The challenge and the fear of the challenge
A blog post on the importance of seeking out a challenge where failure is a likely outcome. How to deal with those emotions and look at it in a way that prepares you for the other challenges in life.
I believe seeking out a challenge is one of the biggest acts of self-love you can make.
Identifying something you are not capable of doing at this moment in time, but believe you are capable of. Maybe the belief isn't there yet, but we've seen others do it and are enchanted by their achievements.
Then we go away to our notebooks and chart the path. Open up our online calendars and pick a date in the future for the event and build the training plan from there. With this step you've injected credence into your hopes and the upcoming weeks now give you the chance to materialise those goals.
I was following a running goal - break 46 mins in the 10K. I found a 12 week running plan with 3 runs a week on my app that pairs with my watch.
Following the plan for me was the easy part. The plan increased in mileage as the weeks went on. I could feel my body adapt and handle it as it was added. We went from doing 2x3min intervals at 4:04-4:22 min/km pace to doing 16 of those intervals in week 10. The mental challenge of the intervals always remained, ==but running this fast with a 3 min break after was something I wasn't used to. I did the 16 intervals the night before a conference in London and was overtaking people in Battersea park all evening. I've never felt so fast==.
The training
No matter how well the training was going, I was consumed by this sinking feeling of dread whenever I thought about going out for a practice race 10K, a race 5K or the final race event in the plan. The possibility of failure was turning into the belief that I would fail.
I imagined what it would feel like if I was 2K in on race pace and feeling the hurt. I felt and knew I wouldn't be able to bear it and I would quit. It's hard to describe that feeling but when you view everything as black or white, success or failure, then things are only ever sailing smoothly on track or else you quit at the first sign of struggle that leads you to be behind where you would be if progress was perfectly linear.
So I never did that 10K race at the end of the plan. To be fair to myself, I had diligently followed Weeks 1-10, then travelled to Australia for 3 weeks on a holiday and managed to do my hill workouts and 1 interval workout. But I wasn't making time for the long runs, was drinking a bit, over-eating and generally not living a lifestyle conducive to peaking for a race. This Australia holiday was the convenient excuse I had to push that sense of raceday dread failure to the Outbacks of my mind.
For two weeks I was okay with it. But when I got back home I wanted to start another running plan. I also had some friends who are runners ask me did I ever "give the 10K race a shot?". I said no, using the holiday as the excuse but knowing deep down I was scared of the prospect, imagining it would only turn out one way. ==They said they thought I was well able of beating that goal, especially seeing how my training had gone on Strava==, but I really didn't believe that.
I chose my next running plan. Different Garmin coach, same distance, new time 45 minutes. But then I realised that the sense of dread to run the race would always be the same. That if now I had done two twelve week training plans, then I would be even more crushed if I was to not meet my goal. There was a hidden belief that putting in the work must give me the output I wanted.
I had to confront these beliefs I had because I knew they were holding me back. So I imagined what would happen if I did fail. How bad would it be? ==I'd probably run 47/48 mins which would still be a PB. I'd see that I can run faster than before, I'd manage to stay injury free (running injuries had plagued me over lockdown), I'd have developed more endurance and aerobic capacity there==. There were some wins that I would still manage to pick up along the way.
One of my friends started doing improv recently. Probably my worst nightmare. I couldn't imagine ever getting up and being judged by the crowd on my ability to create on the spot. Then I realised this fear, was actually blocking my ability to even have a chance to think clearly. Had can you have fun and enjoy something if you're terrified the whole time about how you'll be perceived. If a stranger got up on stage and bombed, yes I'd think that's tough to watch, but I wouldn't judge everything they do past that in the lens of them being a failure. But that's how I'd view myself if that were me. That's when I realised my current mindset would inhibit me from seeing any possible victory that could be salvaged from trying improv, how limiting is that? That's when I knew I was going to have to reframe it.
Going further, how could I reframe failure in my head? That was the big realisation for me. I'd never know unless I try. How could I get better if this mindset was the limiting factor in me ever knowing. In Australia, I'd been staying with a few friends when in Sydney. A couple of them had run the Sydney marathon and there was a funny story that one of the guys had pulled out after 2K in the marathon. On the last day as I was being dropped to the airport for my flight home by a friend who completed the marathon, we were talking about what I might do when I go home. Fresh in my mind, I'd been inspired by the fitness I'd seen in Australia (especially around Bondi) was , so getting into a routine of gym and running was of my main priorities. My friend then said he actually had more respect for the friend who tried the marathon and had to pull up after 2K than all the people who had gone out to watch and have a laugh about it, because he put himself on the stage to be embarrassed, he might have failed but at least he trained and was brave enough to attempt the marathon and try to succeed.
Distilling this down to the main lesson I've taken away from trying to reframe failure and this conversation. The prospect of failing can be the most hurtful for you if you believe that failing and success are the only two outcomes. You've got to be open to the lessons you get taught along the way and use them to burnish your current situation. Ignoring them is the biggest failure you can make. I've learnt this lesson through running but I believe it applies to all areas of my life.
A week after getting back from Australia I realised this, so I went out to my local parkrun to give it my all in a 5K. Before leaving the house, I did my banded clamshells, tibialis stretches and calf raises and my left calf had no power or bounce in it. What could've been excuse number 1 was actually lesson number 1 "Do more lower limb strength work, start progressively overloading it with weight" so this isn't a recurrent problem. Once the race kicked off I was going well for about 2K until I was belaboured of breath, keeping this pace was becoming a struggle. I'd been well trained by my plan in half mile intervals and mile time trials but I hadn't done any tempo runs over 6 minutes. In the moment you can't hate yourself anymore, asking myself Why am I such an unfit piece of sh!t. But this was lesson number 2 "Add tempo runs into my next plan". Next there was a big uphill in the race and I didn't have much strength in my legs. It had been 3 weeks since my last hills workout. Lesson number 3: "Do a hill workout in the week before a race/maintain 1 a week". Then finally as I was running I knew I was carrying some extra holiday weight so lesson 4 was "Pay more attention to your nutrition". It sounds simple but I was able to focus on 4 things that would make my performance better. I ended up running 21:58, a new PB. It wasn't the 10K race that my initial goal had been for, but there was plenty of suffering in there and I did challenge myself in a way I had been scared to do and certainly avoiding.
So what's the main takeaway? I was trying to treat this 12 week running plan as something separate to the rest of my life, something sacred, pure and exclusively positive. Every training run gave me the headspace I was searching for and I never regretted going on one regardless how I felt beforehand. But this approach left me blocking out valuable lessons I could've learned along the way but also added much more pressure and expectation to the final task. I wasn't armoured with lessons from my mistakes. I wouldn't allow myself refactor the plan and be more patient with myself and change my goal if it wasn't realistic.
There could be challenges you take on that you'll be scared to do. But if the reason that you're scared to do them is because the feeling of failure is too hard to take, I encourage you to confront that as it's certainly holding you back. I'm not saying you'll miraculously find more ability by doing this to succeed at your goal. But you'll take note of some of the the positives in trying something and be open to the lessons you learned whether you fail or succeed. Remember [[Pain can be an ally]], noting moments when you don't want to feel like this again can bring change to your life.
I believe if you don't re-evaluate your relationship with failure, you'll feel less competent in life. Feeling competent and overcoming challenges in life gives us purposes and peace in life.
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