I love winning. Probably a little too much. Whether its team sports, individual sports, work related or just some dumb computer game, it doesn’t matter. I want to do it the best and I want to win. I love how it makes me feel superior, I crave the adrenaline that sometimes lets me perform better than I normally would and I thrive on how it feeds my ego.
But I’m honest about it and I’d never cheat to win. I’ve also learned to be genuinely humble about it and if I do win at something, anything, I like to be a good winner. If appropriate I thank my competition and try not to celebrate too much.
So overall I contain my ego quite well and use it to my benefit and try not to piss people off. However, last year I started running. Running is a very interesting sport. Because it is measured over time and distance, by just having a smart phone, you can compete against yourself, you can compete against the times of olympic champions or you can just try to reach a target distance, duration or whatever goals you like.
I quickly found that I love competing against myself. I love when I get a PB (that’s running lingo for ‘Personal Best’), I feel disappointed when I have a bad run and I love when after weeks, or months or working hard I hit a goal.
My only problem with running is when I enter a race and my ego wants me to win. Now, I’m no fool. I know that if I enter a 10km race with 8 thousand runners which include some professionals, that I’m not going to win. I’m not going to come a close 2nd, I’m not going to finish top 100 or even top 1,000. What I do know, is that I will have a time I can achieve and because I am in a competitive environment I’ll get that little hit of adrenaline that could potentially shave a couple of minutes off. But, as every runner knows, I need to be smart about it. I need to know what pace to run at, keep it steady and for the last few km, if I’m feeling good I can turn it up a notch. And last week at the Great Ireland Run in Dublin, that’s what I had planned. Until my ego kicked in.
The race was 10km and so far this year I had run this distance twice in just under 50 minutes (a 5.00/km pace), so I thought I’d try to aim for a PB of 47 minutes. My plan was to start off at a pace of 4:50/km, keep it steady at that for 6km, access how I felt, try to kick it up a gear and finish strongly. Before the race I felt full of energy, I felt confident and I wanted to hit my PB and target time. I wanted that win!
I lined up at the starting line with thousands of other runners, I was close enough to just about see the pros up front who were made up of olympians, European and world champions. Around me were were a selection of men and women of different sizes and different looking fitness levels. As I scanned the crowd I thought to myself “I could take most of these”. Ahhhhh, my Ego had arrived. I reminded myself that I have a target pace and I need to stick to that, "I’m not here to race other people". I repeated that to myself a few times and then set my watch ready for the start.
When the race stated everyone slowly took off through the starting line and there was a melody of beeps as everyone’s timing chips activated. When we passed the starting line there was more space and as the crown started to thin out the pace picked up and we were moving! I strode along with the group of people around me and when we got to the 1km mark I felt comfortable but when I checked my watch it showed a pace of 4:20. Whoops! I had got carried away with the start and ran too quickly. “No bother” I assured myself, “I’ll slow it down a bit and balance it out before I get too tired”. But, as I slowed down, the group of people I had started with didn’t slow down. They kept moving at their pace and they moved further and further away from me. But then, people who were behind me from the start, began to run past me.
This was when my ego popped up again. I began to feel like these people were already beating me and I needed to do something to stop it. As every person passed me, I felt more and more like I was losing and so, completely against my better judgement, I picked up my pace until people stopped passing me. This felt fine and after about 3km I started to pass people out. Now, with just 7km remaining, I felt as though I was winning. I started to get that rush of adrenaline, I no longer felt as though I was running, I felt as though I was gliding. I could keep this up forever! Until I hit about 5km...
When I got to the 5km mark I though “wow, that felt quick” so I checked my watch. It was very quick! I had ran the first 5km at a pace of 4:15 which was just a few seconds slower that my fastest ever 5km and I still had 5km left to go. I forced myself to slow down, but it was too late. At this point in the race we were approaching a few big hills. Halfway up the first one I felt my legs starting to buckle, so I slowed down. When I got to the top of the first hill we had covered just over 6km and I was barely jogging anymore, I felt out of breath, my heart was pounding and my head and all my limbs were feeling heavy. I was suffering, badly and I still had almost 4km left.
I tried to focus, I had suffered while running before and I had managed to get through it then, so I picked a pace that I felt comfortable at and I kept moving, but I was moving too slowly. I was now running at a pace of 5:40 and by doing some quick math in my head I realised that, despite my super quick first 5km, I would miss my target time. So, I tried to focus and regain my energy, but just as I was about to pick up the pace to try and get back on track, the 2nd series of hills arrived.
The next 2km were probably the toughest physical thing I have ever done. There were several times when I felt like just sitting down. I looked at some of the fields we were passing and imagined the bliss I would feel if I were just to pass out on one of them. But no, I couldn’t give up, because that would be losing to myself. So I kept plodding along, running slower and slower. Until, just before I got to the 9km mark I spotted a friend of mine who had promised to come and cheer me on.
“Come on Noel, just one 1km left. COME ON!” he shouted. I realised that this was the first time (since sports day in school) that someone was there to cheer me on in a race. I got a surge of energy and I focused on the line. For the last kilometer, every 100 meters was marked out and every time I passed one of those markers it felt like a small win.
With just 500m left I could see the line in the distance and I could hear the crowds cheering people on as they passed the line. At this stage, people who had ran their correct pace were having strong finishes and in the last 500m about 100 people passed me out. But, by this stage my ego had submitted, it was beat, humiliated by the last 5km and it no longer wanted to show its face. Just before the finish line I spotted my family who had also come out to cheer me on and I managed to smile. I kept moving and I crossed the finish line, in agony and well beaten.
I had lost. Not to the 1,569 people who finished in front of me, but to myself. I set myself a target time and pace and had a plan but I totally ignore it in a childish and futile attempt to prevent people who I didn’t know and who I would never see again from running past me. I felt like an idiot and I knew exactly what I had done wrong.
I found some space and I lay in the grass hoping to find some of that bliss that I imagined earlier in the race. It never came, until my 4 year old daughter ran over, jumped on me, kneed me in the chest, gave me a big hug and excitedly exclaimed “Daddy, I saw you running!”. I picked myself up off the ground and let her tell me about the last hour since I saw her. Then, I drove home and tried to put my defeat out of my head.
In the end, I finished the race in 51:08, a whole 4 minutes and 8 seconds off my target time and my slowest 10km this year. I was fit enough to run my target time, I had prepared well enough and I had a good plan. But because of some little voice in my head that didn’t want to let other people beat me I messed it up. I’d like to pretend that this was an isolated incident, but I had done the exact same thing 10 months earlier in the Dublin Pride 5km run. I started off too quickly because I didn’t want other people to pass me out, suffered for the 2nd half of the race and on that occasion, I came very close to vomiting and missed my target time by a measly 20 seconds. All because of my ego.
What’s next in my attempt to be the best runner I can? I plan to complete the Dublin marathon this October and if I do the same thing I won’t just risk losing to myself by missing my target time. I risk the ultimate loss of not even finishing the race. Thinking about it now, there is a very real chance I won’t be able to control my ego. There will be hundreds, if not thousands of people who pass me out. Will I be focused enough to let them pass without a fight? Can I stick to my plan and ignore better runners passing me? Can I win?
