"Good" race?

What makes a “good” race? Is it a PR? Is it winning your age group? Is it learning something about yourself? Is it overcoming obstacles? Is it having support from family and friends? At the end of the day is there just one thing that makes you look back at a race and not be able to wipe the smirk off your face or is it a combination of things?

I’m at an awesome point in my racing and training journey. When you first start out you are at the bottom and you can only go up. This is the time when it’s easy to get PR after PR from doing consistent work. At some point though I know that will stop. I’ll have to really fight for a PR. That might be in 4 year, it might be in 20 years. I don’t know. And I don’t want to know when I’ll reach my peak. It’s exciting to think how much I can still improve. When that day comes when the PRs start to become lesser and fewer, does that mean I’m no longer having “good” races? No. When it comes down to it, PRs are awesome, there’s no getting around that. But there’s more to a good race than that.

If I have something to smile about at the end of the race (not the second I cross the line when I feel like I’m going to pass out, a bit later), then to me, that’s a good race. In the end it doesn’t really matter what the clock says. It’s just a number and I’m not a pro, it’s my hobby. I love training and I love racing. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it because it would be an epic waste of my and everyone else’s time (not to mention money). Sure I have little sparkly dreams of qualifying but that’s not what drives me (mostly because it will probably never happen).

I had written this back in April going into NOLA 70.3 and it somehow got lost in my blog post world. “As people keep wishing me good luck and telling me I’ll do great I feel the need to tell them I’ve barely been running due to injury as if I need to explain my running time that hasn’t even happened yet. People tend to assume I’m “fast” because of how much I train. I don’t consider myself fast at all, I’m finally at the point where I would even call myself average. There is obviously a whole lot of mental stuff that I could dig out of that statement but let’s not go there now. The point is I felt the need to make a statement to these people to lower their expectation of my times. Why? They don’t really care how fast I go and if they are judging me for my time, I really don’t care. We are all here for our own journey. I work for each and every minute I gain out there. I fight hard for it. The people faster than me might have put in more work or maybe they were genetically gifted. The slower people might have trained less or maybe not. In the end, who cares? I don’t do any of this for someone else, or to show off or to prove something to someone. I do it for me.”

Although I still believe in the second part of that, it makes me sad to read the first part. I remember always judging myself, my times, my progress. I knew it was a problem and yet I couldn’t change my thinking. I’m not sure what has changed over the last several months, and it might sound silly, but training for an Ironman gives you a lot of perspective. Not just in the sport, but in life. I’m not hard on myself like I was before. I’ve learned to accept the bad workouts and be happy about the good ones. I still have work to do mentally but I’m happy to know that I don’t beat myself down all the time now.

Sunday I’m going out with zero expectations. I’ve learned I do best when I think that way and I truly don’t know what to expect anyway. I want to have fun and put in a strong effort. That’s all I can ask for from racing. At the end of the day we’ll see what that looks like to me and if I consider it a “good” race. My only goal is to finish. Honestly. Any times I mention are simply so I can give family estimates of when to see me and plan out how much nutrition and bottles to pack. And even if I have a bad race and barely cross the finish line before the cut off, it only gives me an easy opportunity to PR the next time. So as people wish me good luck and ask if I’m ready (I hate that question), I’ve very positive in my responses. My team at work was even gave me a nice send off. I’m so excited in a throw up in my mouth type of way. Although it’s hard for me to say out loud that I feel ready, my body knows it’s time. The work is done and now it’s time to unleash the beast.