Race Talk: You Have A Right to Your Disappointment

This past weekend was the Cal International Marathon in Sacramento, which when it comes to marathons, we all know is 100% the best in the west. Any number of my good friends were out there, as well as a number of other bloggers or visible social media-type people that I follow, and I've spent the last couple days liking/heart-ing/favoriting my little heart out of dozens of pictures, tweets, and various other types of social media posts.

Far & away one of my favorite parts of big race weekends, whether I'm racing or not, is celebrating the hard-fought victories of friends and others, and last weekend was no exception. From all accounts, the weather was perfect, the temperature was lovely, and PRs, BQs, and OTQs were racked up by the barrel full.

There are always other stories, though. Stories of giving it everything you had and still coming up short of a long-held goal. Of being foiled by some dumb injury. Of training that didn't go as planned, of DNFs and DNSs. Of working and working and working to get back to a certain time and coming nowhere close. Whether you had an amazing day or an abysmal one, it's hard to know what to say sometimes when others around you are in a different place.

As I imagine most of us have, I've been on both sides of this feeling. I've PR'd or accomplished some other long-worked-for goal on the same day that others have had awful races, and I've crashed & burned or sat in a hotel room with an injury while friends had the race of their lives. We have lots of things we say to ourselves and each other when we don't have the race we'd hoped for--It's just running; It happens to the best of us; You'll get 'em next time; You gave it your best; There are always new lessons to learn; etc. etc. But if we're really honest, the bottom line is that having a bad race just sucks and the only thing that really makes it feel any better is time.

Another common response to having a bad race or not running the time you'd trained or hoped for is the suggestion that you should for some reason be pleased with this outcome. We tell someone, or someone tells us, or we tell ourself:

"You should be proud of that time! So many people would do anything to run (xx:xx)."

"Lots of people can't even run ONE mile, you should be happy that you can run (xx)!"

"Hey, it's not the time you wanted, but you really CAN'T be disappointed with (xx:xx)."

"Think of all that hard work you put in. Who cares about the time, you should just be proud of your effort!"

"Forget about the time you wanted to run. You should be thankful for being able to run (a particular time, a particular distance). Some people can't run at all."

I understand when friends say these things to you after a bad or disappointing race. I do. People care about your and it's hard to see your friends feeling sad and we all want to say something to lift their spirits and remind them that they're still great. Almost always when people say these things (or when we say them to ourselves), they do it with the best of intentions.

Also, they contain some real truths. We should be grateful that we get to run at all, and we should be proud of all the time and hard work we've devoted to becoming strong enough and tough enough to run xx miles and/or accomplish this in a certain amount of time. No argument there.

But I also think that often an important piece gets left out.

You have a right to your disappointment.

Really. The idea that you can't or shouldn't feel sad or disappointed or frustrated with a certain time just because there are other people in the world who would be over the moon to run that time is just wrong.

• If an Olympic Marathon qualifier runs a 2:55 marathon, she gets to be disappointed. What anyone else would feel having run a 2:55 is completely irrelevant to her experience.

• If a mid-packer's tune-up race results all point to a 4:30ish marathon and he runs 5:15, he gets to be disappointed. It doesn't matter if everyone else he knows struggles to finish a 5K.

• If someone has BQ'd seven times and has to drop out because of an injury, they get to be disappointed. This is still true even if their training training partners have been trying in vain to BQ for years.

The idea that you don't have a right to your feelings because of someone else's situation is just insanity.

Feelings are gonna do what feelings are gonna do, and nothing is accomplished by telling ourselves that our feelings are somehow not valid or the "wrong" feelings to be having. If you've worked hard for something and didn't quite manage to pull it off for whatever reason, it makes sense to be disappointed. It's okay. Go on; embrace your disappointment. Own your sadness. Give yourself a little grace to say, "You know, this sucks and I am just going to sit here & let myself feel sad about it for a while." It's a-okay.

What's more, it's kind of necessary. There have been so many times in my life when I've been disappointed or upset about something that I perceived as some sort of failure, but instead of letting myself acknowledge the feeling, really feel it, and then deal with it, I tried to explain it away. "This is stupid, I CAN'T be upset about this / I CAN'T be disappointed / I SHOULDN'T let this bother me." Except newsflash! I was and it did! Take it from an expert--brushing off feelings and pretending you don't have them never ends well. Feel your feelings. It's okay. It's healthy.

Now, I'm not talking about wallowing for weeks and months on end or just never getting over it Miss Havisham-style. At some point we have to be able to let the past be the past and move on to our fabulous futures. Still, some people say that pain is how you know you're really alive, and I say that disappointment--even crushing devastation at times--is how you know you really care about something.

So, yeah. Just a quick note to all you CIM runners out there that you have a right to feel proud of all the work you put in and whatever you accomplished this weekend, and at the same time, you have a right to your feelings of sadness or disappointment if it wasn't what you'd hoped to accomplish. The pain is how you know you're alive.