More often than not, I tend to ramble on about The Process — capitalization for emphasis, clearly — with marathon training and the inherent joy and challenge of going through it and coming out on the other side. The Process, the grind, the daily showing up when you don’t always feel like it for whatever real or perceived reason, is part of how we grow as athletes and as human beings. It’s that whole “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it” thing. 

Knowing all that, I tend to hold tight to the value of fairly low expectations for myself. I may have a very vague idea of what I could possibly do on any given day, but it’s exceedingly rare that I go into a race, a workout, or even just a plain ol’ training run with an abundance of confidence about what’s going to happen. Will I fail spectacularly? Will this all go over without a hitch? No idea either way. Won’t know unless (and until) I try. 

That’s a good enough reason, most of the time, to get me out the door to see what’s possible.

I was thinking about all this stuff recently, after my eldest’s swim meet over the weekend and after reading this article from Matt Fitzgerald about his upcoming 100k. I can’t pretend to know what must be running through Matt’s head as he attempts his longest race ever, with a lot of extenuating circumstances that hamstrung his training and his ability to have a minimal-suffering race. His attitude is awesome though — show up, be there for it, and just see how it goes — and this characteristic is one that I’ve been trying mightily to foster in my own approach to my training. 

My eldest’s meet over the weekend also got me thinking about this stuff because she raced very well for her with what I’m pretty sure were fairly non-existent expectations. Of late, she has been drawn to the 500 (500!!) freestyle and has been racing it as often as it’s available in competition; they also fairly routinely do it during practice each week, too. She had been sitting at a certain time for the past 3 or 4 attempts, plus or minus a couple seconds, and she seemed really satisfied by it and happy with the consistent effort she had been putting out. On Sunday though, she took off a solid 20 seconds from her time — 20 seconds! — and when I told her her finish time after she hit the wall (the wall is good to hit in swimming…not so much in running, I know), she was FLOORED, so happy she was nearly in tears. She probably never thought she could do that, or make that huge a jump … until she did. 

As her mom and as an athlete, it was such a joy to witness her realization firsthand.

It is comparably joyful to see how she has become attuned to the beauty of The Process and to watch it unfold night after night at practice and week after week at meets. 

Tempering our high-achieving standards for ourselves with a heaping dose of humble pie, and who knows what will happen? It may not be so bad.

It may, in fact, be far sweeter than we could have imagined.