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Week 58: Finding Patience for the Big Ones

Perhaps the biggest takeaway of my experiences in ultrarunning this past year has been patience.

I bit off a bit more than I was ready for in September, but it’s only been a year of running like this after several years of sitting on the couch.

Things take time. And big goals take even longer.

While I felt disappointed and dejected in the moment, the fact is I chose a 100k race that is among the toughest in the United States. And without the tight cutoffs, I was fit enough to finish a 100k race. I was timed out; I didn’t quit.

And somehow, someway this all happened with a wife that travels for work, a job where I manage a team of wonderful and different people, and two young kids that mean everything to me.

I spread myself thin this year, and in some places it shows.

I had to apologize to my boss for some bone-head shit yesterday.

Parts of the house are going to start falling off if I don’t get back to minding it.

I even let stuff I like go fallow. Things like golf, gardening, and writing took a backseat to a new, crazy obsession.

But here’s also the thing I’ve finally internalized in my dinosaur brain: couch to UTMB qualifier in barely over a year was a touch ambitious. And by touch I mean a pretty epic overreach.

Ambitious? Yes.

Arrogant? Perhaps. Because everything had to go right, and I kind of expected it to. (Who does that?)

Defeated? Hell no.

The break has been incredibly beneficial to my psyche. And it’s allowed me to realize what juggling balls I dropped over the last year. Of which there were a few.

And because of this renewed focus, I realized it led to some new problems as well.

We all think of focus as something we need to succeed. Drill down and find the magic that happens with singular goals. Not really. Not for me at least.

Zooming in so much made me forget about how relevant and important other things were sometimes. It’s like my Eisenhower matrix of what is urgent versus what is necessary got inverted.

There’s yin and yang in everything.

So as we round into the holidays, it’s been a natural time for reflection. Between gathering with family and friends over Thanksgiving, visiting the beaches I grew up on with my own kids, and celebrating birthdays while remembering dates of passing, the nostalgia has been thick.

Last week we traveled down to south Alabama where I grew up. We spent a few days in the sand and sunshine. My brother and mother joined us as well and it was a magical time. We ate seafood, went from sand to pool to hot tub endlessly, and even paid a visit to Floribama, a famous (infamous?) honky-tonk beach bar on the border of Florida and Alabama.

We picked up and shelled pecans, shot off big fireworks, and went to Buccee’s. We picked ripe satsumas, played on tractors, and even got some tree trimming done.

And for the first time in a while, I let go of work.

I didn’t open the laptop for a couple days. I actually took vacation. And it was glorious.

I don’t turn off or unplug much these days. I work on a laptop all day only to walk upstairs once work is done and put my face in a different laptop, working on side projects or wasting time as we all do.

The break from work was like the break from running has been. I told myself if it was a slow grind, I’d be capable of going forever. I now see the fallacy in this thinking. Trying to never let something drop eventually leads us to dropping way more than want simply because we’re too burnt out to care at some point.

Turns out I’m in bad need of a digital detox as well.

I told myself that this ultrarunning journey would be quick. Get in, get it done, get out.

That’s not really the way of things, and big goals especially. I burned hot and bright, and ended up getting burnt out as a result. Sometimes our lofty ambitions bring our flight paths too close to the sun.

I spent so much time focusing on the physical aspects of my life that I really didn’t progress the mental side as much as I could have. Those periods of thinking on the long runs were great, but once I got home, it was back to distraction land. And so instead of each run building thoughts and plans and insight, each time out was but a single data point on a fitness app, a one-off.

Kind of a shame now that I think about it. Oh well, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The second-best time is right now.

And with that, I’ve got my plans more or less set for this next year. I made incredible progress, and it would be dang shame to waste all that work.

Along with a return to consistency in that area, I’ll be getting back to weekly newsletters, although I’m going to try and tone down the running parts of it in favor of content people might actually care about.

Thank you for following along and I hope you have a great holiday season.

Live triumphantly and see you next week(ish).