Welcome to Episode 13 Get What You Came For
The year was 2013. I had set my sights on qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I was 41 at that time and needed to qualify with a time of 3:45 or faster.
I had run the same race two years prior. My previous time at the same race had been 3:57 and the weather conditions that day had been terrible. Rain and wind were constant companions for most of the race. And the course was hard. The hardest I had completed so far. We ran rolling hills throughout the entire course.
Fast forward two years and I was confident enough that I could take the 12 minutes needed off my time with the right training plan and better weather. Nothing is a given. I knew that. It is one of the reasons I am drawn to this sport. There are no guarantees. The distance commands respect. It can’t be faked. Some people might be able to fake their way through to a finish, but I can’t.
I knew I would need to make some adjustments to my training plan. Up until this point I was following pretty basic lower mileage training plans. They were fine for a beginner and got the job done when it came to getting me across the finish line.
Now I was ready for more. I was ready to tweak some areas in my training plan so that I could begin to reach new goals. One thing about me that is always true is that when I am interested in something, I will read everything I can get my hands on to learn more about it. This was no exception. I had been reading, listening to podcasts, following more advanced runners on social media, talking to other runners who were farther along in experience. I set out to learn from people who were much faster and more experienced than me. This led me to selecting a new training plan that was better suited to my new goals. The new plan was quite advanced compared to what I had followed in the past. And the mileage was significantly increased.
As I had done with my training plans in the past, I trusted the plan and followed it to a T. I did not change a thing. Relying on what I knew to get me where I wanted to go would have been a mistake. I hadn’t reached this goal yet, so I didn’t have the understanding of what it would actually take to do so. I relied instead on the knowledge of the coaches who created the plan. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn't blindly following a random plan. I did my research before selecting the plan I would commit to. And once I made my decision, I was all in.
Race day arrived. The weather was better this time, but the course was still hilly and hard. I stuck to my race plan and crossed the finish line with a time of 3:44:14. I had earned my BQ with 16 seconds to spare. That finish was one of the most cherished race memories I have. I had reached my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. The most challenging goal I had ever set for myself. A goal that stretched me and tested me in ways that I had not experienced before. Achieving that milestone was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. It was everything I wanted it to be.
If you are not a runner, here is something you might not know. Qualifying for Boston does not mean that you get to run Boston. That’s right folks, you can work for months training for your qualifying race, succeed in getting your qualifying time and STILL not get to participate in the actual race. Although there is a minimum qualifying standard, of those who run the qualifying standard, the fastest people get those spots first. Once the allotted openings are filled, the race is closed. What that meant for me, was that in order to get to run Boston the next year I actually would have needed to run six minutes faster than the qualifying time. That’s right. I did all the training. Ran my best race. Got my qualifying time and several months later found out that it wasn’t enough.
And guess what. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I had been so focused on QUALIFYING for Boston that once I reached that goal, I felt complete in that. Qualifying was my goal. And I had done that. I got what I came for and nothing could take that from me. Also, after achieving that goal once, I was confident that I could do it again if I had the same dedication and training.
Running Boston hadn’t been my goal. Qualifying for Boston had been the goal. The fact that I didn’t get into the race felt like no big deal and I just moved on with my life armed with some new information about what I would need to do if I wanted to get a spot in the race.
In 2014 I was registered to run the Chicago Marathon. Getting into Chicago can be tricky because you are entered into a lottery for available race entries. It just so happened that Jacki and I both came up in the lottery that year so we were both going to run it the same year. We trained together for the months leading up to the race and ten years later that continues to be one of my best memories of our friendship. I followed the plan that I had used previously to qualify, but this time I didn’t just want to qualify, I wanted to earn a spot in the race itself. That meant stretching myself again in my training and pace. Now that I knew what it would actually take to earn a spot in the race, I had a new goal.
I tweaked what needed to be tweaked. Followed the plan exactly and improved my time by 8 minutes, finishing with a time of 3:36:03.
Based on what I knew about entry times from the year before, I was pretty confident that I had earned my spot for the 2016 Boston. Goal accomplished. I got what I came for. I had the joy of training with my best friend. The race itself was one of the most fun races I have ever run. I was very happy about my finishing time. Everything about this experience met or exceeded my expectations. I had earned a spot in the 2016 Boston Marathon.
But it wasn’t meant to be. By Spring of 2016 our family was facing some serious obstacles and making the trip across the country to run the race just wasn’t the right thing for me to do that year. I was disappointed. Really disappointed. But my disappointment had a lot more to do with the pain I was feeling about other things going on than it did about running. I had met my goal of earning a spot. There was absolutely nothing that could take that away. Life went on and I held onto the belief that if I had done it twice I could likely do it again.
Now that I had qualified twice and not yet made the trip to run the race, I was becoming more interested in the race itself. The race itself had not been the goal previously. Qualifying for the race and then qualifying with a time fast enough to earn a spot in the race had been the goals.
By the third time I was beginning to really want to make my way to the actual race. I set out to run the San Antonio Rock and Roll marathon in December of 2016. I don’t remember too much about that race except that it rained for a good portion of it and even though it hadn’t rained hard, in San Antonio the water doesn’t really have anywhere to go and the roads flood easily. I was running through a lot of standing water that day. I secured a time that was fast enough to earn a spot in the 2018 Boston Marathon.
Finally it seemed that I would be going to Boston to run the iconic Boston Marathon.
In last week’s episode I shared my story about how running had broken up with me. I was no longer enjoying running on the road and my speed had taken a significant decline. Also, I was beginning to dabble in trail running, which I found to be quite different from road running and racing and I was quickly falling in love with the trails. I wanted to run the Boston Marathon, but the challenge had been in securing my spot. I didn’t have a goal in mind for the marathon itself other than to go experience it. Very similar to my first marathon-I really just wanted to see what all the hype was and enjoy the experience. This was a very different goal for me after a decade of pushing to get new and better times at each race. But it was truly my only goal. And I am so glad that was the case.
I didn’t enjoy my training cycle leading up to Boston. At all. I didn’t have the desire to be off the trail and back on the road to train, but that is what I needed to do to prepare. I dreaded most of my runs. It didn’t feel fun anymore.
Now that I am several years past that time, I can see that there were a lot of circumstances in my life at the time that interrupted me being able to enjoy running, so it makes sense. At the time, it was disappointing to feel that way as I prepared for a race that I had worked so hard to finally be registered for.
In spite of the drudgery I felt throughout the training cycle, I was very excited as the race approached. My husband, youngest daughter and I flew to Boston the Saturday before the Monday race.
I knew the Boston weather would be significantly cooler than the San Antonio temperatures I had been training in. This would be to my advantage.
What I was NOT prepared for was the freak winter weather that would pop up while we were there. I had planned to show my husband and daughter all the places I had visited 20 years prior when I spent a week in Boston with my college roommate who lived there. It was so cold that most of the outdoor shops weren’t even open. We were not detoured. We still had a wonderful time.
Walking through the runners Expo, getting my official bib, taking pictures at the expo was all a dream come true. I have been to plenty of running expos in Chicago. I knew it would be a big deal, but I wasn’t prepared for how special it would feel to be there. This was everything I could have hoped for and more. I soaked in and savored everything about it. It was magical.
It didn’t matter that it was sleeting outside and colder than I had experienced since moving from Indiana to Texas. I was so happy to be there that nothing could have dampened my spirits.
Race day came and the weather had not improved. In fact, I was already completely soaked from head to toe, through my shoes and socks before I crossed the START line. It was cold. It was windy and I was not dressed for 26.2 miles of cold rain. Physically, I was pretty miserable midway through, but my spirits could not have been higher. The experience was magical. I knew my time wasn’t going to be great anyway because I hadn't had a great training cycle. The unexpected winter weather sealed the deal on that.
Yet it did not matter. I was there to have the Boston Marathon experience and I soaked in every long cold minute of it. It was a terrible race performance wise AND it was one of my favorite running experiences of my life. It wasn’t bad OR good. It was bad AND it was amazing.
A quick sidenote, being able to experience the hard and the good at the same time is a topic that comes up a lot with my coaching clients. I think it’s worth a pause to consider here.
Life is going to offer up both good and bad circumstances and sometimes at the same time. Being able to hold both and acknowledge both is a tool that can serve you powerfully during sustained periods of a hard season.
It’s usually pretty easy to see the bad or the hard. The hard stuff is easily recognizable.
When you are able to train yourself to find the good that exists even while the hard is hanging around, it can keep you from drowning, provide a moment of relief and give you the encouragement you need to make it through another day.
We are not yet to our life coach connection so I’ll get back to the race.
My body does not handle the cold well. I learned to adapt while we lived in Indiana by finding the right winter gear so that I could be outside running year round. I don’t mind running when it is cold as long as I am dressed for it. I was not dressed or prepared for the winter weather offered up on that April day. Not at all. In case you have never experienced it, when it is raining and the temperature of the air is just barely above freezing, that will chill you to your core. Cold rain feels much colder than snow.
I’m not sure at what point it happened, but towards the end I was so cold that it was hard to pick up my legs to run. I felt like I was going to be frozen in place. I was still having the time of my life, but there are some things about the Boston finish that people talk about that I think I may have missed out on because I was starting to be in a lot of pain from the cold.
I needed to finish and get warmed up.
I don’t remember much about the finish at all other than suddenly only being able to think about getting out of my wet clothes and into dry ones so I could start to warm up.
It’s all kind of blurry at the end, and that is partially due to the fact that unlike all my other races, the end wasn’t what I came for. I was there for the total experience. And it was amazing.
It felt extra special because earlier in the day Des Lindon became the first American woman to win the women’s category in 33 years. It was unexpected and remarkable.
On paper, all the conditions were wrong. My finish time was more than an hour slower than the time I had run to qualify for the race. It was slower than my first marathon. Yet it was one of the most magical days. Having my husband and my youngest daughter there to share the experience with was really special. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
I knew what I wanted from that weekend and that race and I got exactly what I came for.
What’s the Life Coach Connection? I’m so glad you asked. Our Life Coach Connection for this week is the idea to Get What You Came For in every experience you have.
I have made it my responsibility in every situation to get what I came for.
What does that look like? Well in the Boston Marathon, I was there to savor the experience of being at that iconic race. I was there to experience the uniqueness that is the Boston Marathon.
I soaked it ALL in. Every single moment. It didn’t matter that my training hadn’t been the best. It didn’t matter that the weather was the worst I had ever raced in. It didn’t matter that my performance was WAY off what I expected even when thinking about worst case scenarios.
I experienced All of those circumstances and it was STILL everything I hoped it would be in terms of the Boston experience.
I’m so glad that I approached the race with the mindset that the race itself and the experience of our entire trip was not a goal to achieve but rather it was the CELEBRATION of achieving the goal of qualifying.
That had been the case from day one. Since I set out on my quest to run a Boston qualifying time, the qualifying time was the goal, not the race. Each time I ran a qualifying time, I felt complete in that goal. Did I want to go to Boston to experience the actual race? Yes, but I looked at it as the reward or celebration of reaching the goal of qualifying. The race itself was never that important to me.
And it was this mindset that allowed me to have such a wonderful experience in spite of the weather that slowed me down and made the conditions physically very unpleasant. Would I like to go back and experience the more typical beautiful Northeastern Spring day that is often what runners find waiting for them? Yes, there is a little voice that sometimes pops up to say, let’s give it one more go.
The truth though, is that I don’t know if I have another qualifying time in me. My body is different now that I run on trails. My speed seems to have left permanently.
And most noticeably, I don’t know if that goal lights my fire enough to do what it would take to find out if I have another qualifying race in me. And I’m not sad about any of it. I know that I already got what I came for.
This is a principle that can be applied to every area of life. Awhile back I was taking a course that was a large financial investment for me. Each cohort was assigned a facilitator. The facilitator for my cohort was different than I expected. In fact, she wasn’t great. She had the knowledge needed to facilitate, but was lacking in other areas and the cohort didn’t gel as well as it might have under a different, more skilled facilitator. I had made a significant investment to be in this program. I could have felt a great deal of disappointment over this and possibly even some resentment. Instead, I did everything in my power to show up to get what I came for during that course. I made sure that the value I received from participating far exceeded the investment I made. Because I took responsibility for my experience, I was able to make it fully valuable in spite of the parts outside of my control that I would have preferred be different. Taking responsibility in this way means that I very rarely walked away from any experience feeling disappointed. It allows me to have the best experience possible no matter how anyone else shows up.
What do you need to do to be able to “get what you came for” in every experience? Here are a few things I find valuable:
First, you need to understand what your goal is. Be clear with yourself about what you want.
Second, take responsibility for setting yourself up for success. This is key. When you remove the possibility of placing blame on anyone or anything else, you show up differently. When clients first learn about taking full responsibility, there is sometimes a misconception in the beginning that this means blaming themselves for things going wrong or being hard on themselves. Those are attributes of perfectionism. Perfectionism and responsibility are not the same. Not even close. Perfectionism keeps people stuck, because perfect is unattainable.
Taking responsibility empowers you. When you are in the habit of taking full responsibility for your outcomes, you become better at planning ahead to set yourself up for success. When things aren’t going as expected rather than getting frustrated or feeling defeated, you are able to use this new information to make adjustments necessary to make sure you are still heading toward your desired outcome.
I hope this idea will help you to look at situations that arise in a new light.
Step one is to get clear about what you want from that situation.
Step 2 is to make it your responsibility and no one else’s to make that happen.
Step 3 is to take the time to notice how much more satisfied and joyful you feel when you know you are choosing to live this way rather than to let circumstances dictate the experience you have.
That’s all I have for you today, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Running to Myself. You can find previous episodes on apple podcasts and spotify or on my website www.trishastanton.com. New episodes are released each Monday. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify to automatically receive each new episode as it comes out.
If you know someone who you think would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them! I will be back next week to share a little more about my journey on the road to discovering my truest self.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about my coaching program or have questions about one-on-one coaching or life coaching in general, please visit my website at www.trishastanton.com or visit me in my Facebook Group The Simple Truth Coaching. I would love to hear from you!
Have a great week and remember, Mindset Matters!
