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Start at yes

Start at yes

In my first job out of undergrad, I was working as a full-time staff member at a small liberal arts college. To put it simply, I basically spent my days (and many, many nights) working with college students and helped them navigate college life. It was a fantastic first job — really hard at times, but also really rewarding — and I got super lucky because I worked with some fantastic human beings, college students and professionals alike.

 

Just some of my great colleagues. #tbt – this was 10+ years ago!
More good souls. (We usually didn’t wear matching clothes — with puffy paint on it, no less. Mine says “I love my marathoner body” or something like that. My colleagues made it for me at a feminist student group’s body image/body awareness meeting).

Arguably one of those very influential and fantastic human beings with whom I had the pleasure of working was my dean of students. In the small college world, or at least at this particular small college, the dean of students was the “big boss” to everyone in student affairs, so while I didn’t report directly to her, my bosses did, and she relied on us minions to find out what was going on in the trenches. The college students clearly respected her not only because she was all business but also because she made it clear, through her actions and her words, that whatever decision she made was for the good of the college and thus, the students. Students routinely attended her open office hours each week, and they always did, evidenced by the queue that always flowed out of her office. Students knew that they could talk to her and, maybe more importantly, that she would listen.   

Even though I’ve been many years removed from working at this particular college, I’ve been thinking about my former dean pretty frequently lately. I remember a very long staff meeting — in student affairs, we liked to “process” everything, so big staff meetings often took veritable eons — and when one of my colleagues talked about some ridiculous request or inquiry a student had thrown out, my dean quickly reminded us that it behooves us — when engaging with our students, when we are listening to their grandiose and likely improbable ideas, when we are in the throes of a disciplinary meeting with them for some drug or alcohol infraction, or shoot, even when we’re trying to navigate an unreal roommate conflict that has escalated to us (and/or has gotten parents involved — yup, that happens in college) — to start at yes.

Starting at yes, my dean explained, in effect allowed us to convey to our students that we were actually listening to them, that their thoughts and opinions were worthwhile, and that we weren’t just another naysayer in the students’ lives, shooting them down and telling them that whatever they had to offer wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t so much a matter of coddling the students or being yet another helicopter authority figure in the students’ lives. Instead, I interpreted “starting at yes” as being equal parts “be a good human” (i.e. it’s kinda a dick move to not even give another human the time of day for a few minutes, when that person has obviously mustered up the wherewithal to tell you something that he/she feels is of value) and “grant this person the permission to try” (i.e. if every other person has naysayed this student, you being the one who will actually listen can make a difference in the student’s life).

I’ve been thinking about my dean and her idea of “starting at yes” of late because the more I think about it, the more seemingly ensconced the idea is in running. There is no shortage of running-related “inspiration” and “motivation” percolating in the interwebs, but while the “rah rah you can do it believe and achieve!!” stuff may be helpful, at times, I think many of us are more likely to struggle with the idea that we should — that we ought to — grant ourselves permission to try, and possibly fail.

The hell am I talking about?

In running, many of us, myself included, often associate some degree of success in a race or in a training plan to a number we may or may not hit; this, of course, can include stats like how many miles per week/month/cycle/year we run, the times we post in a targeted race (and whether those are PRs and/or how well or maligned they compare to existing PRs), or even the paces that we target (and how well or how poorly we hit them) in our toughest workouts. Naturally, we can always say that we can measure our running “success” by other, perhaps less-easily-quantifiable measures, but for a lot of runners, at least in some point in their running career, the time on the clock supersedes just about everything else.

However, many of us will often see a tough workout staring us down in the morning — or think about a target race, where we’re going to try to hold a seemingly impossible pace for a seemingly impossibly long period of time — and we fall into this miasma of despair and self doubt. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that we’ve been training well, that we’ve been feeling stronger than ever, or that we know we’re fit. Instead, we convince ourselves that oh shit there’s no way that I can hold X pace for Y amount of time, and we mentally shut our shit down before we even take our first step.

Disclaimer: I’m no coach or psychologist, but I can’t possibly imagine that going into a key something or other — workout, race, pick your poison here — feeling already mentally defeated will, in any way, do anything positive for our running performance.

I’ve been there before and fairly recently, in fact. A vivid memory that stands out was from my Oakland ‘14 training. I completely bailed on a tempo run (for those playing along at home, it was the classic Pfitz 12 with 7 at 15kRP or HMRP tempo) before I even began it because I had all but lost my mind over holding tempo pace — then, 7:1x, maybe 7:2x — for 7 miles out of a 12 mile run. I didn’t even begin the workout, never even took a step, literally (and I do mean literally) never got past my front door before I had already beaten myself, mentally, to a pulp. I ended up not running that day and was pissed about it — my window of opportunity that day gone because I had squandered it on self-doubt. Granted, I’m not saying that had I had a more sunny disposition about this workout that it would have gone over swimmingly. What sucks is that I willingly undermined myself and convinced myself that there was no way that I could hit those paces or anything remotely close to them, so trying would just be entirely futile. I didn’t give myself the permission to try or to fail. Start at yes? Eff that – I started at absolutely not a chance in hell.

I think my dean’s idea of starting at yes is resonating more with me now, than ever before, because I’m beginning to feel like my running is turning a corner. The nebulous “things” have been feeling very comfortable and smooth, and I’ve been producing in training and in races control, confidence, and speed that would have been ridiculously implausible to me not that long ago. Don’t get me wrong, Hoka or the Olympics aren’t beating down my door, but what I’ve been producing for me is fairly surprising (and also really exciting, I won’t lie!). It’s weird, really, because I feel like I’ve gotten less obsequious with my watch — as most of us would probably stand to benefit from doing — and this new-found emancipation is serving me quite well. When I’m staring down a hard workout or a race, where I want to perform at my very best, I’m no longer going into it thinking efffffffffffff this is gonna be impossible, questioning my life choices, and instead, I have grown more receptive to simply showing up, granting myself permission to try my hardest that I can in that moment (and possibly even failing, and unabashedly so), and just rolling with it. I’m seeing that just starting at yes — not hemming and hawing about it, thinking BS along the lines of oh, well, maybe, we’ll see, this will probably be really tough and I’ll probably keel and this is probably the worst idea ever — is probably one of the better things I’ve done for my running in a very long time.   

Simply stated: in running — as in basically every other area of life — you don’t know what you can or can’t do unless you (give yourself the permission to) try.

2017 Reach for a Star 5k (Brisbane, CA) – Race Report

2017 Reach for a Star 5k (Brisbane, CA) – Race Report

Beginning my 2017 racing calendar with a 5k wasn’t what I had envisioned, but as we all know, life seems to make decisions on our behalf at times. A horrible bout with flu/sinusitis/colitis made me have to reluctantly bow out of the first PA race, a 10 miler, as well as my favorite SJ race, the 408k, and I felt like my body had taken a good week+ to gain back any semblance of strength that those stupid poorly-timed illnesses had taken from me. I generally have very few expectations going into a 5k in general, but going into the Reach for a Star 5k up in Brisbane, the second PA race of the year (and the first one I’ve done), I had even fewer.

I don’t think that 5ks warrant the waxing philosophic that marathons do (at least at this point, anyway), but I’ll at least mention here a little bit about my 5k history. In a phrase, there isn’t much of one. I’ve done many 5ks over the years, but they’ve always been as part of marathon training and never as an end goal in and of itself. Similarly, they’ve always been a bit sporadically placed in my season, and more often than not, they’re lighter on the official side (lacking in USATF certification) and heavier on the super fun side (and typically, not that competitive). One “type” of race isn’t inherently better than the other, but I do think there’s value in racing against significantly faster fields (even though it’s intimidating as hell) just so you can give yourself the opportunity to see what mental/speed/endurance deposits you can draw from your bank — something that’s harder to do in less-competitive races. My 5k PR, 20:31, was from a 2012 Chicago race, and any subsequent attempts at 5ks I’ve posted have generally followed the predictable formula of go out stupidly hard + try to hang on = oops, too bad, death march it in and never do this again. Gladly give me many opportunities to run a fast-for-me marathon over a fast-for-me 5k, for the discomfort and pain in the former is far more pleasurable than that in the latter.

The RFAS Brisbane course is quite flat and a little bizarre. It has the USATF certification, but had I known that the course consisted basically of running through office parking lots, including some OABs in said parking lots, with a few little bursts on a not-wide trail (adjacent to parking lots), I would have been dubious. I had heard that it was fast and a great team race — no doubt evidenced by the throngs of other teams there Sunday morning (in addition to general community members who were there to help support the race’s charitable connection to a local school district) — so if nothing else, I figured that the race could hopefully give me some decent “official” feedback and give me a fun morning with my team.

People like to propagate this idea that running is for solitary introverts, but all you have to do is go to a race (RFAS was a perfect example of this) and see that it’s really quite the opposite. Sure, we all get into our own heads when we run — I think it’s a pretty necessary thing to do — but by and large, much of the gratitude I have for this sport extends less to the opportunities I have to get into my own head and more to the connections this sport has afforded me to make with other people, folks with whom I would share very little otherwise. Outweighing all our relative differences — in our running capabilities or otherwise — is our shared sense of purpose that you get when you’re on a team. I so deeply admire and respect my teammates, many whom can easily run me under the table any day of the week, but despite my initial hesitations of oh man I really hope I’m not slow as hell this morning I hope I don’t let these guys down, I knew that my team would help buoy whatever I could produce. There’s something to be said for running for your own purposes, no doubt, but I think there’s something more profound in running as part of a team and trying to perform in a way that shows that the total doesn’t really equal the sum of its parts. Deep, I know.

team. office building. (PC: Lisa/Wolfpack Running Club)

At any rate, thanks to a pretty race weather-perfect morning, a flat course, a fairly indescribable team atmosphere, and a field that was super deep with talent, my first PA race — and a 5k at that — went way better than I could have imagined. That aforementioned going out too hard and slowly dying formula miraculously didn’t manifest like usual, and honestly, I felt like I was playing a giant game of tag, focusing on chasing my teammates and friends in front of me — Claire and Sam were the closest to me, with Impala friend Robin within close reach. I felt like if I slowed down at all, I’d be trampled, a la Lion King, by everyone coming up behind me. The super-twisty course wound through some office parking lots, picked up a fairly narrow trail (more narrow than the Chicago LFT or about as narrow as the GRT here in SJ, for those of you playing along at home), did an OAB in some more parking lots, and ultimately finished where we began in (you guessed it) more parking lots. It was about as low-key a race as I’ve ever done, with very little fanfare, and honestly, it was refreshing. If you want a fast, no-frills 5k, this is for you; if you want something with more entertainment value (and probably a bigger price tag), I’d pass.

one of the few times we weren’t in a parking lot. Why does it look like I’m crashing a kids’ race here!? (PC: CT)

This was among the most evenly-paced 5ks I’ve run, definitely the one wherein I’ve felt the strongest from start to finish, and hey, I will never complain about breaking a 5 year-old 5k PR by nearly 40 seconds and going sub-20 “officially” for the first time (19:55). I had the added luxury of finishing within paces of my teammates Claire and Sam, clutching the same PR time as Robin (finishing a couple steps behind her), and yet again, getting smoked by Verity at the end, just as she did me at the ‘14 Oakland Marathon (replete with lots of sweaty hugs at the end, both in Oakland and at RFAS). It was a good day. The racing endorphins were kickin, and my soul was happy from being surrounded by good people. Again: it was a good day.

home stretchin’ it behind Sam (PC: CT)

 

teamwork makes the dream work. note the office building. (PC: CT)

For expecting nothing, I sure got a lot out of this race experience. I’m excited to see how the rest of this spring will go before I get thick into SF training, and I left the race feeling totally energized (if not also tired — eff off, DST!) and stoked for the next.