Answering the Unanswerable

So last post (check out "The Unanswerable Question") I said that all the doubts, the fears, the questions, all the negativity that manifests in the days before your "big day" (race, interview, presentation, date, WHATEVER)...do not matter.  In answering the unanswerable question, naturally, begs another question:

HOW can they not matter?

The answer, simply put:  Because YOU are DOING it.  You are not playing the role of armchair QB, the guy at the far end of the conference table, the dude at the end of the bar.  These people LOVE to watch people try things, because they get to, on occasion, watch people fail at things.  Then comes the smirk, the "knowing" nod, the snarky comment.  It's simply amazing how many people KNOW things are going to go badly, right AFTER they do so.  And I know I am yelling too much in this post, but it is necessary to combat the legion of naysayers we encounter each and every day.

When I completed my first (only, to date) marathon, I had a two-month brain cramp, where I did not realize that they had portable music players (this was 2001, so no iPods, and I know how crazy that sounds).  To push through the tough stretches, I would recite a passage attributed to Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  (thanks to Goodreads.com for the text of the quote)

In his book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales studied people who survived extreme situations, and others who did not.  He identified a trait common to many of the survivors he referred to as "PMA", Positive Mental Attitude.  Simply put, people who believed they COULD do something, by and large, DID that thing.

This is not, however, irrational confidence; I'm not saying you should sign up today to run a marathon next week (though it's not too late to register for the Urbanathlons in NYC and San Fran!).  This is believing in yourself; believing that your training, your preparation, your plan, ARE good enough, and WILL BE on the big day.  This is me, when the Whatifs crawl into my ear, ushering them out with answers I built pounding pavement on runs and blasting through circuits at the fitness center.

Because there's always that guy at the end of the bar, the back of the boardroom, and there's NOTHING better than looking him in the eye, KNOWING you did what he's afraid to do.  Trust me, he'll look away first, and then it's your turn to smile, my friend.

Until next time,

Tom

2T4:7

The Unanswerable Question

It happens every race, every year.  You hope it doesn't, but there it is, just like clockwork.  This time, it took the form of a text from a friend:

"Good luck in the race!  Are you ready?"

Now, those weren't his exact words, but they are the idea behind The Great Unanswerable Question.  It's the same question that will HAUNT you, in its various forms:

Did I log enough miles?
Did I do enough strength training?
Did I cross-train?  What IS cross-training?
Should I change my diet?  Do I HAVE a diet?  Is it good enough?
Should I eat more carbs?  Fewer carbs?  Or is it "less" carbs? (NOTE:  I have never seen a carb, and thus do not know, grammatically speaking, if they are individually counted, or grouped.  But I digress...)

The Great Unanswerable leads, inevitably, to what that great sage and eminent philosopher, not to mention fantastic poet, Shel Silverstein, called "The Whatif Song."

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song

You've been there, when it's the night before the race, and your mind is already running the race, or, worse, NOT running the race because a herd of wildebeests escaped from the local zoo and trampled you, injuring your ankle (don't ask, just understand, my family has a strange history with wildebeests).  Or maybe it's the night before the test, and you wonder if you took ALL the notes necessary...or it's the night before that big meeting, and you aren't sure if you backed up the backup of your presentation...

We KNOW this is coming.  We know it like we know the sun will rise tomorrow (hopefully during, and not before, my last longish run before race day).  We gather together our mental armor, our pithy quotes and sayings.  We scour YouTube like it's a sacred site, searching every variation of "motivation" for that perfect video, like this one:

Get Up Get Moving!  (sorry, that's not the name of the video, but it works, no?)

But in the end, it's just you and your training, or lack thereof.  And believe me, you WILL remember every morning you hit snooze too many times, every workout skipped with "I cut the grass, that counts", every second helping of dessert justified with an "extra mile" you didn't run.

Here's the best part, though:  NONE OF THAT CRAP MATTERS.

I say again:  NONE OF IT MATTERS.

And I'll tell you why...next week, when I write my last words before hitting the streets of Chicago for the Men's Health Urbanathlon.

Until next time,

Tom
2T4:7

Motivation: The Dark Side

So last time, I talked about motivation (Check out "Motivation: It's What's For Dinner"), and today, I got a nice reminder of the motivation that no one likes to talk about, or even consider as a factor in personal motivation.  Let me explain...no, is too much, let me sum up:

My daughter's volleyball team lost a heartbreaker today.  Lost, in a tiebreaker, by 2 points.  Worse, she had the serve, to win, and it...sailed long, and then the other team's best player (basically LeBron with a ponytail) served out the match.  It KILLED me, and there's nothing worse than standing in a rapidly-emptying gym, holding your daughter as she cries and says "It's all my fault that we lost."  No, sweetie, it is NOT "all your fault", this is a team game.  Now let me find someone evildoer to punch on your behalf...

On the way home, we talked about how this does, indeed, feel awful, but I was trying to "coach her up", so I said, "Now, just USE this, and next time..."  She interrupted, "Yeah, next time I'll go back in time and not hit that stupid serve long."

My pre-teen Yoda.  She reminded me, so beautifully, why we TRAIN.

We train because of mile 9 of 13.1,  mile 20 of 26.2.
We train because "PR" does NOT mean "pretty reasonable".
We train because Soldier Field, Citi Field, and AT&T Park are NOT getting shorter.
We train because of the person we hear, running right behind us.

We train because, deep down in places that we don't talk about at parties, we FEAR failure.  We FEAR hitting the wall, we FEAR cramping up, we FEAR getting to the stadium, and not being able to climb the stairs (Urb reference, if you missed it, just move along, remain calm, all is well!)

So after her game, I dropped her off at home, went to the gym and did my circuit training, hungry and tired though I was.

Because, since I must be honest, I am DEATHLY AFRAID that the 35-year-old guy who ran the Urbanathlon three years ago was the best version of me, and he's dopplering off into the sunset.

Until next time,
Tom
2T4:7