Week 80: At times giving your best isn’t enough

Unedited raw version of the column Run&Bee published in Hindustan Times on 18th January 2020.

In this life you would have at least once experienced that inspite of giving your absolute best, every ounce of what you had, in every sense, mentally and physically, you would yet fall short. It doesn’t matter how big or small that margin is, you simply didn’t make the cut-off. It could be in an examination that matters the most to you, in the love of your life or in this case, the race that you had been preparing for a while, possibly what seems like a lifetime. Your heart would be broken into tiny pieces. As if that wasn’t bad enough, if it were to happen the second time around, it might seem that your soul just got shredded. 

Just recognising your follies will help you become a better person. You might not get a second chance, you might not want a second chance, and it’s yet ok.

You might want to feel awful for yourself. Be my guest. Don’t resist that. It’s easier for others to tell you not to. They are not you. They don’t get it in spite of their best intentions. Not to the extent you do. You’ve got to go through it on your own. Your layers will peel off. You might make your well-wishers run for cover. For all your friends and family, it is going to be tough for them with all those tantrums and mood swings thrown by you but I urge them to be there through your lows. Your irrational behaviour doesn’t need to make any sense at all. They just need to hang around without judging you when you are at your lowest. 

Irony of life is that everyone wants to hang around with happy-go-lucky beings, whether it be a dog or a human being. As much as I often tell people to put on that fake smile expecting that smile to soon turn to real, this one time, just be. It is your journey. You need to do it. Get used to it. 

Stop blaming others.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it.

Now let’s do an autopsy of what went wrong and how it could have been tackled better.

The first reason (of falling short) could be that you had prepared really well for weeks and months, but yet you faltered.

You need to put yourself through race like conditions on multiple occasions to be able to use your Brahamastra when it really matters. You need to practice staying calm and understanding that it’s never about anyone else but about you alone. Like in Game Theory, you can only control what you do, so focus on your best performance for best outcome. 

It’s a harsh fact we need to come to terms with. You simply need to become better. But that realisation is crucial. Plan your next race no sooner than 4-6 months. In this time start to follow a plan to get to your goal. You need to be honest with yourself as to how realistic is that target. Maybe you had set the bar a bit too high. You might need to lower it down a bit. Most runners during training want to focus on running faster and longer. Fair enough but without a solid base, you aren’t going anywhere. As a matter of fact, it’s a recipe for disaster. You training needs to have a solid base. Get on with strength training three times a week. Before you plan to run fast, get used to running slow. 

One more round!