful.

But one of the best ways to be successful is to fail, as long as you learn from it.