We aren’t supposed to link blogs, but I really wanted to share this entry that my daughter wrote, since I think it explains a lot about being competitive even if you aren’t going to be at the front of a race or win your age group. (plus- it mentions me, so there’s that!)
“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” – 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
I was listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s new podcast Magic Lessons, and she was helping a woman start to achieve her creative goals. One of the things that was holding her back was her role as a mother; she felt guilty for potentially neglecting her children while pursuing her dreams as a writer. Liz responded that by living into her calling as a writer and creator, she was actually setting her children up to also be creators. Liz and her sister are both writers, something that Liz attributes to her mother being a writer and creator. Liz said something along the lines of “if you model being a creator for them, they’ll become creators. If you model being a martyr, they’ll become martyrs.”
My mother modeled being a competitor, and so, after a lengthy journey, I too became a competitor.
Growing up, I had a conflicted relationship with competition. For one thing, I did not inherit my parents’ innate athleticism in the same way that my brother did. I was not gifted with their particular body shape or VO2Max that makes them impressive endurance athletes. Team sports were particularly stressful as one of the weaker links, so I drifted towards more individual athletic pursuits like swimming. Like most kids, I dreamed of swimming in the Olympics, but when you’re not fast enough to make the state meet, you’re probably not fast enough to make the Olympic Trials. I quit swimming and focused on music instead.
If you’d have asked me, I would have sworn up and down that I was not competitive. In my mind and from what I had absorbed culturally, competition had an edge of nastiness, and it certainly wasn’t very lady-like. Good girls weren’t competitive, at least not overtly. Attending an elite, all-girls private school taught me all I wanted to know about passive-aggression.
When I started to run, I emphasized that any races were about completion, not competition. But even running to complete a distance is a competition between the voices in your head – the one that tells you to quit because you’re slow and worthless and the one that tells you to keep going. I realized I would dig deeper and push harder when I was racing, even when I was trying to out-sprint a 75 year-old man at the finish line.
Several years ago at a Memorial Day 5K, I ended up neck-and-neck with a man in the last mile. He would pass me and then I would pass him. Whether through eye contact or the strange bond developed by competition, we knew we were racing each other. Finally, he took off in the home stretch and kicked into a gear I just didn’t have. A few minutes later, once the finishing kick nausea had dissipated, he approached me, shook my hand, and congratulated me on a good race. We definitely weren’t competing for an Olympic medal or even an age group award, but we both tapped into our inner competitor to use the other person to push ourselves further.
I’m a solid middle-of-the-pack athlete, usually finishing right in the fiftieth-percentile. I’ll probably never win a race, and I only place in my age group if it’s a small race and the fast kids stay home. It can be frustrating to be giving it my all when other participants around me seem to be out for their recovery jog. There is an additional frustrating misconception by some faster runners that if someone is running slower than X minutes per mile that they just aren’t trying hard enough or they aren’t really racing. But I know that competition feeds me. I know that I’m not content to just finish, that I want to be stronger and go faster or longer. I love training hard and seeing my body and mind adapt to the stress, when I easily nail a workout or pace that I struggled to hit a few months ago.
My competitive self also has a shadow side that manifests itself in jealousy and comparison and self-pity, in an ability to be happy for my friends’ achievements only as long as they are not greater than my own. It comes out when my first tendency is to berate myself and my body when I’m struggling in a workout. It comes out when that competitive drive doesn’t stay within the confines of a race environment. Most competitors know that strange blend of pride and despair that comes from achieving a goal but failing to run the perfect race, like beating a personal record but failing to qualify for Boston by under a minute. Competition can be a curse when nothing is ever good enough.
The joy of competition comes in hoping that there will be a next time, a better training cycle, another chance to nail your fueling, another competitor to outkick at the finish line.
There is, apparently, a very nice park with trails within the city. I am so not running on cobblestone!