The Most Important Race Advice I’ve Ever Received? No One Cares.
“In running, it doesn’t matter whether you come in first, in the middle of the pack or last. You can say, ‘I have finished.’ There is a lot of satisfaction in that”
The year was 2018, and I was laying facedown on a hotel bed in Midtown Manhattan. My phone was thrown across the room, my face was tear-streaked and buried in a pillow, and a half-eaten slice of pizza and half-drank bottle of orange Gatorade was on the bed next to me. My poor wife was sitting in a hotel chair on the other side of the room, scrolling Instagram and checking her emails while still wearing her race day shirt with my smiling face all over it and waiting for me to pull myself together.
I had gone into the NYC marathon that year with big dreams of PRing: running a 2:55 was the goal. Admittedly, my training had not been on point that year; it had been a busy, hot summer, and I had the grand delusion that my fitness from my PR two years prior would somehow translate into a flawless race this year.
That was absolutely not the case. I felt good through mile twelve; I came out hot, leading a pack of all male runners coming off the Verrazano Bridge, hauled ass through Brooklyn and high-fived spectators in Williamsburg; somehow missed seeing my wife and family at mile nine, and then right before the half, worry start to set in. My endurance felt fine, but my body had other plans. My stomach felt crampy and weird; every time I tried to drink Gatorade or take a gel, I felt nauseous, and my mental game was weak as I knew I would never be able to hold this pace while simultaneously under-fueled.
By the Queensboro Bridge, for lack of better words, I knew I was royally f*cked. I had run this race in 2016 coming off my sub-three race in Chicago, and ran a 3:02 marathon for what felt to me, very easily. I had gone out to a NYC Ballet event the night before that race, had multiple glasses of wine and a gigantic slice of cheesecake, and didn’t remember feeling any pain running two back-to-back three-ish hour marathons. But this was two years later, I hadn’t kept up with my intense training that I had pushed through in the summer of 2016, I was two years older, and the pain I didn’t feel in 2016 came through full-force in 2018.
I slogged through miles 17 through 19, and by mile 20, I was walking. My sense of defeat was at a level 100, and I was loathing in self-pity. In typical social media fashion, I had been posting all over the place about my big PR goals, and I knew that had slipped away miles ago. I was so concerned with what everyone who was tracking me was thinking (and judging) that I couldn’t even fake a smile when I saw my wife and family on Fifth Avenue leading into the final hills of Central Park. I practically collapsed into Emily’s arms and told her that I felt like a huge failure and didn’t know if I could even summon the courage to finish the race nearly thirty minutes slower than what I had thought I’d cross the line in. But DNF-ing was not in my vocabulary. I staggered up and down the rolling hills of the final 10k and crossed the line in 3:22… a very impressive time that I should have been incredibly happy with, but was so mad at myself that I couldn’t even fathom thinking about the positive.
After tearfully walking back to our hotel and ignoring all the congratulations texts and DMs from friends and family who had been tracking me, and forcing my wife to wallow in my misery, I spent the next few hours trying to think of every excuse in the book to explain why I just could not execute on my race plan, when in reality… Did I even have one?
My wife then told me some hard-hitting words that would change the trajectory of my running life. She said,
“Kelly, you finished the race and qualified for Boston. Even if you had run two hours slower than you wanted, you finished. No one cares about your time. People are just impressed that you can run 26.2 miles.”
This shook me. As someone who up until this moment had obsessed about the numbers on my watch and on the clock above the finish line, I simply could not imagine not telling anyone who would listen about my finish times and my PRs. I couldn’t believe that the general population simply did not care about finish times. In fact, let’s be real. Most people could care less about how many miles you ran. Obsessing over a finish time was a selfish and delusional mindset.
As we went to dinner later that night, I wanted to test the theory. I obviously wore my marathon medal and we immediately were met with some claps and whistles when I walked in the door. An older couple came over to us while we were at the bar almost immediately and asked me, “Did you run a race today? How many miles was it?” Not even five minutes later, another couple came over and said, “How long did it take you to run?” They couldn’t believe it when I answered “Just under three hours, thirty minutes.” I didn’t even have to break out my canned script of “I ran under 3:30, but my race plan imploded and I was supposed to run under three…blah blah blah.” It was true. NO ONE CARED. Those who were interested in what the medal was and how the race went didn’t care ONE bit about what my time was.
All this to say… the numbers on the clock are just one aspect of your race. Yes, it is incredible to set big goals for yourself and train hard to test your limits. But that should not be the end all, be all of your running career. Running a ten hour marathon can be just as impressive as running a two hour marathon. And guess what? If you don’t hit your goals, drop the excuses. As someone who used to look for any justification as to why a long run or race didn’t go as planned (too hot, too cold, too rainy, shoes didn’t feel right, I had a tag in my sports bra that was bothering me, my stomach hurt, etc.), let’s just embrace the fact that running is really, really, REALLY hard. And it’s not going to feel the same from one week to another, from one race to another, and usually, from one day to another. And that’s what makes it so endearing.
Because if it were easy, everyone would do it. And speaking of everyone… everyone doesn’t care about your times. So stop putting so much pressure on yourself and run because you love the sport, not the attention.
Xo
Coach Kelly