Suffering Builds Character, and Why It's Often Unnecessary

Today's Leadership Lesson is brought to you from the half-marathon I ran yesterday.

There were actually many lessons learned during my almost three hour pain-fest, which I'd like to share:

1. Routine events are NEVER identical

I've done a dozen or more half-marathons in the same amount of years. Even though they are all 21.1 km in length, every race has been different and even the same race can vary from year to year. So, despite how cookie cutter things may look on paper, don't assume what worked last time will provide the same results this time. Take the time to refresh your plan and make sure it makes sense.

2. Have a plan

For that to work, you actually need a plan! Running sounds pretty simple...left, right, left, right, repeat 28,000 times, but there is so much more to having a successful race.

First of all, are you "racing" or are you "running"? In all my races, I think I have only ever "raced" a handful of times. And if you are racing, who are you racing against? Are you racing to win the event, win your age group, or just beat your own personal best? Each of those is a vastly different strategy and mindset. Any time I've raced, it's always been against myself or the clock...I'm not delusional enough to think I can actually beat someone else. Knowing your goal, gives you a target for your strategy.

If your goal is to win the entire event, your choices in gear, nutrition, and pacing will all be tuned to meet that goal. We passed the men's leader as we were somewhere around the 4-5km mark, and he was on the return leg of the course, having already done 17-18km. He carried no fluids, he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and was running to finish before 1 hour and 15 min. In other words, he was built for speed, light, and leaving everyone in his dust.

I, on the other hand, had pants, a long sleeve shirt, jacket, water belt with three bottles of Gatoraide, two granola bars, my iPhone, headphones, running visor, and sunglasses. My journey and goals were different and required a different plan. He was going to be back in his hotel room, showered, massaged, and resting before I got to the turn around point to start my journey back. He was the rabbit, I was the turtle. Same event, different goals, but we both had plans which we carried out to the best of our abilities.

3. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

My plan was based around the fact that I didn't train for this race. Not a single step. I signed up for four races before the middle of April with the hope that it would inspire me to train again but, as of yet, there is no motivation.

So, my plan was bring what I needed to be on the course for several hours, and run with the pacer who would get me across the finish line at 2 hours and 45 minutes. I would stay with them as long as I could and if it became too much, I would let them go, switch to Plan B, and run short intervals to the finish line. If that failed, I would walk to the end.

We've all been there when trying to deliver a project or deal with an issue...throw resources at the problem until it gets better or white-knuckle through it. But, with proper planning, ramp up, training, etc, we should never have to get to the white-knuckle stage.

Once, in a previous organization, we had to relocate an office from Houston to Dallas before a hurricane hit. We loaded every bit of tech we could in a convoy and drove hours north to Dallas and got it all set back up over a weekend. It was a herculean effort on the part of dozens of people but come Monday morning, we were up and running. Fast forward to budget time the following year when we asked for money to set up a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery program to make us resilient for the next hurricane. We were summarily dismissed, told there was no need because we did such a good job the last time that we could just do that again.

Like this training for this race, being proactive and planning for future hurricanes and incidents, would have saved a lot of pain, effort, and suffering. But because we performed miracles before, we could do it again, regardless of the toll. And because I have a decent enough base level of fitness, I got through a race without training. It doesn't make it right in either case and past results are not indicative of future outcomes...see point #1.

Now that I've passed along these observations, please excuse me. I need to slowly and carefully rise from this chair, take more Tylenol, and pretend my hip flexors aren't screaming at me.