I was a very competitive sprinter in high school. By my senior year I was one of the top hurdlers in my home state of Rhode Island. My best event was the 300-Meter Low Hurdles. This race was just long enough that one could not run it, entirely, at full-speed. Luckily, the week before the Class B Championships, the penultimate meet of the year, my coaches pulled me aside. They taught me the exact speed I should be running from beginning to end. Up until then, I would just take off at the sound of the starting pistol, hoping for the best.
Coaching made all the difference in the world. Before, crouched down in my blocks at the beginning of the race, I felt as if I were perched on the edge of the unknowable. With their help, however, my approach drastically changed. I began to picture how fast my feet would move between the hurdles, instead. It made the race feel simple. Doable. Once the shot sounded, I was off.
Because it had a staggered start, where the runner in the lane to your left starts behind you and the one to your right starts in front of you, I began the race feeling like I was running by myself. Noticing I had reached the first hurdle, before the runner just to my right, I focused my attention straight-ahead on my own lane. I ran the first straightaway, comfortably, then went into the curve of the lane. Nothing escaped my notice—not my lane, not how fast my feet were moving, not my form over the hurdles. In my periphery, however, I could see the runners I was passing to my right.
I cleared the last hurdle on the curve. This is the initial moment in the race where you really know where you are in relation to the other runners: the stagger no longer exists on the curve. If all of us had run at exactly the same speed, we would have reached that spot at the very same moment. I hit the final straightaway—no a single competitor in sight–with just a hundred meters and four hurdles between me and my target, the finish line.
Then it happened. I made a mistake. Instead of keeping my focus on my feet and the pumping of my arms, I—for a moment–pictured myself through the spectators’ eyes. I realized I was THAT guy, the runner of “the big race,” who was far out ahead of his competitors, leaving them in the dust. I had won plenty of races in my four years of competing, but I had never been that guy. Now, I was.
Things can go awry in the blink of an eye, though. That was all it took. I let my pace slow just enough that by the next hurdle my stride was off. Instead of smoothly clearing it on a dead run, I had to stutter-step and hop over it and, then, began to panic. As I approached the next hurdle, I could hear the clack, clack, clack of another runner’s spikes from behind me on the asphalt track. I stutter-stepped, again, over the next hurdle–the clack, clack, clack coming-up closer and closer behind me. After stutter-stepping a third time, I could feel him coming up upon my shoulder. The finish-line was just ahead and there was only one hurdle left.
I had been there, before. I have let my stride break down and lost races I could have easily won. As I neared the last hurdle, I began to prepare myself for defeat in a kind of ritual disappointment. Suddenly, within three steps of the hurdle, I heard a voice in my head say, “Don’t lose this one!” It wasn’t a reprimand or a command: it was a suggestion. I took it. Even though I was fatigued, and my body had begun to look forward to the end of the race, I lifted my knees, pumped my arms, stretched my stride, and cleared the last hurdle without slowing down, lunging and leaning through the tape. I won.
The other runner appeared beside me, smiling and panting, and gave me a high five. “Man, I almost caught you!”
“I know,” I said. He looked so proud of himself for having come as close to victory (to beating me), as he did. I hugged him, overjoyed that I had finished so strongly. My coach was sitting by the track. Falling on the grass beside him, I exclaimed, “I did it! I decided not to lose it!”
That was the last race I have ever won. From then on, I had come in fourth or fifth at State competitions, tore my hamstring in my first college race, and, eventually, lost interest. I sometimes feel that all my running in high school was really preparation for that one hurdle in that one race. In that moment, I saw winning and losing as choices of focus. For the first time, I saw my successes (and failures) as things I could influence and not results of the unalterably good or bad about myself.
I did not live my life firmly-rooted in this understanding after that amazing day. I have suffered the grief and confusion of (what I called) failure many times over the next few decades. Eventually, it became clear that life was so much simpler when I could manage to focus on the things I wanted for myself. Other people’s expectations or accomplishments just did not matter.
Now, it is just me in my own lane. I am finding the right speed, using what I’ve learned, and headed where I, alone, know to go.
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