On Being Your Best
I can think of countless times someone has wished me “Good luck!” or “Break a leg!” and I’d nervously reply, “I’ll try my best!” Which is maybe the most noncommittal answer ever. It’s that pesky word, try. It’s sort of like saying, “Well, let’s see how I feel.” Either you’re going to do your best, or you have another objective (which is completely fine). And only YOU can define those parameters. To do your best simply means to be honest with yourself. Doing your best is really hard. Doing your best is all you can do. And absolutely no one and no thing can take that away from you.
The reassuring part about doing your best is that it’s within your control, both in preparation and execution. It can’t be defined or carried out by anyone but you. Your best on one day (or season or year) might have a different outcome than your best on another day. Whether you win the race or come in dead last, you’ll know whether you left all of yourself out there. That is, if you wanted to.
I’m spewing this partly out of frustration. We put a lot of value on the idea of winning or losing, or ranking each other and ourselves, and placing a lot of value on these particular aspects. Of course, that’s an inherent part of the sport of ultras and FKTs. The whole idea of racing (as a sport) or breaking a record is to be or see who can be the fastest. However, many runners, including myself at times, struggle with their sense of self-worth and sense of belonging as defined by these kinds of parameters, and that makes me sad.
How I like to think of it is, any result or race place lives in its own little bubble, completely detached from anyone’s worthiness. Running as a daily practice is part of my being. I feel a sense of belonging in the running community; part of that is the shared struggle. No matter where in the pack we are, we have our personal reasons for being out there, and of course a common thread is that running and hiking humbles us all.
I think when we let go of the rigidity of results and strive for the more intangible “best” version of ourselves, that is ultimate freedom. I’ve written about Karel Sabbe and Heather Anderson before, and I’m going to bring them up again. I noticed a direct similarity in their approach to hiking long trails, as quoted by them directly.
On Heather’s self-supported Appalachian Trail record (which she wrote a fantastic book about), she initially had a goal of breaking Jennifer Pharr Davis’ supported record. She had specific checkpoints for herself. After hitting some obstacles early on, the plan went out the window, she fell behind JPD’s pace, and she was even thinking of quitting. But, ultimately she kept going, but with a major shift in mindset–doing her best. That may not have meant reaching her original goal, but she hiked every day until she dropped–ultimately that’s all one can do–and maybe besides the moral of the story, but her best just happened to be good enough for the overall self-supported record in the end.
In this excellent article by Emily Halnon about Karel Sabbe’s recent Pacific Crest Trail record, he deliberately did not hold himself to a standard set by someone else. “If you go into an FKT attempt with the current FKT in mind, you’re limiting yourself,” Sabbe said. “My goal was to get the best out of myself every day.” The old record pace average was approximately 51 miles per day; his approximate average was 58 miles per day. Boom!
When you think of it this way (being your best on your own terms), you can relieve yourself of so much pressure, expectations, and even limitations. You can also look at a competition as an extremely positive thing; the more you surround yourself with people striving for similar goals and to share the struggle with, the more you can bring out of and help each other. To shy away from or belittle your own effort because you might not be the best by the standard of anyone besides yourself sounds to me like the saddest thing in the world.
With all that in mind, am I ready to do my best and have a great time at Bubba’s Backyard Ultra next weekend? Heck yeah!
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