Failure: an act or instance of proving unsuccessful; lack of success.
I have a degree in linguistics, so it's natural for me to pick words apart and really consider their meaning. Sometimes I do it just for fun, but in the case of "failure" I really wanted a way to move forward, to feel inspired, and...well-- to not feel like a failure. An instance proving unsuccessful felt a lot better, but it's just semantics- it means the same thing. I set out to do something and I didn't do it. Read: I failed.
Last year I attempted to run Georgia Jewel 100. It was definitely an instance proving unsuccessful. I made just about every bad choice I could and it ended in DNF at mile 71. I was sad, angry and disappointed. I didn't think I'd go back, but the race director and I had some conversations throughout the year and she very graciously invited me back to try again. I put so much effort into my training. I spent hours all but memorizing the runner handbook and race details. I had a solid nutrition plan. Rich was crewing for me and we had gone over my race plan ad nauseum in the weeks leading up to the race. I was determined to finish it and not her or myself down this year. And yet...things didn't go as planned. I got stung by 19 yellow jackets at mile 7. I had somehow overlooked that the cutoff for the 2nd 18 miles was 1/2 the time allowed for the 1st 18 miles and found myself sprinting from mile 30 with a body full of histamine to make a cutoff that unbeknownst to me wasn't even being enforced. So I arrived at mile 36 with a few minutes to spare, sick and bee stings swelling, and after trying to get some food down I pushed on. My food wasn't staying down. The bee stings were burning and itching and becoming welts that spread across my body. My race plan had fallen apart at that point and all I could do was try to keep moving forward. I officially missed the cutoff at mile 50 by 45 minutes, but they weren't enforcing that either so I dragged myself back out onto the course with Rich coming along at this point to pace me. I made it a mile and a half and my body just couldn't anymore...in retrospect the bee stings were probably more than I could handle and running so hard for almost 7 miles earlier to make the cutoff had gotten my heartrate up and had probably just made the effects even worse. My options were to go forward for 5.5 miles to finish the loop I was on or turn around and go back. I had been told this next cutoff was actually a hard cutoff and I needed to pick it up to a 13-14 minute pace to make it and I was barely walking a 20 minute pace...so we turned and went back to the aid station and with 53 miles behind me I gave up. By all interpretations of the definition-- this was a failure. It took a few days, but the acceptance started creeping in and I started to see the value. I started to see the strength I had shown and the perseverance I had displayed, despite the frustrations I had experienced.
My feelings about failure have changed over the last few years. I used to see it through a negative lens. Do I label this race as a failure on my part? Absolutely. But do I think that's a negative thing? Not at all. Here come the semantics...and some of my own interpretation of the word failure. There's point A and point B and if the goal is to get from A to B and you don't make there, it seems that would be an instance proving unsuccessful. But maybe it's not that cut and dry. Maybe there's something gray between the black and white. Maybe some instances happened between A and B that weren't unsuccessful and needed to be factored into the equation. What about the effort, the will, the passion, the drive, the motivation and the unwillingness to give in to defeat until there's just nothing left to give? And what about not being afraid of failure? If you never even show up at point A to try, isn't that an instance proving unsuccessful? I have this really nice list of finishes on ultrasignup and then if you scroll down far enough I have an almost just as long list of DNF's... if I had stayed home from all the races I've finished because I was afraid of failure- there'd be no list at all. So when we're talking about definitions, I don't consider myself or my success defined by how many times I fail... I define my success by how willing am I to try get out there and try again. I've considered playing it safe...I know I can finish a 50k and for a while I thought maybe I should just stick to 50k's and give up on the 100 mile distance. But where is the challenge and the growth in sticking to what you know you can do?
Maybe it's just semantics, maybe it's rationalization or self-validation...but whatever it is, I'm not going to give up trying just because I'm risking failure. When I look back on all of my failures, I can see all of the growth they led to and I wouldn't trade any of them. I choose to carry them like trophies, reminders of how brave I am for trying...and I certainly won't stop trying.
"'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again."
~William Edward Hickson
