Quitting vs. Giving up

OK, before I get into the good stuff I need to own up to my race result from the weekend.  Of my goals, I met one.  I was second female out of the water.  And only 4 men swam faster than me.  I had an awesome swim.  However, I did not meet my goals for the bike, run or overall time.  I did not compete well against my competitors yesterday and I did not podium.  There are no excuses.  It was a challenging day out there, but when we line up on race morning, everyone faces the same obstacles on the way to the finish line.

I have always prided myself on being mentally tough.  I can block out the negative voices in my head.  I believe in, and routinely practice, visualization.  People say there are 5 disciplines in triathlon:  swim, bike, run, nutrition, and recovery.  For me there is a 6th:  the mental game.  I read about it.  I think about it.  I practice it.  And yesterday, I completely folded.  I gave up.  I let my Inner Bitch get the better of me.  It was not pretty and I am not proud.  One minute I am composing my victory speech in my head, the next minute I have sworn off triathlon forever. 

I always have a little bit of dread leading into this race.  It's tough.  It's over 6000 ft of elevation, which is fine if I lived in Colorado.  I don't.  I live a hair above sea level.  The elevation never gets to me until the run, but when it hits me I just want to walk.  Especially on this miserable little out-and-back section of the run on horrible barely-runable gravel road.  It sucks.  But it sucks every year and I know what to expect and I just have to deal.  This year, I placed an expectation on the race and when the going got tough very early on, I didn't deal.

I'm not going to give you a play by play of my entire day, I'll just outline a few of the things that led to my demise.  I had a phenomenal swim.  By half way through, I could see that I made a gap on my competition.  I came out of the water second female.  I was feeling great.  It was a good start to the day.  I hit the bike and within 3 miles I realized it was going to be a long day, but I was still feeling good.  I was in the middle of composing my victory speech in my head when a man rides by me and says, "that's a men's bike," as he goes past.  It interrupted my train of thought and I was completely distracted as I was trying to understand A) why it mattered, and B) was he joking?  He certainly sounded condescending, but I'm also not the best at picking up subtleties in the humor of strangers.  Have I mentioned how much I love my bike?  It does happen to be a "men's" frame, but don't most women ride men's frames?  Especially if they happen to be tall???  It fits me, it's comfortable, who gives a fuck?  I digress.

So suddenly, instead of focusing on the positive (my stellar swim) I am now focused on something negative (feeling judged by this nobody who felt the need to comment on my bike).  From there it's a slippery slope.  My Inner Bitch sees the opportunity and takes over.  Now I start thinking about how miserable the wind is that I'm fighting, instead of thinking about how far of a lead I got on all the other girls.  Now I'm mad that the cross wind is so bad that I can't go aero, and I can't eat or drink for fear of ending up in oncoming traffic should I remove my hands from the handle bars.  Literally, at 20 miles in, I gave up.  I didn't quit, I gave up on myself.  I gave up on my goals.  I gave up on the opportunity to have a good day.  I swore I'd never race another triathlon ever (other than CDA and StG of course-- after all, I've already paid the entry fee!). 

I soft pedaled the rest of the way (36 miles) back to transition where I was looking for any reason at all to even put my run shoes on.  I was done.  So I dismount my bike and I'm walking, dejectedly, down the hill toward the racks when the TriSports staffer monitoring the timing at T2 starts yelling at me about how "this is a race!"  Basically reaffirming the fact that I am moving quite slowly at this point.  I mean, come on.  How hard would it be to offer a few words of encouragement?  I completely lost it.  I screamed at him.  I opened my mouth and out spewed the culmination of every nasty thought that had accumulated in my head over the last 3 hours and 16 minutes.  I am completely ashamed of my attitude and behavior in that moment.  I should publicly apologize to every spectator who witnessed my display.

I entered T2 and heard some people shouting for me by name, cheering me on.  I was looking for a reason not to quit.  And maybe that was all that I needed to put my shoes on and keep moving.  If I quit, if I dropped out of a race when there is not a single thing wrong with me physically, I could never show my face in the triathlon community again.  Ever.  In reality, I sat down.  I changed my shoes.  I put my visor on.  I applied body glide and sunscreen.  I took my time.  And when I was good and ready, I put one foot in front of the other and didn't look back.  I didn't walk a single step of the run course.  I was moving quite slowly and I'm sure there were spots where had I been walking I would have been going faster.  But there was no reason to walk. 

Physically I was completely fine.  Mentally, I was out of the game.  I climbed back inside my own head, hid my Inner Bitch as best as I could though after my display in T2 I was sure I had a scarlet B on my chest.  I was humiliated into running.  Had I walked I would have just reaffirmed my poor attitude.  After crossing the finish line, I sat on the curb and cried.  I cried out of embarrassment for my shitty attitude.  I cried for my loss.  I cried for fear that I will not be able to conquer this inner demon now that it has seen the light of day. 

I thought a lot yesterday about the difference between quitting and giving up.  I did not quit.  I crossed the finish line in 6 hours 12 minutes and 24 seconds.  If it wasn't my slowest half Ironman ever, it was darn close.  I did give up on myself and did not honor my abilities.  I am better than I demonstrated.  Even with the 42 mph winds on the bike, I could have done a lot better.  I am not sore today because I did not work hard.  I did not push myself.  Had I quit, I would have been spitting in the face of every person competing in the event that day.  I would not have been honoring my competitors or the race.  There was nothing physically wrong with me.  Quitting would say to the world that the race was not worth my effort, that when the going got rough I walked away from the challenge.  I don't know that giving up is any better, but in some bizarre way I feel like I only let myself down.  My performance didn't affect anyone else but me.  Had I quit, what would that say to all those people who were out there 7 and 8 hours, long after I was done?   Had I quit, what would that say to all the girls who did beat me, that they were not worthy competitors?  That I was too egotistical to lose to someone who was better than me on that day?

No matter what happens, no matter how bad things seem... it is always worth finishing.  I learned more about myself yesterday than I have in a cumulative 5 years of racing triathlon.  I learned that I am not immune to negativity and I need to be very careful when I entertain a negative thought.  I learned that when setting goals for myself, I need to not only set time goals but also to have a backup plan for days like yesterday, when maybe a specific "time" is not realistic due to conditions out of my control.  I learned that though I can come up with a list of reasons why I could legitimately drop out of a race (I seem to have caught the nasty bug that my husband has been battling for 2 weeks, I have been dealing with an injury since my marathon last month, should I go on?), I would only be lying to myself. 

I learned that no matter what happens, I need to keep my mouth shut.   I cannot repeat enough how humiliated I feel by my attitude yesterday.  I am not at all embarrassed by my performance.  I did a good job.  I cannot believe that I said the things I said and acted the way I did during the race.  It is not me.  I did not like the person that I saw yesterday and I hope that she doesn't show up again at any of my future races.     

Life is not always what you want it to be, but it is what you make of it.  I want to make my triathlon experience a positive one.  I am not a quitter, and I won't to give up on myself anymore either.  I deserve better than that.