Failure is an option
What I learned when my first attempt at the Great North Run turned into my slowest-ever half marathon. Sometimes, losing is just part of life.
Running is about improvement. At least that’s what we’re conditioned to believe. With each stride, each tempo run, and each gym session, we are boosting our performance potential. We’re getting stronger, faster, better. We’re on the journey. Soon enough, we’ll be basking in the warm glow of a new personal best, or at least the smug satisfaction that we gave a race absolutely everything we had and that’s enough despite the outcome. But what about when that doesn’t happen? What about when you don’t give your best and you underperform?
Nobody in the strictly sanitised and carefully curated world of social media and personal brands ever likes to admit that they simply f**ked up. The oppressive weight of failure is a tough enough burden to bear without broadcasting it to your friends, families, acquaintances et al. Can doing such a thing ever be considered a good use of your time? I’m not here to tell you the answer to that question, only to share the experience of my most recent half marathon, which also happened to be my slowest by a clear 15 minutes. What did I learn? Will you learn something too? Who knows, but there are humorous anecdotes about Vaseline, so there’s that…
My lead-up to the UK’s biggest and most famous half marathon, the Great North Run, was about as ideal as a blister in mile eight (one of the mishaps that didn’t actually happen). I’ve been struggling with injury, motivation, and consistency for well over a year now and a combination of a recurring Achilles/calf problem and a suspected arthritic knee had joined forces to become a dynamic duo of disaster that seemed to take pleasure in letting me improve just enough to think I’d finally put them behind me before flaring up like the home end at the San Siro.
However, as I perched precariously inside a very lopsided portaloo in the starting area, race day bravado led me to think I was reasonably well prepared. Amid that unmistakable stench and the creeping fear of toppling over, I took some solace that I had been able to run 20-30km a week for the last nine weeks or so.
Maybe I could give a reasonable account of myself in spite of my frail body and its worse reliability record than the average 20-year-old Land Rover? A PB was out of the question as it sits north of 1h35m (I was young and stupidly motivated), but I was faintly optimistic that I might be able to match my most recent half marathon time from 18 months before, in the more comfortable realm of 1h50m.
And so, as I left the strange time-slowed nervous limbo world that is the starting pen and crossed the line to begin the race, happiness was the main emotion I felt to be competing in this famous old race. And then it started raining…
And it kept on raining, and raining, and raining, and raining. By the time I reached the iconic Tyne Bridge, I was already pretty saturated, squelching my way through the early miles thankful that I had improvised and used my wife’s pink, raspberry-flavoured Vasoline lip balm as makeshift protection for my nipples. If you think that’s an uncomfortable mental image, just imagine them after 13 miles of torrential rain and sweat.
The weather is one of those uncontrollable factors that can make or break your race experience, but this constant downpour that endured for the entire event arrived late and without warning. While all it really did for me was make me feel miserable, I saw many others struggling with the conditions due to lack of preparation or incorrect kit.
My biggest issue was that I hadn’t bothered with contact lenses, so I was in a constant state of trying and failing to clear my steamy, rain-soaked glasses. Who needs to see where they’re running among 60,000 others on tight northeastern streets, right?
In my head, I’d been telling myself that once I’d run 10k, I would have broken the back of it and even if something disastrous did happen, I’d be able to shuffle home in a respectable time. Predictably, my left calf, which had been waiting patiently for its time to shine, took the passing of the 10k marker as its sign to enter the fray with its well-rehearsed lines of cramping, tightness, and general discomfort of the kind that leaves you unsure over its severity.
No big deal. I could stop and stretch it off. Dodging puddles and runners veering wildly across the course to grab handfuls of Jelly Babies from the warm and generous supporters, I made it to the curb and began relieving my calf tension.
Okay, so 1h45m was probably unachievable. I took stock and decided to aim for 1h50m, maybe even 1h55m at worst. I carried on, but my calf was unhappy with this brief cameo, it wanted a starring role, and who was I to play director? By 14km, I was staring down the barrel of my first-ever DNF. The cramping seemed relentless and I just couldn’t get it under control. I made a bold and pretty stupid decision – if I could just find a way to run without using my left calf muscles too heavily I could make it home. I’d ignored a lot of this limb’s protests throughout my training so what was a few more kilometres? It was only a parkrun left, after all.
So began an undignified hobble/shuffle that brought me into South Shields and onto the famous finishing mile, of which little was visible due to the low-hanging clag that had smothered the entire coastline.
I was fighting and concentrating so hard on not turning this issue into a more major injury that I’d forgotten all about times. I glanced down at my watch and saw that the time began with a two. My heart sank as I entered this uncharted territory for me. My 15th half marathon was going to be my slowest by some stretch – at 2h5m. A time, that in my own personal world of goals and ambitions, I considered to be a failure.
Expletives poured from my mouth as I crossed the line – a combination of relief, anger at myself for pushing through an injury, and also just general disappointment at the fact that what should have been a euphoric race was just plain miserable.
I’ve had my fair share of niggles or doubts going into races but they’ve always been unfounded and I’ve always come out happy with my efforts against whatever colourful backdrop fate has provided. The 2024 GNR was different. I felt defeated. I felt like I’d wasted my time and effort on something with no redeeming features. I felt like I didn’t really deserve to be there.
Sometimes, it takes time to get the clarity you need to make sense of your race, and that is precisely what happened with me in the hours and days that followed. What did I learn from recording my slowest half marathon ever and pushing through an injury that could have potentially blown up in my face? I think the most important thing I learned is that failure is an option.
Of course, failure in this concept is a very personal thing – many people would be quite rightly delighted with the time I recorded. Failure a potential on the periphery when I enter a race, but I’ve been through enough of them to know that it barely ever comes to fruition. This time it did, and the humble pie was bitter. By my own standards, I tasted failure. I made the wrong decisions, not just on the day but in the weeks leading up to it, and those decisions reaped rewards that I didn’t enjoy. But you can’t win at life every single time you take on a challenge.
And, perhaps more importantly, there aren’t always positives to take when you fail. It sounds strange but sometimes failure seems to come with more pressure than success – pressure to learn something or to grow in the aftermath. This failure was not to be polished, it was to be accepted, swallowed, and digested. As the days wore on, I found I didn’t want to look for positives, I wanted to embrace that I had a bad day and it was mostly my own doing.
It might sound strange, but sometimes it’s really helpful to lose and not to look for excuses. To realise that what happened happened. To simply be in that moment and accept it for what it is – not try to unpack it or understand it better. Life doesn’t always do happy endings, and that’s okay. There are ups and there are downs, and sometimes I believe it’s just as important to be present in the bad times as it is in the good.
I’m always on the lookout for interesting or inspiring people to interview and feature in this newsletter – if you or someone you know would be happy to share their story with my small audience, then please do get in touch.
My first GNR too. I actually enjoyed the rain as I could see it was a challenge for lots of runners, so I made it my friend. I had my lenses in though, so I can see why your experience was different. I have Achilles tendonitis but used k-tape and that seemed to hold my leg together for 13.1 miles.