Running With Setbacks: Part 1
The correlation with ambition in running and career
This is part 1 of a 2-part series.
People in startups often talk about major setbacks, as if they’re learning how to deal with them for the first time in their lives. They need to try running for a few years — setbacks are built into a runner’s blood!
Either way, once you’ve dealt with a few setbacks, they’re kind of like missing out on a convenient parking spot on your daily commute. It’s just something that most runners accept as dealing with on a weekly or daily basis.
I’ve hardly run at all in 2013, although I still call myself a runner. I’m now a runner who hardly runs. As someone who’s trained competitively for brief periods since I was 16, and has always had motivation to compete, my major setbacks haven’t been due to my mind. It’s my body.
What qualifies as hardly running? In line with my aspirations, it would be any less than 5 days a week. Unfortunately this would be the best case scenario. I’ve been reduced to running less than 3 days a week for most of the year, with a couple of months being 0 days a week. May and June were strong months, as detailed in my training log. February, March, and July were mostly absent. Although I did do a lot of cycling to make up the cross training, but that’s another story.
Those that aren’t from a running background, stay with me. Why does the mere act of “not being able to run” have such an impact on life?
Picture this analogy using career instead:
You’re starting out at a new company on a new project, or building a new product. A few things on the last project went wrong, you know what they are, and you’re eager to make amends. You’re determined to prove to yourself and to your peers, that the bullshit that brought down the last project wasn’t anything to do with your ability.
Lots of people are doubting your skills, some don’t think you should even be working, they think you’re too slow and that you’ll always be slow. You don’t really know that you can be faster, maybe they’re right. You need to push things forward and take action. There is a deadline for this project, and anything less than meeting these goals will push you back further in your career.
You start by building up slowly, doing the small repetitive tasks that you know work. They do. You progress, and a few weeks later start adding in a few more complicated tasks. There are a few scares where you think you’re in over your head, but then you come out unscathed. You’re now working faster, you’re getting more done.
The project is 80% finished, and most of the hard work is done. You’re on your computer taking a break from work, just doing some casual tweeting, when your computer freezes, and then your computer shuts down, and your computer doctor takes it for an x-ray and says that you can’t power it up for 4-5 weeks. You physically can’t power it up. All this happened at a time when you weren’t even doing any heavy lifting too, you were just tweeting!
What are you supposed to do? Look for a replacement computer? Expensive, and in a lot of ways physically impossible (let’s say you didn’t back up, there is no Git or no Dropbox).
I think you get it from here. I like to categorise running setbacks into 2 major categories:
1) Manageable setbacks. These are the recurring injuries, you’ve had them before and you know how to deal with them. Every now and then they come up without warning, but you’re mentally prepared for the amount of time off or treatment that you need.
2) Unexpected setbacks. These don’t occur as frequently. But they always occur either by accident or at a time when everything is going well. You have no idea if this will be a temporary setback, or something that leaves you inactive for months or years.
I’ve gone about 10 years with injuries exclusively from the 1st category, but just this year I’ve had not 1, but 2 injuries from the 2nd category.
In January I injured my knee while sleeping awkwardly on a plane. On a plane! Then when running in June, I thought my shoelaces were done up too tightly, causing a pain on the top of my foot. If only it was a bruise from the laces, it was a stress fracture from out of nowhere, and I had hardly even got back into training.
If I’m getting injured from these simple things, why should I even think that I’m capable of attempting the more complicated things?
Part 2 is going to deal with the lessons learned from having these setbacks…
