honest maths

We joke a lot about remaining distance on a race while we’re running, sure, but being out on any course can be as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one.

Either jokingly or with sincerity, reminding runners of remaining distance is a high wire balancing act.

One of my run crew was out doing an ultra trail run recently and, as she related the story afterwards, she had made the mistake of leaving her text message notifications on. Nine klicks into a one hundred kilometre race a well-meaning relative sent her a message of intended encouragement. “Only ninety-one K to go!” it read.

She probably wanted to throw the phone into woods at that moment.

I’ve made this joke myself on course. I’ll admit it. It landed about as well as one might expect, too. We passed the one klick route marker on marathon and I half heartedly muttered to whoever was running with me “just forty-one to go!” 

Groan. Shut up, Brad!

I would argue I was in a much better position to have made that joke in that moment, given that I’m also the butt of it and I never intended it as encouragement. But, seriously, it isn’t that funny and I’ll beg forgiveness for my lack of tact based on race day nerves as try to do better next time. 

But to send a text, shout from the side of a road, or wave a sign that says “only such and such distance to go” when that number is larger than I can count on a single hand or “almost there” when I cannot literally see the finish line ahead of me… you should know as a spectator that ninety-eight point seven percent of people will sneer, jeer, and occasionally offer you a one-finger salute, and you’ll one hundred percent have deserved it.

That mental challenge involves convincing yourself that the distance remaining in the race is an achievable one, and in such pursuits honest math is rarely ever helpful.