What my ill-fated half marathon taught me about achieving personal goals
“You do a lot of meaningless, purposeless, stupid things. You get obsessed. You spend years focused on it. And literally, no one cares but you."
If you’ve been with me and this newsletter for some time, you know that I don’t normally share a goal before I hit it. (Like how I didn’t publicly tell anyone that I was writing a book until it was available for pre-order.)
I’ve never liked sharing an intention before the result. I’m not entirely sure why — probably because I’m afraid that I won’t complete it or that it’ll get derailed in some way.
Well. This leads me to what happened last weekend.
A little backstory: After my son was born in November, I needed a new goal to chase. I decided that half marathon training would be a great mental/physical outlet following postpartum. Plus, I found a race on April 28, which seemed like the perfect, far-away date.
So I started training in January. I shared updates about it in this newsletter and on Twitter, and Instagram. For the first time, I publicly stated my intention to run a sub-2 hour half, and I thought that would give me the accountability I needed to take the training seriously.
And I did. I ran mile after mile during the week and dutifully completed my long runs every Sunday morning.
On the evening before the race, I laid out my clothes for the following day and studied the course map one last time.
And then, of course — of course — I started feeling severely nauseous and deeply unwell. I’ll spare you the details, but my husband and I got food poisoning.
So at 4 a.m — four hours before the half was set to begin — I was Googling, “Can you run a half marathon with food poisoning?” (The answer is: you can try, but there’s a serious chance you might get dangerously dehydrated & end up in the hospital.) Given that I couldn’t even keep a sip of water down, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
Needless to say, I wasn’t able to run it. I gotta admit — it was a weird cocktail of feelings. Even though food poisoning wasn’t exactly on my bingo card, I felt really disappointed that I couldn’t close the chapter on this journey.
So then what?
I kept thinking about this one part from Casey Neistat’s video Sisyphus and the Impossible Dream. In it, he talks about how he attempted to complete the New York City marathon under three hours last year, and his time came in at …. 3 hours and 1 minute. Devastating.
He says:
“It’s just an arbitrary number. I don’t need to break three hours to know who I am. What matters are the experiences. The journey. Even if I failed in the goal, see, life’s a battle, and there are times when you need to accept that you’ve been beat. It’s been a long road, and there’s a lot to be proud of. But I’m never going to break three. I’m just not that guy.”
[he pauses, and then says:]
“Oh, F*CK THAT.”
Of course he didn’t stop. Of course he didn’t give up after that attempt. It took him 17 years and 24 marathons, but finally, at age 42, Neistat ran a 2 hour and 57 minute marathon.
Here’s the thing: I know that running this half doesn’t define me, but I am also determined to finish what I start.
So yesterday, May 4, without telling anyone, I went to Central Park and ran the exact route of the half marathon — two loops around the park for a total of 13.1 miles.
(And I managed to achieve my goal/personal best of sub-2 hours, running 1:58:48 with an average pace of 9:05 minutes/mile.)
No cheering. No fanfare. No medal. Just me and my family at the “finish line.”
I didn’t have to run it. It may seem meaningless, purposeless, and stupid, but it was important to me. As Neistat said:
“You do a lot of meaningless, purposeless, stupid things. You get obsessed. You spend years focused on it. And literally, no one cares but you. But you persevere anyway and you keep running. Because when you add up all those stupid, meaningless obsessions, what they add up to is your life.”
That’s inspiring sending this to my kids. Thank you.
Makes me feel better about my constant tendency to set arbitrary goals.