Giving My Almost Best: Do I Still Have What it Takes?

I've lost my running killer instinct. I'm not sure when exactly it went away and if I really care to have it back. I'm not saying I'm not still extremely competitive. I'm not saying that I don't have the motivation to run or train hard anymore. On the contrary I am more motivated to improve and work harder than ever, I've just stopped caring as much about what happens at the end of races and a few seconds or even a minute here or there.

There was a time when I would kick into the finish line of almost every race as hard as I could, particularly if it was going head to head with another runner, as if one or two seconds or one place would significantly change the outcome of my race. I just can't make myself do that anymore. This mentality definitely started at some point after my return to consistent racing after an injury riddled year of limited running and almost no racing. In order to return to racing shape without continually re-injuring myself I had to come to accept that it was not worth running every race as hard as I could and that I would have to run in races when not totally fit or at my old levels to get back to where I had been. I know most people who run and race do this---some races are goal races but others are just workouts or tune-ups---but I had always raced every race trying to set a PR and to accomplish the best time I could on that day.

What started out as a mechanism to avoid injury during my comeback has gradually evolved into my thought process in all races. I still have goal races, which I will taper for and push myself both mentally and physically harder and become disappointed if I don't do well in them and races which don't mean as much which I will train through. For awhile I thought I had an on-off switch and that when it really mattered for some purpose I would turn on that switch and really push myself to my absolute limits for a few extra seconds at the end of a race. But I've come to realize that that may not be the case any longer. In all the race reports I have written over the last year or so I cannot find more than one or two instances when I said I stopped pushing at such and such point because a few seconds or a minute didn't matter to me as much not being injured, or recovering for my next race, etc. Even in my goal race this spring, the New Jersey Marathon, this became the case as I didn't care in the closing mile or two whether I finished in 3:01, 3:02, or 3:03. The funny thing is I don't really have regrets about this after my races when I'm able to hit the road and get back into workouts injury-free and a day or two or a week or two earlier than I think I might have been able to otherwise.

And just to clarify here, we're not talking necessarily about the last 400 meters of a race but often the last several miles of a longer race or the last mile of a shorter one. At some point I worry that this lack of mental toughness or willingness to rationalize saving a little something up at the end of most races will start costing me more and more time than I realize. Let's say that the mentality started to creep in somewhere around mile 20 or 21 in the New Jersey Marathon and as a result by mile 23 or mile 24 there really was no chance of breaking 3 hours and thus no reason to really kill myself for an extra minute or handful of seconds here or there at that point. But maybe if I had been a different mindset at mile 20 about how I would fight like heck in the last couple of miles then I would have pushed harder and given myself at least a shot at sub 3 in the closing mile or two. I don't think that was necessarily the case but I am worried I am headed down a bit of a slippery slope.

But then there's the other side to the story. I have just had one of the most successful stretches of running in my life and PR'ed at every distance I have attempted within the last six months and I appreciate and enjoy running more than ever. I'm willing to spend more time in training running more miles and doing more cross training and feel out right exhausted some of the time to get better and make more leaps and bounds, I just don't have the desire any more to ever put absolutely everything out there on the line in one day and I honestly believe it has kept me training more consistently and better off than in the past in terms of my injury situation.

It's almost come to a point where it is a training philosophy. After my injury layoff after my first marathon I had a lot of time to reflect on my running and I really questioned the purpose of training for a marathon in the traditional sense with a big build-up, a two to three week taper, and then totally beating my body up on an off day for a time I wasn't proud of and then weeks of recovery (which in this particular case turned into months). The more I thought about it in those terms I came to the belief that if I ran at 98 or 99 percent effort in my races and didn't try to fixate quite so much on tapering and preparing myself for just one important day that the recovery time between races or cycles would be shorter and that there would be a better overall consistency in my training by avoiding injuries but also by limiting the taper and recovery period which was out of sync with my normal training and running. In other words, I considered that in the long run I would become a better runner and improve more by not losing up two months of good training every time I ran a marathon or losing a week every time I ran a half marathon, or three to four days after a 10K. What if I were able to accomplish 98 or 99 percent of my potential ability from a training cycle in a race and only lose a month of peak training instead of two or three days instead of a week or a day or two instead of three or four? If that were really true (and the 98 or 99 percent figures were really accurate, something which I could never fully know or prove) then in the long run it would undoubtedly be worthwhile because I still have so many ways in which I can improve and I still have time where that should come as long as I can avoid injuries or some sort of burnout or life distraction. What's the point of running a marathon one minute faster if with the right training and approach you think you can run one ten minutes faster in a year?

I realize that sometimes you have to take and seize an opportunity when it is available to you because there are many unanticipated factors that can hinder it from ever coming again but there are just very few opportunities or instances now that seem to merit that ultimate effort to me for the purpose of a two seconds or even two minutes. If in my next marathon I hit the last mile struggling but needing just to put together one last sub 7 minute mile to break three hours, do I hope that I would give almost everything I had to accomplish it, yes I do, because breaking 3 hours has become such a meaningful and sometimes perhaps too consuming goal for me that it would be worth seizing that opportunity right then and there and knowing that I had given my best.

But in most instances I think I am becoming more and more satisfied with giving my almost very best when it comes to races. If I were an elite on the top of my game that would be the wrong attitude but with so much room still to improve my training methods and overall running ability and the fact that I'm not racing for a gold medal or a big paycheck but just for me I'm starting to believe that it might be the right approach. It's just a difficult thing for me to admit to because I don't want what I'm saying to myself to be misconstrued or lumped along with people who just run for fun and don't care much about their times or people who don't train hard or breeze through races and don't suffer much through pain or put forth any mental determination and then wonder why they didn't run faster or why they have hit a plateau. I think I'm still competitive and tough and committed to fast running and working my butt off but I just view things a little bit differently than I used to and have a new approach of how to reach my ultimate goals and enjoy them a bit more along the way. Or maybe I'm just getting soft and I have to turn this around? I hope that's not the case at least. At least I've had the chance to be a bit philosophical about running for the day now.