Thoughts on PBs, and Looking to the Past for Perspective

I didn't originally intend to write a blog post this week, but after a week spent discussing the 2018 Tely 10 over and over again with runners of all ages and abilities I have some thoughts that I feel are worth sharing. Hopefully they can prove useful to some.

For the vast majority of runners who toed the starting line last Sunday morning, a personal best (PB) was likely their ultimate goal. There is obviously a large group of runners who are doing the race for the first time, and their primary goal is to finish. And there is a much smaller group who are racing competitively, either for overall or age-group placings. However, I think it's safe to say that the group in the middle, who have run the race before but have no dreams of a second medal to go with the one they get for finishing, makes up the bulk of the race.

When you are in that group, a PB is generally your focus, and that can make a day like last Sunday very difficult. While the competitive runners also obviously have goal times in mind, they can often take solace in their placing if they fail to reach their time goal. So if everyone is suffering and they are all slower than normal, they can adjust their pace and still have a satisfactory result. When your time is the only objective, that is a little more difficult.

Over the last seven days, I've spoken to many runners who were disappointed in their time from last weekend, and that is understandable. After working hard for months of training, and feeling like your fitness is there to run a PB, it is disheartening not to achieve that goal. So, what can we do to help process that feeling? In my opinion, the first thing is to change the way many of us, especially less experienced runners, look at PBs.

I wrote a blog post earlier this year talking about how we need to consider all the variables when we are assessing our training runs. There are so many factors that can affect our performance on any given day, and while it's not good to make excuses, it is necessary to evaluate our training in the proper context. What I have found in talking to many people about last week's race is that we often fail to do this when it comes to racing.

As I see it, the trap that many of us fall into when assessing our race performance is boiling it down to a single variable: our fitness heading into race day. We work hard, we do the training, we see our paces improving, and we expect that to deliver the desired result. We know we've done everything right, we have tapered and allowed our bodies to prepare. What could go wrong?

Well, the short answer to that question is: just about anything.

As last week showed, the weather can play a huge role in what we are capable of, no matter where our fitness level is. There were some very impressive performances last week, especially from the top runners on the woman's side. But there were not many runners I spoke to this week who hit their goal time, including a number of the elites. Even 11-time Tely champion Colin Fewer acknowledged that he had to ease back in the second half of the race.

On top of that, we all have commitments outside of running, whether they be work, family, or any number of others. I don't know of a single professional runner who ran last weekend, so that means that none of us are able to train and dedicate ourselves to running full-time. A sick child, a friend in need of assistance, an impromptu household repair that needs to be dealt with; the list could go on and on. One of my running buddies actually got called in to work after he had already gone to bed the night before the race! Needless to say those types of things aren't ideal for running performance.

And on a physical level, it is not just our training and fitness that matters. I know of people who were sick heading into the race last weekend. Others (myself included) were struggling to get proper sleep in the extremely humid weather. And I'm sure there are a few of us who don't exactly eat quite the way we should to maximize performance.

Taken together, these variables (and more) affect our performance on race day. With that in mind, it's important to expand your focus beyond just the number on your watch. I was given this lesson by a running partner in 2016, when I was similarly disappointed from not reaching a goal. He emphasized how hard I had trained, how much progress I'd made, and how if more of the variables had lined up I would have crushed my goal. I keep that lesson with me in every race I run, and I try to share it with others every chance I get.

With that out of the way, I want to briefly (or as briefly as I can!) highlight a second thing I think we can do to help ease the pain of missing a goal. As you may have already guessed from the title of this post, it's to look to our past for some perspective. :)   I'm going to deliver this message from a personal point of view, but I am sure most can take this thought process and apply it to their own situation.

I first ran the Tely 10 in 2013. In my first 3 attempts, I ran times in the 80 minute range, with a PB of 80:04 in 2014. My training varied through those years, but I gave my best effort each year on race day. So up to that point, I was unable to break 80 minutes for the Tely. If it had been at all possible, I would have squeezed those extra 5 seconds out!

That means that as recently as July 2016, I had never run under 80 minutes for the Tely. When I look back at the results for those years, I see names in the 72 minute range, and the 76 minute range, that I remember looking at and thinking, "Wow, those people ran really great races!" As much as I wanted to, I never knew if I could get down to those times.

Since then, I successfully lowered my PB to 76:20 in 2016, and then 68:55 in 2017. Heading into 2018, I had hopes of dropping it further, hopefully below 67:00. Unfortunately, that was not in the cards. As I wrote in my race recap last week, I knew by the halfway point that I wasn't going to make my time, and I made a conscious choice to dial back my effort and run a comfortable second half. That led to me finishing with a time of 73:01.

Now, 73:01 is definitely a little disappointing when you were aiming for sub-67. But then I look back and realize that two short years ago I hadn't cracked 80. I think about those 72 minute runners I had so much respect for, and realize I just ran 73 minutes on a bad day. What would the 2016 version of me think of that? I'm pretty sure he'd be awfully damn impressed!

That is my story, and everyone reading this has their own. So when you do have a difficult race, and you fail to get a PB or reach a goal you've set, try to think back to where you started, and think about how that version of yourself would view the current version. I think like me you'll find that your current accomplishments are likely more impressive than you are giving yourself credit for.

That is all for me on this one. I hope that these ideas can help provide some context for some of those who are reading this and may be struggling to process their result from last week. And as I often say, while these topics are all about running, the ideas are often very applicable in many areas of our lives. Thanks as always for reading. Cheers!