Thoughts on the Run

All this week the topic has been around my failure. What I did wrong, how I didn’t finish the 50k run, ending up in an ambulance, and how it was a preventable experience.

Sometimes though, you have to be dumb and be allowed to fail. Believe it or not, you don’t know everything and everyone else is not completely wrong. If so, it is a sad way to live and you are probably doing the same thing day in and out. Boring.

When I was growing up, I was scared to death of flying. Not because I saw a crash, had a close friend die in a plane, or watch too many movies. My parents taught me that flying was not safe.

They had logic: If a plane crashes, everyone dies. Hard to argue that.

Then there was: a 30,000lb piece of metal shouldn’t fly through the sky like that. I can get onboard with that. Wait … not onboard.

Eventually, I got on an airplane and traveled to 9 countries in one year. Life changing. The people I met and experiences I had changed the way I looked at the world. There was more to what I learned in my small town. I had heard stories in history class, social studies, and from teachers that explored the world, but experiencing it first hand was a different story.

Now I travel so much on an airplane that I maintain frequent flyer status. I know the tricks and ways to travel comfortably. I changed what was taught to me as absolute fact.

I like the world of long distance running because they get this. We all have different coaches and read a variety of articles, but we know there is no one way. From fuel to training plans to how much sleep to get, there is a different combination for everyone. Listening to just one person’s view on it is just that … it’s one person’s view. In order to succeed, we need to experiment a little. Change it up and break the mold. In fact, reinvent the mold. Change the mold. Find something that is not a mold and use that.

I was asked yesterday how I feel about everyone talking about my failure of not finishing a race. I like it. It feels good. Know why? Because it gets people thinking and talking. Who knows, maybe they’ll even think about a time they failed and learn something from it. Perhaps they’ll prevent what happened to me happening to them.

Most likely, if you read my blog then you are fairly open to change. You are open to learning something new and accepting you don’t know everything just because someone told you so. Or that your interpretation is absolute. My favorite is when someone says that’s the way it is because that’s how they see it. And anything you say they will have a reason with why you are wrong. Exhausting. Sad.

Surround yourself with people that love to learn and can admit it’s a big universe. If we are not open to change, then we are not able to grow. Whether that be as a runner, person, or community, there is opportunity all around. Stop being defensive and start being inquisitive.