Taper Thoughts Part II

Abrahams doesn't like losing.....

When the new issue of Runner's World showed up late last week, the first article I devoured was the one about Chariots of Fire, my favorite running movie. My favorite scene? The one where sprinting phenom Harold Abrahams, having just lost to his Scottish rival Eric Liddell, is sitting in the now-empty grandstand reliving every nano-second of his defeat.


His soon-to-be fiancee, Sybil Gordon, tries to coax him out of his funk, noting that he's lost a race, not a relative, and that he still ran like a god. Harold's having none of it. He cries out:


If I can't win, I won't run! 


I'm really relating to that right now as taper madness starts to touch me. It's not that I will ever "win" in the absolute sense (which was of course the sense Abrahams meant--he goes on to become an Olympic gold medalist in the 100 meters). But sometimes it seems like this running thing comes easy to everyone but me, and that I never will "win" by the definition I've written for myself.


This could be because I read too many blogs, and too many of you bloggers are awesome runners. The PRs flow, no matter how tough the circumstances (or so it seems). Same thing for qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I've read several blogger accounts of BQs happening on second (or even first) marathons. Because I, like many others, like to read about success, these seeming-overnight success stories are the bloggers who become popular. They are inspiring, and, consciously or not, our standards for ourselves rise as we read about them.


High standards and lofty goals are good. But the downside is that if it doesn't happen for us like it did for them, we can start to feel like failures. Yes, I know even the people who look like overnight successes work hard, putting in lonely miles and grinding speed work day in and day out. You can't NOT work hard and be a successful runner by any measure. But the hard work yields results faster for some people than others. It's just the way it is. That's a hard thing to teach kids. And it's a damned hard thing to teach ourselves.


For me, with my history of giving up, wanting to quit when I can't quickly achieve something is still an attitude that I struggle with. As a young person, I was able to enjoy only activities that came easily, that I was a natural at. I didn't mind working hard, but if hard work resulted in an outcome that put me at merely average in any kind of ranking, I simply wouldn't play. That meant that I poured myself into two things: writing in particular and school in general. At these things, I could be at least a best (if not always THE best). Avoiding everything else was my equivalent to Abrahams' sentiment...if I couldn't win, I wouldn't run.


Then I discovered that I actually love running, good at it or not. It helped that in the early days, I didn't set goals that were particularly tough. When I realized I could finish a marathon, I trained for it and did it. I didn't care that it took me five hours. I just liked being out there and telling people later that I was a marathon finisher. And in the middle years of my running, I actually had some success of the ranking variety that kept me going. I won my age group in one 5K race in 2005 and placed in it in several other races. I even took third woman in a cross-country race (because there weren't many other runners in it, but hey! it was still success at the time).


This go-round, though, with my BQ goal, things aren't happening fast enough. And on the eve of my second marathon since I set this goal (my fifth marathon overall), the specter of failure-phobia has returned to haunt me anew.


Yesterday I ran 10 miles with four miles at a fast-finish pace, as directed by my plan. I did those last four miles in 8:40, 9:05 (uphill), 8:30 and 8:24. I felt just fine at the end of that. But to qualify for Boston, I have to average 8:34 miles over the marathon distance. The objective information from my training tells me that it would have to be a VERY good day for that to happen. VERY good days--where weather, rest and training converge--don't come along very often.


Even if I PR in Houston, which unlike BQing doesn't require perfect conditions, I'm going to have to wrestle with myself to not be disappointed if I don't get the Boston standard. Part of the reason is that flaw of mine, the giving up thing. The other part is that I can't train for another marathon until fall. Which means the hard work, the bearing down, the chipping away will have to go on. There will be no moving on to the next thing until this thing is done.


This has one rather loud corner of my tapering mind echoing Abrahams: If I can't win, I won't run! Why work so hard, if I don't achieve what the dream really is for me and if I can't do so in a dramatic winning fashion?


The answer lies in what Sybil, Abrahams' future wife, zings back at him as he sits there wallowing in his loss:


If you don't run, you can't win.


I think I need to type that sentence again. It is the reason the scene is so good. It is the thing we all have to tell ourselves when the going gets tough:


If you don't run, you can't win.


Regardless of what the Houston Marathon brings this weekend, I must keep on, even if I have to change the name of this blog to BQ by 45. Beyond becoming a better runner, it has everything to do with becoming a better person. I clearly have some work to do on that.


If you don't run, you can't win.


If you don't run, you can't win.


If you DON'T RUN, you CAN'T WIN.