Sometimes your best has to be good enough

What a great weekend!

This week, I had the opportunity to race in the National Capital Marathon in Ottawa, ON. What an amazing experience! 30,000 runners with different goals and different abilities coming together to challenge themselves to see what they are truly capable of.

It was my third marathon and I had visions of cutting 30 min off of my time. I'd trained, I've done the work, and despite a few nagging injuries, I was confident that I could finish under my goal time (4:29:00).

For the first 28km, I was on pace to run 4:20, things were going well, and I felt great. Then my calf started to act up. Soon the pain spread up my leg and in an effort to compensate, I adopted a different stride, the other leg began to ache too.

Soon I was reduced to walking most of the time and then running when I could. Slowly I watched as my time goal slipped away. I 'wanted' to run, but I just couldn't seem to make my legs go anymore. It was a tough feeling, and there was seemingly nothing that I could do about it. I fought with myself for miles until finally, I ran in the last two kilometers and finished in 4:45. It was still a respectable time and still better than my last marathon, but there was something disappointing about not achieving the goal that I had set for myself.

After feeling bad for myself for a while, I got an email from a friend about some really tough stuff that he was going through. Suddenly I realized that I was focussed on the wrong thing. Instead of enjoying the accomplishment of completing my 3rd marathon, or rejoicing in the fact that I was healthy enough to be able to run in the first place, I was stuck on the fact that I hadn't finished quite as quickly as I'd liked.

The truth is that goals are great. They're important and you should set big ones and set them often. But what is equally important, is to remember that we're human. All we can ever do is our best, and our best is different in different situations and at different times. On Sunday my best was 4:45, on a different day it might be 4:29 on another day, it might be 5:10. But if it's your best, it's your best and that should always be good enough.

In Black & White

Are you beating yourself up for a recent failing? Did you come up short on one of your goals and then decide that goals weren't worth setting because they just lead to disappointment?

Make a list of the things that you most regret or wish you'd done differently. Know ask yourself, did I screw up, or did I do the best I could in that situation on that day? If you screwed up, figure out how and why, and learn from it. If you did your best on that day, be happy with that, your best is always good enough.