Written by Elliot Singer, an SEA Athlete
For the last few weeks, I’ve been teetering on a knife’s edge of insecurity. Last Tuesday I had a great workout, so I went home feeling fit, psyched, and proud. Saturday kinda sucked, and I promptly decided the less-than-ideal training during the last few weeks had rendered me out of shape. I convinced myself that the Skyrunning champs would be a throwaway, and that the good sessions I’d had were a fluke. Fitness doesn’t come and go in four days; if it did, everybody would be Tadej Pocagar. Honestly, nothing really comes in four days besides Amazon Prime. But I digress.
Erratic, fitful confidence is an emotional rollercoaster; it spreads into daily life like syrup, glomming onto to anything else that might bring a smile. All too often, I find my days defined by the quality of a single training session. Satisfaction orbits around speed, power, endurance. Literal forward motion isn’t the only thing I’m pursuing. It’s not enough to have a training session that I could’ve only dreamed of a year ago. It has to be better than the last one— because that means I’m getting better, that I belong, that I’m not wasting my time on a dream that is reserved for the people greater than myself. Right?
In running, time can be a meter of worth (no pun intended). And the promise of better has irresistible allure for those of us not yet satisfied. But physiologically and psychologically, there is only so far you can make it if self-love is wholly dependent on daily success. Sometimes, I think that those fluctuations are a sign of what I am lacking. If I were really that good, I’d probably know it. But this past week, in all of its ups and downs and then a surprisingly good training session after a really fucking shitty few days, are making me think about it differently. Nobody thinks they have “it” because “it” doesn’t exist, and also because if we did then all we’d ever do is eat ice cream and rip track 200s. It’s the people that can turn that insecurity into patient curiosity that excel.
Insecurity, for me at least, is a fear of failure that comes with attaching self-worth to concrete results. At its worst, this ebbs and flows based on a day’s quality. It’s a hunger for validation that must be fed regularly. Putting your full self into something is vulnerable and ripe for devastation, but trying hard isn’t my problem. It’s the way I let a singular data point control my sense of identity. Patient curiosity on the other hand, is compassionate. It doesn’t fuck with the daily ups and downs, it rolls with them. It just wants to see where a bunch of training leads, and knows that it doesn’t have to be impressive to be worth something. EVEN (and this is key) it doesn’t lead to some sort of athletic excellence— it’s a worthy pursuit in of itself. Simply trying, and trying with integrity and fullness, is something to be proud of, something that says something about your character. Being surrounded by very good athletes makes it easy to lose perspective that you’re doing isn’t the norm. Which is tricky because the ultimate confidence would be not caring if it was the norm. Maybe one day I’ll get there.
The impetus for this journal was a 4x4min uphill session that came after a couple weeks where my head and body where all over the place. My knee hurt, I felt anxious and sad, and getting out the door to train took all I had. Some days I couldn’t even do that. But I somehow managed to get started on those intervals, and ended up feeling decently fast. And now I feel good, and I’m excited to run on the track tomorrow. Which is positive, except for it shows me how much I’m controlled by just one workout. I’m learning (slowly), it doesn’t really matter. Anybody can run a good workout, but great athletes can weather the storm knowing that even bad workouts are important. Bad workouts might even be more important. Not sure yet.
All of this is basically just a long winded way of saying I’m learning a lot, mostly about how to not feel so much. Being sensitive and emotional is good, but it’s about knowing how to control those emotions. Or maybe it’s about knowing that you even when you can’t control the emotions, they don’t have to control you if you don’t let them. Joe said to burn this experience into my brain, and so that’s what I’m trying to do.
