You hear triathlon coaches saying it all the time: you have to race at your own pace. In other words, you have to swim, bike and run at a pace that your own body can handle. Trying to keep up with the Joneses means it’s not only going to hinder your race, but quite possibly put an end to it if you’re racing outside of what you should be.
And let me be clear: you can go too slow, as well as too fast.
Years ago, I received the same message from a variety of different sources during one year. The message was this: you have to run your own race.
It made me stop and think for a minute: was I being a sheep? It seemed as though people wanted mean to lead in some way, and whatever I was doing was not meeting that expectation. It made me think about my chosen profession, abouts some of my habits and routines, and even made me do an audit on my core beliefs.
I went back to the drawing board to try and ascertain what it was that people saw which I didn’t. And slowly the mist started to clear.
I have always tried to live my life accommodating of others. To live one’s life in service to others is considered by many a noble way to go about our time on earth. But the question for me was: what does service to others look like? How do you best serve people with the gifts and talents that are in you? Surely, that looks different for different people?
When I was a university student, one of the regular gigs I was offered was as a drummer in a theatre production. It was always nice to be able to sit at the back of a stage and anchor the music and watch from a bird’s eye view what was happening in the production. For me, there wasn’t as much pressure sitting behind a drum kit as there was being out in front on stage. That season lasted just a few years, before I ended up at the front of the stage behind the microphone. It wasn’t that I have the best voice – far from it. But early on, what people kept saying to me over and over again was that I had to be out front… not at the back.
There have been times over the last two decades where I have really wanted to go and sit at the back of the stage behind a drum kit and not be the front man. But it seems that is just not what I’m designed to do in this season.
Let’s go back to triathlon for a minute. The sport exposes a number of things. Firstly, and most importantly, it highlights fairly quickly which of the multi-disciplinary sports you are based at. The converse is also true. It highlights the areas where you are weakest.
The wonderful thing about triathlon is that putting the pieces of the puzzle together is a challenge – but what makes it fascinating is that no one else will have a puzzle like yours or mine. Our own race is unique. Only you can run your race – no one else can run it for you. Similarly, you cannot run my race for me.
It’s interesting that throughout our lives we have to revisit our race plan. Comparing ourselves to others leads to us wanting positions that we don’t need, sometimes that we don’t even want! It’s part of human nature, and it is sobering when we come round to our senses. No one else can run our race for us.
