Our Mayor is a Freakin Animal!

Well, as a lot of you know I am coming off my 5th marathon in 6 months and am just under two weeks away from my 50 miler on April 12th. This last marathon was great in all aspects; the weather turned out to be pretty much perfect, the course was challenging but fun, constantly changing and lined with support, it marked the start to a great weekend of sports (go Nationals!) and, I ran the whole thing (well, almost the whole thing) with our great Mayor, Adrien Fenty.

I've been training with him and his training group off and on since before my first marathon last October and have really enjoyed the group and been inspired by everyone in it. So it was exciting to be headed down with them to another race, especially since it is technically the only marathon in DC. Alot of the group was running the half, even Fenty was considering it seeing how he was feeling under the weather; but there were a few of us there planning on getting the whole thing in. I needed to because it would be my last long run before the real long one. Either way, it was great to ride down there with everyone and to share in the freezing cold excitement of the start of a race.

We started from the front line and began running towards the capitol. I ran next to the Mayor as he was pushing a perfect pace for me and I wanted to be able to feed off someone for a while, even if he did break off at 13.1, I would make decent time having been by him that long. We passed the half way point and kept on trucking, never slowing down at all. I stopped looking at my watch around mile 3 and just enjoyed the fact that my body didn't hurt as bad as my last four (and the fact that after the half way point, it was me all alone, running with the Mayor (another one of the group was with us through the half)). At about mile 20 Fenty started to pull away, or, a better way to look at it is, I started slowing down. I felt my legs starting to get heavy and we were entereing a long, straight and very windy portion of the course. This kept up for about 3 miles until I realized something: I wasn't really as fatigued as I thought. My legs didn't hurt, they just felt tired, I wasn't out of breath, nothing like my other runs. Fenty was out of reach at this point, on a great pace I assumed, so, I would just pick it up and go as hard as I could if I felt fine enough to do so... so that's what I did.

The last 3 miles I ran in under 8:45 per mile and I crossed the finish line with a time of 3:50:22, a PR (personal record) by around 7 minutes. The best part, I felt totally fine. My legs were tored of course, but I could walk fine, I could bend over, I could move around; it was great. And then, to add to the craziness of the day, I got to our meet up point and found out that Fenty had finished in just over 3 hours and 40 minutes, a PR by about 16 minutes (a record he held from the age of 16 he told me). We both had a pretty good run is what I'm getting at here people. Granted, his was a bit better than mine, but, I am so happy with my finishing time and hope to work on improving that over the years; maybe even besting him at some point.

(The Mayor has the Fleet Feet shirt on, I am to his left)

But this isn't why I call him an animal. If you haven't read my article on him by the way, please go to my website www.joshcouragetraining.com and check it out in the articles section. I call him an animal because today I went out with the group, two days after 26.2 and figured we'd go on a nice easy 4 miler or something. Well, with Fenty at the front, we blazed through 55 minutes of street and trail probably covering a bit over 6 miles. I was not planning on running today at all, and then, when he asked me to come out, I figured "come on, he's got to be about as sore as me, it'll be a nice jog"; but noooo... good ol' work horse himself, a guy who has got to be 20 times busier than me, sleeps 2 or more hours less than me, has a wife a two kids more than me (I have neither for those who are wondering) and beats my best marathon time has the toughness to push on through 6 more tough miles...and you know he'll hot the pool and the bike tomorrow.

What a great leader.

I am proud to know him and to be able to run next to him.

Thank you Mayor Fenty!

Josh Courage

Failure

It seems I am stuck on some somewhat grim topics these days. But through it all, I am certain that I am coming out with very optimistic opinions on all of them. It seems this is what I like to do; take challenges and find ways to get the positive out of all of them, no matter what happens, always come out with one or more good lessons learned.

So I've been stuck on the idea of failure; what it means, what it feels like, how to react to it, so on. I have talked to many people about it, pessimists, optimists, apathetic folk (there are a lot of self proclaimed apathetic people around by the way). Talked to my mom, my dad, clients, friends and all along, I really sat down and thought about how I felt about it.

What I have found is that everybody seems to have a different definition, everyone feels one way or another about it especially when it's surrounded by specific events. People have positive views on it when it's about things they love, they leave with great lessons learned and happy for the experience. But when they are experiencing something they do not like, failure becomes an excuse, something that's dirty and bad. I came away from all these chats and self-analysis with a very new perspective on what it means to truly fail, and I think I like what I've found.

"True failure is never having tried at all"

What I think this means is that failure (the kind it seems we all think about...you know, the negative kind) can only really happen if you just don't try something you want to try. As I'll explain here, just because you do not succeed does not make YOU a failure (in the negative view of it). I really only think that being a failure (being or doing something that could be looked at in a negative light by most people) is when you want something, but don't do anything about it. Or, if you did not succeed and then never try again because of that lack of success. I really think that a lot of people construe what failure really means; and because of this, they make life very hard on themselves.

The definition of failure is simply: to not succeed. If it was always simply looked at like this, I think there would be way more happy people in the world. Failure is not a negative thing, it does not mean you suck at life, or even at the thing you are trying, it simply means you put forth a goal, and you did not achieve that goal at that time, or in that effort, that is it.

Now I don't want to take away from the disappointment of failure. It does hurt to not achieve ones goals, and a lack of success should never be taken lightly. But that old saying "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" really has some meaning to it. What I mean here is that if you set forth to achieve a goal and train for it, and work towards it, and never compromise your pursuit in any way and still somehow don't get there, that is not true failure, that is reaching your limit. From there you know that you gave it your all and the only thing you can do now is work harder to achieve it next time. You learn from your experience and you push forward. During this time of pushing to your goals you'll realize that every day is filled with smaller versions of what you are attempting. Every day, every moment you try something (a miniature goal) and you either succeed and move on, or "fail" and try again a new way; or, after you re-evaluated your first attempt. The next day is filled with much of the same, as is the next, and the next, until you final goal is either reached, or just out of reach. If you really looked at failure in such a negative light all the time, according to this process, you'd probably be the most depressed human being in the world, even if you reached your goal. I say this because all along, you just keep failing over and over again. But the funny thing is, most people don't see those failures as failures. Trial and error isn't failure, it's trial and error. Well, not achieving a bigger goal can really be seen as just trial and error on a grander scale.

Be pissed, be frustrated, be bothered that you did not succeed. But then take that and use it as motivation to learn from your mistakes and go after it again. Too many times have I seen on the ball field, or in the gym, or (and this is the scary one) in life, that people do not succeed and proptly call themselves failures and walk away with their head hanging. Well if you walk away and never come back then yes, the harsh truth is, you are a failure! But if you sit back, look at why you did not succeed, and come back in a new and stronger way, you never really truly failed, you just hit a speed bump, found a door that was a little difficult to open, or tried to run before you could walk.

If you take this attitude, you will never truly fail in life. I can say this because if you are constantly pursuing your goals, without giving up, you will come to two conclusions no matter what:

You will succeed.

You will learn that you actually can not do it in a healthy manner.

The latter is not failure by the way. If I have a goal to squat 1000lbs, but every time I keep pushing I just keep injuring my back and knees. Well, perhaps, if I were smart and very concerned for the well-being of my back and knees, I would stop. I would accept that my body can't handle it, I reached my bodies limit (a wonderful thing to find by the way) and hold off from pushing further. And if I want to return to this goal another time, well, so be it, but for know, I am at a limit. That is not true failure.

But, if you make a goal and never really put all (and I mean all) your effort into achieving that goal; then walk away. You failed. Or, if you put it all and just went about it the wrong way, and in the end you don't succeed. Then, you re-evaluate the process and still want the goal but still just walk away. I think that is failure too. This last one is a little iffy but let me tell you a story...

A guy wants to pack on about 15lbs of muscle and become a better athlete. Without knowing a thing about lifting he hits the gym six days a week and spends a good two hours in there working and working and working. After a couple months of great results he starts to realize his strength, energy and level of play start to deteriorate. So what does he do?

Well, if he says "shoot, I guess lifting just doesn't work, what a waste of time, I can't do this" and walks away; well, I think that's a failure. But if he says "man, maybe I went about this all wrong", then he reads up on lifting and nutrition, and his sport, talks to some professionals and begins again from a better angle; well, that is a process destined for success.

The point here is folks, life is full of little failures; but if you sit back, look at what happened, and keep on going failure is not a negative thing at all. In fact failure can be one of the greatest lessons we can learn, and should be welcomed as one of our best teachers. I have not succeeded many, many times in my life; but when I look back over the years I can say with much confidence that I am not a failure. I have always pushed for more, for better, always wanted to find that limit with the hopes that I would never reach it and could keep on pushing. My experiences have been and will continue to be recorded in this blog.

Share with me some of yours...

Never Stop, GET FIT

Josh Courage

Trying To Push The Limits

As most of my clients know already I am a fan of pushing the limits. What this means is that I like to test the limitations of the human body and mind through any sort of activity. I have learned through the years that the most, and usually best changes occur on that very last extra lap, the last mile or the extra umph to the end. The other great thing that happens during these strenuous moments is that you are faced with nothing but yourself, what you thought was the very peak of your abilities become challenged right then and there.

My limits were tested last Sunday; and I crashed and burned. I had my fourth marathon planned up in Albany, NY. A runners run. this race was flat as any race out there and just circled around the University of Albany campus and State Buildings about 5 times...how boring. But because of this I figured it would be perfect to work on splits (explained in a second) and push a little further than 26.2 and get 31 in, a 50k, in preparation for my 50 miler in April. The weather was chilly but fine, especially since the sun was shining bright without a cloud in the sky. The small group of a little less than 100 people made our way to the start line at about 10 until 10am. It seemed like everyone knew each other. It was a mixture of students and old runners, most of which seemed to have run well over 50 marathons in their time and also, it seemed to me, really considered this one a fun, short little weekend run...and people say I'm crazy.

My plan was to run 30 minutes straight before breaking down into 8 minute runs, 2 minutes walk splits through hour 2. After that, I would try a different split, working 4 minutes running and 1 minute walking. On top of that, I would be running a slower pace than normal with the intentions of saving my strength so I could push through an added 5 miles at the end. I figured, even if I walked most of those last five miles, I still would push beyond my farthest of a marathon. So off I ran.

Things seemed to be going fine as I entered into my last loop, about mile 20 (they didn't really have mile markers, so I just guessed); but as I hit the turn around I was witness to about 5 other runners crossing the finish line not 20 yards from me. That hurt. I didn't really realize at the time, but that really got to me. Then, pushing on the halfway mark of the loop I remember clear as day, in fact, I think I even said it out laud, "I can't do this". Now, for those of you who know me, those words have probably been spoken by me maybe 5 times in my life, and the second I said them, I was defeated. My body was breaking down and through this, my normally very strong mind was breaking down too. When I crossed the finish at 4:06, I was done; no chance in hell I was running any more.

It was an interesting experience for me to watch myself break down mentally like that. I think negative thoughts all the time just as most people, but usually they act as motivation for me to push harder. This time, I just could not bring myself to do it. I was happy with 26.2, I did it in my second best time, but I've done it before. I went in with the goal of doing more, driving further, pushing my past limits and I could not beat something I had done in the past. Now, of course their all many other factors that are in play here, I assume now that I could have had a much faster time if I was actually going for time. I make this assumption because I was intentionally trying to run slowly, and finished with my second best marathon time out of four. I clrearly wasn't able to stick to the game plan of around a ten minute mile, but I did learn, with the splits, I could push a nine minute mile and probably stick to it for 4 hours straight. Which is a cool thing to learn.

Ultimately, looking back, I did push my limits, I just didn't get beyond something I had done before. It is clear to me now that pushing your limits does not have to mean you set a PR every time you try something. It could be just waking up when you are VERY tired for some people, or making sure you get to the gym 4 times a week no matter what. If it is something you feel you truly will struggle with at the time, and you do it anyway, you push your limits and grow.

When all is said and done, I am happy with the last race, and am still confidant I will finish the 50 miler in April. I will keep pushing every day, and I will keep helping my clients push every day because I know, when you challenge yourself you change, and when you change you learn, and when you learn you progress. It's the never ending process of the mind body and the world, and it is a great thing weather it is understood or not.

Never Stop, GET FIT

Josh Courage