You Don't Know

Lauren Fleshman, in her book "Good for a Girl," recounts an unforgettable moment from her 5000m race at the London Diamond League on August 6, 2011—a race that nearly didn't happen. During her warmup, she was plagued by a side stitch similar to one that had hampered her earlier in Stockholm that year. Despite needing to achieve a qualifying time of 15:14 to secure the final US spot in the World Championships, she contemplated withdrawing due to the discomfort.

Having expressed to her coach that she needed to pull out, his response was pure gold. He said, “You don’t have to race. That’s fine. But– you don’t know?” She responded in confusion, “Know what?” He replied, “You don’t know what will happen. Maybe you get the cramp, maybe you don’t. You don’t have to go out there and try to win. You can just go out there and be curious” (Fleshman 205).

With these words in mind, Lauren not only decided to compete but astonishingly won the race in 15:00.52. Her humility in sharing this experience offers a valuable lesson: no matter what you feel like is going to happen at the beginning of a run, you really don’t know.

How often do we skip workouts or give up on races fearing inevitable failure? I think of one of my athletes, apprehensive about competing after recovering from an illness. The varsity runner did not want to run at an invitational. Illness had ravaged my team, and if the athlete in question bailed, we would have been down to four athletes. A collective decision between parents and coach was made for the runner to compete. The outcome? This runner finished in the top ten, contributing to our team's second-place finish and earning a trophy.

Then there was the time I personally was up coughing all night before a marathon. It was the worst sleep I’d had in ages, and the cough was still going strong in the morning. As I went through my pre-marathon warmups, I filled a pouch with cough drops. I had trained too hard and paid too much money to just drop out. Constantly downing cough drops (20, to be exact), I managed to achieve a personal record of 2:42:08—a testament to unexpected triumphs amidst adversity.

All that to say, you don’t know. None of us do. If you wake up with a queasy tummy, or just extra tired, it doesn’t mean you need to throw your workout plan out the window. You might have the most amazing run of your life that morning! You might have a workout that isn’t your best, but still makes you a lot stronger in more ways than one. A lot of times, just starting to move is all that is needed to push your metabolism and mentality to the point where you can accomplish something that might have been impossible moments earlier. 

Using emotions often rooted in fear, your lower brain will always try to derail you from doing that which is difficult. This is why you have a prefrontal cortex. It allows you to choose the difficult road. To paraphrase Lauren’s coach, Mark Rowland, it allows you to “be curious” and proceed through adversity rather than just shutting something down.

Therefore, let's heed the lesson: embrace uncertainty, trust the journey, and allow curiosity to guide us in confronting challenges rather than succumbing to doubt.