Runners irrationally let their running performance define their self worth

who o why wrote: And for a guy who used to run 15 minutes, 18 minutes feels slow. Maybe you have to run that fast to understand it, not trying to be condescending...

Wow. This is an old theme on Letsrun, but it really is the sub-elites who have the most inflated sense of their place in the running world.

Winning is winning...unless you're beating little kids on field day.

Exactly. And limiting yourself to races where the winning time is in the neighborhood of 15:00 is the exact equivalent of only participating in field day at the local elementary school. There are plenty of races open to all comers where the leaders split 5K faster than your PR and keep going for 10K, 10 miles, half-marathon, and even marathon. By choosing to avoid those events, you're playing in the shallow end -- and that's fine. But what's baffling is that you don't seem to realize it.

In my neck of the woods, there are multiple tiers of road races. There are the international ones with Olympic athletes from all over the world; there are the semi-competitive ones where winning times for 5K are typically 15:00-16:00; there are the charity ones where the winners are somewhere in the 17:00-18:00 range; and there are the fitness run/walks where a few people might break 20:00. To you, the fastest races apparently don't count (maybe they're for the "mutants"?), and winning the slower races isn't a worthwhile accomplishment (running 18:00 "feels different" from running 15:00, though apparently only the faster runners could possibly understand how it feels different). So, by happy coincidence, the only meaningful accomplishment is to run the races that are precisely at the level you're at! This is just a tiny bit solipsistic.

For what it's worth, I've run in the high 13s for 5K. Earlier this year, I ran a 16:07 hammering as hard as I could. Why? Because I enjoy going to the well and finding my limits. I was psyched with 16:07, because it's about 15 seconds faster than I ran on that course last year, and I didn't leave anything out on the course. You may not have that frame of mind, but I can promise you that many others do -- and it's not just because they've never experienced the incredible thrill of running at 15:00 5K pace.

hold the phone, you're precisely the kind of individual I want to get information out of.

You once ran 13:xx and you now enjoy hammering to finish in low 16s because "you're finding your limits" in doing so. What limits? Your limit was 13:xx. The 16s you're running now are either because you've gotten older or are not training as much. Are you trying to prove that you can still suffer out there on the course? Are you trying to defy age and complacency? That's a different kind of battle and if so, we're not talking about objective performance anymore.

I think we've gotten away from my original point slightly. I'm not tryng to put a value to 15:00 in the 5K and say that is somehow superior to the people runnng 17-18 mins. Of course running is relative to each person's natural ability.

I just don't understand why anyone at any level would continue to runnning hard when they've already run their best times and won't get any faster. So far, I'm only getting vague responses like "I enjoy going to the well." Or I enjoy pushing hard. Maybe that's the problem, I'd rather run 7:00 pace for the rest of my life and cruise into the finish line than bust my left nut trying to run 16:30 which proves nothing in the grand scheme of thngs except that I'm prone to masochism.

Whereas before, when I was running 15s, the hard running was justified by continued improvement and finding out what my true limits were.

The limits change. Why does Haile keep running? Because he loves it. He says he wants to break all the age group records. To keep running until he is 100 years old. You can both run to the best of your ability and purely for the enjoyment. Why not do both?

Using Haile as an example, or even someone who is a contender let's say for Masters nationals is not what we're talking about!Whe you're performing on a national stage and breaking world records, the justification becomes valid once again. You're "in the race" so to speak, one of the best in your field.

name hidden wrote:

The limits change. Why does Haile keep running? Because he loves it. He says he wants to break all the age group records. To keep running until he is 100 years old. You can both run to the best of your ability and purely for the enjoyment. Why not do both?

who o why wrote:What limits? Your limit was 13:xx. The 16s you're running now are either because you've gotten older or are not training as much. Are you trying to prove that you can still suffer out there on the course? Are you trying to defy age and complacency?

Thanks for asking the question respectfully. From my point of view, the limit I'm chasing is simple: I'm standing at Point A, and the objective is to get to Point B as fast as possible. On any given day over any given course, there is a theoretical limit as to how fast my body could cover the distance, and I'll never actually reach that minimum time. It's always a battle to see how close I can come to that limit, and that hasn't changed from my faster days.

It's not that the time is totally irrelevant. Of course I remember how great it felt to be much fitter and faster (and younger!) than I am now. But time isn't the only barometer. If you asked me to list my five greatest races, one of them would be a 10K cross race I ran in university, a few months after starting to run again after missing almost two years with a knee injury. It was an important team race (which always seemed to bring out the best in me), and I ran about 30:30. The time doesn't rank among my best, but I know that that day was about as close as I've ever come to reaching my theoretical limit. By any external objective measure, that race wouldn't be among my top 50 performances -- but when it comes to rising to the occasion and doing everything within my power, I know that was one of my greatest days. Days like that are rare (and always were), but it's the same feeling that I still chase, independent of what the clock says.

Now that I think about it, I guess that experience -- being injured for a couple of years -- was one of the things that helped me reframe my appreciation for running. Until I got hurt, I would have said that loved basketball and only ran because I was good enough to win races. After not running for a few years, I realized that I actually enjoyed running for its own sake too.

I realize that it sounds like I'm saying that you could get the same enjoyment if you never trained, and just showed up for races occasionally to "test your limits." My limited experience with that is that if you get too unfit, then you can't really even get into that zone. And besides, I also enjoy the training!

@ hold the phone

I think I understand your point about competition, that, it's personal. It's personal because we choose who we compete against. And we choose races in which we are competitive? Okay.

But this idea that winning the Olympics is qualitatively different from winning any other race....is obvious and does not clear up anything. Of course winning the Olympic [title] is better than winning any other title in running. Winning the world championship title is better than winning a national championship title, D1 title, HS title, national masters title etc. They are all different.

The rarity of the performance is what really counts. A win in the Olympics is better, that's to say, more valuable, because it's the ultimate desire by the best runners in the world. And as you pointed out, all the best in the world are usually in the race. You must defeat the best in the world and that requires running ability at or very very near the human limit. It's very rare for anyone to do this.

But being the best in the world in the 55-59 ag is objectively as real as being the best in the world in the open. However, we don't value the ag title as much as the open title, it's of lesser quality. But that's because we happen to choose not to do so. We could though.

Consider this, is an Olympic title in the women's 5000m equal in quality to the men's 5000m title? A women could have it if she could run 14:20 in that competition. But 14:20 is quite pedestrian relative to top men runners. Thousands of men could run that fast. It's less rare for men to be that fast.

Where am I going with this? I'm suggesting that a 55 yo (age groups) is in a category as real as the gender categories. They both have physiological basis. We just don't care as much about age categories....but we could.

Re. the Olympics, we're just quibbling about semantics at this point. You seem to be hung up again on my use of the word "artificial," as if I'm suggesting that your races aren't real. I shouldn't have used that word -- "arbitrary" would have been a better word.

Yes, the 55-59 age category has a real physiological basis. But it could equally be the 57-61 age category, or the 55-55.1 age category. Similarly, the Clydesdale category for heavy runners has a real physiological basis. There are an infinite number of categories that have real physiological bases but nonetheless only acquire meaning because we agree on the category.

In the Olympics, at least in its theoretical ideal form, the difference is that you don't have to stipulate any conditions. Every other category (leaving aside WC etc. for a moment) has some caveat that excludes some potential competitors. The Olympics has none. It's like the top step in a staircase: it may be the same height as all the other steps, but it's qualitatively different because there's nothing above it.

To reiterate: I'm not saying that other races aren't "real"! I'm just saying there's a difference. I won (and lost!) races at many different levels, and to me there was a fundamental similarity between winning a big high-school race as a high-schooler and winning a big road race as a post-collegiate road runner. My belief is that if I had made the Olympics (which I never did) and won the Olympic final (which I obviously never did!), that would have been qualitatively different, like finishing the last level of a video game.

Of course, I fully acknowledge that the meaning I invest in the Olympics is itself socially constructed. But to me, it's a clear, unambiguous difference.

hold the phone wrote:

Thanks for asking the question respectfully. From my point of view, the limit I'm chasing is simple: I'm standing at Point A, and the objective is to get to Point B as fast as possible. On any given day over any given course, there is a theoretical limit as to how fast my body could cover the distance, and I'll never actually reach that minimum time. It's always a battle to see how close I can come to that limit, and that hasn't changed from my faster days.

I too am pretty surprised to read your perspective. It's quite different from that of most of the people I know who were at your level.

I think the above quotation in particular captures what seems to be different about your approach. To me, the objective is to get from A to B in six months, at some arbitrarily determined important race. What I do on that particular day certainly has a role to play, but it's truly minor compared to the role of the previous six months. And I do enjoy, indeed I love the actual process of racing, but that enjoyment is intertwined with the experience of having first constructed the body that I will subsequently torture for 15 minutes. If I hadn't done the training first, it really would just be torture to me.

Great post. The 1st paragraph was particularly well stated. At age 50 I had medial meniscus knee surgery. I didn't know how important running was until I couldn't do it. First I only wished to be able to run again. After I could run I pined for the ability to race, to push myself to my limits and to get that total sense of exhaustion, sweat, high heart rate and the andraline rush. That was 8 years ago and I'm glad to be back. I don't race as much and some periods I change my types of races and recallibrate my goals.

I don't understand why either one of those activities has to qualify as "worse" than the other. The runner certainly must get satisfaction out of getting up to train and trying to finish first in his age group in the upcoming half marathon. Likewise, the former high school football player certainly enjoys getting together with his friends, drinking some beer, and watching an athletic competition along with some pre-game hype.

Neither of those activities is bad, wrong, pathetic, etc. If someone wants to spend his time getting up early and pounding the pavement to win his age group, there is nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with somebody wanting to tailgate, drink beer, and watch his favorite sports team (or any team) play.

Who are we to judge how someone else spends his/her time and decide whether that is a good use of that person's time and energy?

who o why wrote:

I just don't understand why anyone at any level would continue to runnning hard when they've already run their best times and won't get any faster. So far, I'm only getting vague responses like "I enjoy going to the well." Or I enjoy pushing hard. Maybe that's the problem, I'd rather run 7:00 pace for the rest of my life and cruise into the finish line than bust my left nut trying to run 16:30 which proves nothing in the grand scheme of thngs except that I'm prone to masochism.

Whereas before, when I was running 15s, the hard running was justified by continued improvement and finding out what my true limits were.

I dropped off pretty quick from early 30s to mid 30s. One year it was ho-hum 5:00 pace for 5K to 4 mile, and just a couple years later I was fighting (and relatively happy) to run 5:15 or 5:20 pace. It was still fun and I enjoyed the downsized running and racing. Had a similar meltdown-slow down in my mid 40s. Haven't gone faster than 17 for more than a decade, but I still get a kick out of it. Now the name of the game is not to slow down from year to year.

No excuses, no apologies. Just going out to see what I can do and I don't give a rip what others might think.

This is what I think it boils down to for a lot of you. Just to MAINTAIN a level of decency, to keep from dropping off too much. Again, I'm not here to judge whether this type of investment is worthwhile. I'm just trying to understand it from an outsider's perspective. Maybe I just assumed that when I started running, the WHOLE POINT of becoming involved, pouring heart and soul into the process of training, was to go further and faster than I had ever gone before or thought possible. I think in LINEAR terms. I'm all-in or all-out. Once I got a taste of what it feels like to be at the top, the rest left much to be desired.

what the wrote:

I dropped off pretty quick from early 30s to mid 30s. One year it was ho-hum 5:00 pace for 5K to 4 mile, and just a couple years later I was fighting (and relatively happy) to run 5:15 or 5:20 pace. It was still fun and I enjoyed the downsized running and racing. Had a similar meltdown-slow down in my mid 40s. Haven't gone faster than 17 for more than a decade, but I still get a kick out of it. Now the name of the game is not to slow down from year to year.

No excuses, no apologies. Just going out to see what I can do and I don't give a rip what others might think.