How a marathon humbles you: the miracle of start, finish and everything in between

Change, its touted, is often not gradual. Epiphanies, topple-overs and ‘aha’ discoveries are an integral aspect of the process. Mine came as I crossed the finish-line of my first half-marathon! The learnings of the experience are too many to ignore the muse who is nudging me to share them.

There is a pattern here- if one observes people who succeed at efforts at making huge changes in their physical appearance eventually take it up notch by notch so that the sense of accomplishment of losing weight and gaining health is continually reinforced by other victories like running a marathon. But as I flirted with the thought of joining the cult of running-junkies it was more than just a sense of victory that provided the impetus. It was the hope based on anecdotes that the experience of actually running the race would be transforming- I am proudly not disappointed.

Hypothetically, running to me was putting on your shoes and hitting the road- but there is more technology involved in it than that. It is the right running shoes that match the arches on your feet, dry-fit clothing that keeps you dry, as you become more tech-savvy it is your i-pod in your Nike shoes encouraging you to run an extra mile everyday of the training, the hand-held GPS that prevents you from getting lost and your heart-rate monitor watch that provides the pace you should maintain. More than the fascinating technology it is the indispensable discipline that gets you on the road every day of the training plan – rain, wind, snow or sunshine.

But as everything else in life others as a source of support are pivotal for accomplishing the goal. Be it your trainer, your running-buddy, your running-club or even strangers on the road who smile and nod encouragingly as you huff and puff down your way- its difficult to go very far if you are alone. The only advantage of trotting your way in isolation is the birth of some of the best ideas and solutions you might be struggling with in other aspects of your life- the adrenalin from the run is conducive to finding those elusive answers.

Running also changes your relationship with time and food. You soon find out there is no ‘bad’ time for a run, and all those carbs that were your enemy in past life are your best friends to keep you on the go.

All this though is miniscule compared to what the d-day entails. The energy, the excitement and the camaraderie on the race-day is worth every ounce of discomfort during the training. You wonder why by-liners come with their children, dogs and friends, sometimes in pouring rain, just to cheer on the runners and incase of good Samaritans even hand out energy bars and jelly beans. The chain of low-fives along the course is good enough to keep even the most enervated one going on. The encouragement continues with fellow-runners. You get into some of the most interesting conversations, tips for successful completion, and wide-eyed appreciation for mentioning it’s your first race. Being passed sometimes by fifty-somethings in fighting shape is what pushes you on while other times its watching runners with their legs in braces who are oozing of determination to reach the end.

Stepping across the finish-line is undoubtedly the most overwhelming part of the entire story. There are sighs of ‘having arrived’, cheers and embraces and for us novices simply the choking feeling of ‘have I really done this?’ All the excitement, food, music and beer, momentarily zones out as you realize there is nothing one cannot do!

Living through the experience you also realize that not only is it addictive but its contagious. The runners-high almost ensures that you would want to do this again and then again, this being compounded by genuine inquiries and wishes by everyone who cares even an iota. Those who are a witness as you live through the change feel encouraged to emulate. As you enjoy the salt-stung eyes, quivering legs and ‘I think I will pass out’ on a steep-hill effort, it dawns on you that the best thing about long-distance running is that most of us are not in it for the fierce competition and hating other runners- its one of the few occasions in life when you perform beyond the challenges of the circumstances and you finish it ‘together’. The learning that you are running for the finish-line even when someone else has reached it first is worth all the effort!!

Myth of the one-man army

The tug-o-war between long-term vs. short term, reality vs. dreams, should vs. would, has been perennial. What I wish to add to the list is my latest ‘aha’ of performance vs. development. Before I embark on sharing my latest discovery the caveat that needs to be delineated is that, like everything else, this phenomenon is not ‘either-or’ but ‘more-or-less’.

Imagine an organization, parent or even yourself, who instead of emphasizing on the results, focuses on the development even when the times are not very rosy. Most of us, conditioned to evaluate in terms of the output, would dismiss them as not tuned into reality. But even a superficial reflection of our best experiences being ‘lead’ or observing a display of magnificent leadership would indicate that this assumption is shaky.

A single-minded focus on results gets us just that- results. Which I presume is not a very bad thing! What makes it ephemeral is the fact that it is debilitating and not sustainable. Forgetting the importance of development and relationships is a precursor to the dead-end of the road. It saps the energy out of the ones being lead and turns them into turtles that refrain from sharing their ideas, thoughts or creativity. Most of us continually crave for spaces that help us to learn, grow and as a by-product get results. But turning the tables so that the experience is about getting results and letting the development take care of itself is a bubble that is bound to burst.

Where it gets trickier is that sometimes to facilitate development in others the efforts toward the output have to be ostensibly slowed down so that the energy can be channelized into the other direction. Whether it is taking the time out, despite a deadline, to talk to a colleague; allowing mistakes for the sake of learning or spending more time than usual in handholding your child through an assignment; the investment of the time and energy is not only a ‘nice to do’ but a ‘must to do’. The proposition here is that success is achievable only if the concentration of efforts move from problem to the process to the person.

This is easy when all is going well- the organization has a cherubic bottomline, your child is behaving like an angel and you have all the time in the world to know and understand your peers. The awareness becomes essential when the real world strikes. That is when one needs to put the brakes to the instincts of treating others around as means to achieving the results and put their development and our relationships as the priority. This does not imply irresponsible ‘schmoozing’ with others ignoring the urgency of the situation. What this posits is that even when we go into the ‘crisis control’ mode how long do we stay there and how do we make others around us feel at that time.

Sometimes as the commitment to a goal increases, the flexibility to improvise takes a nose-dive. This is evident in entrepreneurs, and leaders who work for noble causes. Their capacity to exhibit compassion to customers and outsiders is in surprising contrast to the utilitarian view they possess of the people working for them. The single minded and narrow pursuit of the goal almost always excludes everyone from their journey toward achievement.

Balancing performance and learning of others is an intriguing dynamic. Years of conditioning justifies the treatment we shelve out to everyone else, characterizing our endeavors as a personal journey to higher achievements. But the anomaly lies in the truth that it is never a personal journey. Even if you are a solitary noble prize laureate research scientist, you need to connect and reciprocate with people to avoid stagnation. What makes it magical is that facilitating development is just another way of spelling your own development.

What I think you think that they think

Thirty pounds and gazillion days of inactivity ago I could have never envisioned that one day I would be running my first half-marathon. In addition to the race-day being so exhilarating, experiencing the training has reinforced my belief that most of our limits are self-imposed.

My regurgitating of the inputs in psychology, social psychology and sociology has introduced me to this fascinating idea of behaviors and actions driven by a yin-yang like interplay between you as a person and others. Psychology vouches by the motto that it is ‘I’ who thinks, reflects and hence acts on the world. Sociology on the other end of the continuum lives by the maxim that social structures and society defines a person. Enters social psychology. Adopting the best from both, it redefines thoughts and behaviors as a reflexive understanding and private interpretation of what has been handed to you by the society. Going one level deeper, this further bifurcates into micro-sociological approach where the content of social relationships is not as important as structure and a pure social psychological approach where content is more important.

At the risk of irking purists, this reductionist explanation that I just shared, hits at the root of my proposition about defining limits. The ideas about how much, how long, how far, how deep, and how many are in all probability bestowed by ‘others’. In the spirit of sociology, the cogitating and assimilation of most of these demarcations of high and lows is ignored. They are accepted because they are what everyone does. So you cannot perform if you sleep less than eight hours, you should not work out more than six days a week, work and play should not be mixed together and the list is endless. The idea here is not to malign these ‘truisms’ because they provide huge predictability to the world, but when they are used to define constraints is when they loose their luster.

This is also not to glorify the Ayn Rand like one-person army ideas about pooh-poohing all that is defined by others. The thought here is to understand and redefine limits to ensure progression.

Whenever we are in a ‘knotty’ asana in a yoga class, amidst all the huffing-pufffing and sour-lemon faces of fellow ‘yogis’ there are a few who exude a calm that probably is the objective of the whole asana. Those are the torch-bearers of the hypothesis that real limits are understood when you solve the dilemma between what has been defined for you and what you can achieve. My yoga teacher often says that if you are unable to reach the ‘prescribed’ form of the pose, instead of forcing it, you must scan your body to understand if it is because of your bone structure aka ‘sociological/others defined’ boundary or it is because of a lack of flexibility of your muscles aka ‘psychological/self defined’ boundary. The beauty of this statement is its generalizability to all limits in life. The continual redefinition of ‘what I can do’ is imperative to experience that invaluable feeling of moving ahead.