The Difference Between Losing And Failing

I hate to fail.  Now, I don’t mean that I hate to lose.  There’s a big difference between failing and losing.  Losing means that you worked your ass off, but whatever you were up against was just better than you.  Failing means that you didn’t even really try.  At least that’s what those two words mean to me.  I don’t mind losing.  I lose all the time.  Other runners are faster than me; in two different triathlons I crossed the finish line just as they were packing up (both times though, I was not last.  Let’s make that clear.  Last and second to last (or sixth to last in one case) are very different things.  If you don’t believe me, find 10 people who are being chased by a lion.  When the chase is over, talk to the guy who finished second to last and see if he feels any different than the person behind him, the guy the lion caught and is now snacking on).

Last week, I failed.  I was supposed to do an 18 mile ride at Harriman State Park with my friend Jeff, but rather than trying to do the whole thing, I climbed up inside my own head and refused to come down until it was too late to ride the whole course.  At that point I didn’t have had the energy to do it anyway.  Let me tell you, failing takes a lot out of you.  So I did 9 miles, and actually chose a pretty easy part of the course that I repeated a couple of times rather than trying any of the hard parts.

One bright side of failure is that most of the time you get a second chance.  This past Saturday I went back up to Harriman State Park again, with the goal of riding the entire 18 mile course that I had set out and failed to do the weekend before.  This time, things were a little difference.  First, I went with a friend, Karen.  Karen and I have been running together for a few years.  We often are training for different races, and we have different running styles (she uses the Jeff Galloway run/walk approach, and I’m what they call a “straight” runner), so we don’t run together all the time.  That said, we’ve done 1 and 1/3 marathons together, the 1 on purpose (2012 NY Marathon that we ran unofficially in Central Park after it was cancelled), and the 1/3 by accident (and if you don’t believe in miracles, then you’ve never been about to pronounce your own death at mile 16 of your first marathon and then have your running buddy pop out of the 47,000 or so people swarmed around you and help you out for the next 7 miles).  Despite our running styles, we’re pretty well paired in terms of pace and endurance level.  We also get each other.  Neither Karen nor I are natural athletes, and we both started running in our late thirties (if we get a little creative and say that I started running when I was thirty-ten :-).  We’re not out to crush the competition. We’re out to challenge ourselves and fight against failure.

I also went with a different attitude.  Riding 18 miles was not a choice.  It was mandatory.  This was the second Saturday in a row where Wil was going to watch our 2 kids for the bulk of the morning so that I’d have time to train.  It wouldn’t be fair to come home 6 hours after I left my house and tell Wil that I hadn’t ridden the whole thing – again.  Not only that, but Karen is training for a ½ Ironwoman triathlon (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, 13.1 mile run).  That is some serious stuff, and she needs to be earnest about her training.  She doesn’t have time for her friend to drive up to Harriman with her and then flake out and sabotage her training for the day.

When Karen and I got to Lake Kanawauke at the park, we parked and got our stuff together.  I told Karen that I was nervous, and she said she was, too.  But I noticed that she didn’t look nervous.  She was completely determined to do this ride, a ride on a course that she had never done before.  Right there I learned that you can be scared and determined at the same time.  That was lesson number 1.

Karen asked me to ride in front since I knew where I was going.  We took off, and on this ride, pretty much the first thing you do is climb a steep hill.  I tried to look over my shoulder a few times to make sure that Karen was behind me, but then I got to lesson number 2: I really suck at riding and trying to look back over my shoulder.  I didn’t want to crash (and I’m pretty sure Karen didn’t want me to crash, either), so I stopped looking back but I’d yell out to her every now and then and she’d respond. 

At about mile 4 we hit a VERY hard hill.  I dropped my bike to a low gear and pushed through it, breathing like I was lying on the floor with a baby grand piano on my chest.  When I got to the top I felt pure joy – until I saw the big downhill that was the obvious partner to the very hard uphill I had just finished.  Lesson 3: I’m terrified of down hills.  Instead of looking at the beautiful scenery and the nice open road with nothing to hit, all I could see was me in a twisted heap at the bottom of the hill, with my wildly torqued bicycle in its own heap next to me.  This vision caused me to squeeze my brakes and slow down.  I kept feeling bad for Karen stuck behind me as I crawled down the hill, so I’d let go of the brake just long enough to get the “twisted heap of Alison” vision again and then I’d slow down until I’d remember that I was screwing up Karen’s training ride and I’d go faster again.  This continued all the way down this hill and actually at every one of the hills we encountered along the way.

At mile 5.5 we basically turned around, and went up and down the hills we had just done in reverse.  Every time a car passed us (which was very infrequently and part of why I chose to ride here), I’d panic and literally shake on my bike.  Fortunately, the drivers all swung wide of the person they probably thought was having an epileptic seizure on her bike and got around me without incident.

Miles 9 – 17 were an out and back part of the course that had evil hills.  I’d say the two toughest hills were not only on this section of the course, but they were also back to back (though the second one may have felt so difficult because it immediately followed the first one and I was completely spent by the time I had to climb it).  This was also where the wind had been hiding all morning.  It couldn’t decide if it should head straight into our faces or push us sideways, so it oscillated between the two.   Lesson 4: I’m actually small enough for wind to have a significant impact on my forward motion, and this made the hardest part of the course even harder. 

At one point of this section, as the wind hit sideways and pushed me from the right shoulder to the center of the right lane (which fortunately was available at the time), I thought to myself “I’m done.”  I couldn’t do this.  I was going to get off my bike and walk it back.  Or Karen could ride back to the car and come pick me up off the course like a sweep van at the end of the races that pick up the last few athletes who aren’t going to be able to finish (in the race where I was second to last, they tried to sweep me and I kept arguing with the guy until I think I got him to the point of either annoyance or pity.  Regardless, he left me on the course, and I ended up going through the second transition and through the run faster than another racer, leaving him to be the one who’d be eaten by any lion chasing us).

Just when I was about to pull over and get off my bike, I thought about last week.  Last week I really failed before I even started.  Was I really willing to fail again?  I wasn’t injured, my bike was working just fine.  So was I really going to quit with just a few miles left?  Did I really want to be the reason for my own failure?

Of course not.  I admitted to myself that I was really hating this part of the ride, but I also decided that if I went a little faster that I’d finish it a bit sooner.  Finally I got to the turn off that meant we were only about a flat ¼ mile to the car, and suddenly it was the best ride ever.

Karen & me, 2012 NY (non)-Marathon

After we finished and put our bikes on the car, the two of us went for a 2 mile run (which at that point was almost as hard as the 18 mile ride that had preceded it).  Karen and I chatted for most of it, but at one point we ran silently and I thought about the ride.  I rode 18 hilly miles, twice the length of the ride last week.  I did the whole thing.  I was scared, and parts were brutal.  There were many other cyclists out that day, all of whom passed us like we were barely moving (including the “Richard Noggin” who passed me on the right and scared the crap out of me since I wouldn’t expect a clearly experienced rider to do such a stupid thing).  Had we been in a race with them we would have lost.  I wouldn’t have minded losing to those other riders (even the “Richard Noggin”), because this ride was a complete success.  Lesson #5:  I love to succeed.