When you decide so.
On my travels I occasionally hear people I know refer to feeling under pressure, stressed or worried about the races they take in part in. Every now and then I feel it myself, becoming anxious about performing in a particular event, although normally my stress revolves around whether I’ll actually be capable of making the challenge or completing the distance.
This is a slightly different feeling to worrying about making a certain time, position or meeting the perceived expectations of others, but it’s all in the same ballpark – feeling a sense of judgement from others, whether they be friends, competitors or random Strava stalkers.
Only God can judge
I recently listened to a podcast where the interviewee stated that he’d experienced something of an epiphany while training for a marathon, realising that pressure he felt from external sources was actually a subconscious attempt to pass responsibility for performance to other people. I found this an interesting way of looking at things, suggesting that allowing yourself to feel like other people are watching and judging you is only really a way to internally justify your own sense of coming up short of your prior expectations.
Essentially, no-one is actually looking at the way you perform, the times you achieve or the results you record – your races are yours and no-one else’s, so any pressure that you feel is only created by you. Therefore, only you can control what pressure you feel on the start line – if it’s your big race of the season, then go ahead, emphasise the importance; the added adrenaline might help you reach the finish.
However, pile the importance onto every event, and you’ll end up either only toeing the line on days you might win or, worse yet, hanging up your race kit altogether.
Busting balls on Box Hill
With that in mind, I went into my last multi-sport event of the 2018 season, the Ballbuster duathlon, this weekend just passed. Ballbuster is a long established race, dating back to the early 90’s I believe. As a duathlon, it’s a run-bike-run affair, starting and finishing at the top of Box Hill in Surrey.
For those not in the know, Box Hill is a well-known climb in the south of England, which gained most of its notoriety in 2012 as the key climb in the men’s cycling road race at the London Olympics. On that day, the race rode a loop that took them up the hill nine times and since then it has become a popular playground for professionals, amateurs and day-trippers.
Fast forward to 2018 and it was my turn to go loopy for Box Hill, courtesy of Ballbuster’s 13km route, which the race covers a total of five times – once on foot, three times on bike and then again on foot. Just for good measure.
On paper, Box Hill is a decent climb – it’s not too long, not too steep and it’s generally a pretty steady gradient, so you can find a rhythm pretty comfortably and control your pace from start to finish. That said, the repetition makes for a certain kind of fatigue – after each loop you know what’s coming, so it can be easy to go too hard at the start and find yourself either flagging by the finish to daunted by the scale of the task looming on the horizon.
Ups and downs
Anyway, before this descends into a race report, I’d booked Ballbuster after my big event of the year, the Vitruvian Triathlon, a middle distance swim-bike-run race back in September which served as the English championships. At that time I was feeling in decent shape and keen to prolong my 2018 season as much as possible. Ballbuster looked a great option as it’s a bit different – it’s almost impossible to compare it to other performances because of the distance and terrain involved, making it a standalone challenge.
As wannabe athletes we’re always looking for ways to challenge and stretch ourselves, which usually revolves around going faster or going longer. This means that the outcome often influences our perceived enjoyment of any given event, with a new personal best being the ultimate judgement of whether a day was ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Which is why sometimes it’s great to do races that don’t fit neatly into any particular category or genre. When this is the case, it can be great to just do something you enjoy for the sake of enjoying it – which is exactly what I got from my day in the Surrey Hills.
No thinking about time, pace or position, no jostling with rivals for age-group podiums and no post-event result searching to see where my splits ranked – sometimes that’s all just numbers which create noise and fabricate reasons for feeling negative.
Don’t get me wrong, the aim of the game is improvement, development – looking to improve yourself and achieve new goals, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.
Yeah, you did!
For me, when the day’s goal is purely enjoyment or the personal challenge of completion, I don’t refer to it as a race or racing – I call it eventing. Taking part purely for the enjoyment and self-satisfaction of saying: ‘I did that’.
I find that taking this approach every now and then is extremely relaxing and allows me to gain masses of positivity from some really tough days. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into a day of eventing and come out the other side disappointed at how it went – sure, I’ll have an idea in my head of how I’d like the day to go and I might have a goal or two to achieve, but in no way do the outcomes affect my enjoyment of the event.
Just turn up, do stuff you enjoy, collect medal and go home – simple as that.
Show me the money
However, I don’t think the eventing approach need only apply to non-standard races – not every marathon has to be a PB and not every race has to be chosen for a fast and flat course. It’s good to take on a variety of challenges in all manner of locations, if you think you’ll enjoy it.
After all, this hobby on which we spend so much time, energy and money should mainly be about enjoyment. The vast majority of us aren’t professionals and we don’t need to draw our race diaries around accumulating prize money or building an enviable palmares; just do what you want to do and try to do it with a smile.
It’s much more enjoyable that way – and you’re far more likely to keep doing it.