Dropped!

At the finish line everyone gets a time and a place, but those numbers don't always tell you the story of the race. After all, the final result is the product of physical and mental processes that have weird feedback loops and cross-effects.

What I mean is, you might see "Fred" finish 30 seconds ahead of "Barney" and as a result, conclude that Fred is 30 seconds better than Barney in some absolute sense. But what actually happened was that when Fred finally broke away from Barney, the effect was entirely different on the two of them: Fred felt just great; the flood of positive feelings helped him to accelerate over the last mile. He finished with a smile on his face and a wave to the crowd. Barney, on the other hand, had been trying everything to hang on to Fred in the early miles, but as soon as Fred got a little gap, Barney started tightening up trying to run a little bit harder than his body could handle. He faded badly in the last mile.

Barney could have gone out at a more moderate pace and maybe produced a better time, but there's no way to tell from the results.

Here's another example: at the league meet, "Betty" finishes way behind "Wilma," even though Betty has beaten Wilma every other time they have raced. You might conclude that Wilma is now better than Betty, but that's not the whole story. Betty slipped when the gun went off, sprinted awkwardly and ineffciently to get back in position, felt frustrated at having a bad start, and never got into her rhythm. As a result, Betty's efficiency spiraled down through the race, and every attempt to pick it up ended up making her race worse. Next week, Betty might be back on top.

Racing well is such a balancing act... when it goes badly, the results can be warped beyond what anyone would expect or predict.

(On man! I just had a flashback to one of the worst races of my life -- it was the Boston Marathon, and I was in really good shape but I went out too fast, accelerating to get around slower runners at the start. I absolutely crashed in that race, and had the excruciating experience of watching hundreds and hundreds of runners stream past me in the final four miles.)

Anyway...

One of the awesome things about races is that two runners can be together for a long time and then all of a sudden -- boom -- one runner puts in a little surge and drops the other runner. If you are the runner being dropped, it's startling how quickly you can lose all hope of beating the other guy. Once dropped, runners tend to stay dropped. This is because prior to being dropped, you try everything to stay in contact. If you can keep yourself in the race, that's great, so it's not always a bad idea to hang on to a better runner for dear life. On the other hand, hanging on is not a very efficient way to run, and if you are dropped early, you can look forward to a long, miserable run to the finish as other, fresher runners catch and pass you.

And yet, being dropped isn't the worst thing that can happen to you, even if your time at the end suffers. Sometimes it's worse to just let someone go early without putting up a fight. If you've never been dropped, then maybe you've never really explored how good you can be. Or, to put it another way, bad races are just that: bad races. You can learn from them, use them to become better, and then try to forget them. The important thing to remember is that bad races are not an absolute judgement on you as a runner. They are what they are. You move on.

And yeah, this happens to me, too.

On Sunday, I raced a 5K in my hometown. I worked hard to stay with the leader, matching his first two or three surges, staying on his shoulder through a mile and a half. Then he opened a tiny little gap. I struggled to maintain contact but I could feel my form deteriorating. A little before the 2M mark it happened... I was dropped! All I could do was watch him pull away. He put 30 seconds on me in the last mile. Ouch!

Yes, I am Barney.