Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

I recently ran the Jingle Bell Run 5K, finishing off my racing season for 2011. It’s been a year of learning but my past three races have taught me one big lesson: Racing, if you are doing it right, is uncomfortable.

A lot is written about the value of negative splitting, or finishing the second half of a race faster than the first. Beginning marathon guides go on ad nauseaum about holding back and saving some energy for the end. While I understand the theory, and maybe there was a time I needed to hear it, that advice is not working for me anymore.

The last three races I have gone out in a pace I wasn’t sure I could sustain. I felt like I was pushing myself, breathing hard, not able to talk, and focused on nothing but running. This is not nearly as fun as a casual run while chatting with a friend. This kind of running involves a lot of positive self-talk, and refusing, over and over again, to let up. In short, these runs have been uncomfortable.

As difficult as these races have been, there is no describing the feeling of looking at my watch and realizing I am running fast. That my time at the finish may be better than I thought possible. One quick time-check at a mile marker is incentive to endure the discomfort. Water, rest, a break…none of those things are worth trading for the feeling of being fast. In dieting, it’s been said, “no food tastes as good as skinny feels.” Likewise no comfortable pace feels as good as a PR feels.

I’ve spent a lot of time holding back in races. Saving energy or pacing myself or whatever. I’ve learned holding back is limiting myself. The last three races, I’ve gone out hard and held on. I’ve realized that getting to those mile markers with fast splits is teaching me the value of sustained discomfort. It’s in that space, if we can stay with it long enough, we get better. 

Maybe negative splitting isn’t always a positive strategy. I got to the end of the Jingle Bell Run and didn’t have a finishing kick. My last mile was a solid 30 seconds slower than my first. But my overall time was the fastest I’ve had in two years. I had nothing left at the end. I knew I ran as hard as I could for as long as I could. It was uncomfortable. Hard. And nothing could have been more satisfying.

We play conservative a lot in life. We hold back our best for fear we might lose it if we put it to the test. We wait too long or late in the race to make up time. At that point it’s too late: we’ve settled into comfortable and it becomes hard to imagine we have a better “best.” As long as we are holding something back we aren’t becoming what we can really be.

As T.S. Eliot said “only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” The thing about going out hard is there isn’t any wondering “what if.” The secret to racing, and maybe more than racing, is finding a way to be comfortable being uncomfortable. To put in enough effort from the start that we risk the certainty that we can hold on or finish. In that uncertainty and discomfort we find out what we can endure for what is most important to us.