“To win a dog sled race is great; to lose, that’s all right too.”

Old eskimo saying, Joseph Campbell – This Business of the Gods

Any big endurance race like Iron Man, is a psychic and physical explosion. Athletes have been strengthening their bodies and minds for months, maybe years, and in a blur of cheering, panting and isotonic gels, suddenly it’s all over. Depending on their goal, they’re either victorious, defeated or an unsatisfying in-between.

Whatever the result, there’s only one thing left to do. Post on social media. Sharing a race report with your buddies is a time honored tradition. How did it go? How did you feel? Which was your strongest leg? What the hell happened in T2? The bystanders have seen the results, now they want answers.

In Australia we’re well into the summer racing season, and race reports trickle into my newsfeed at the end of every weekend. There’s always the usual remarks on the weather, the different kinds of luck they faced and thank-you’s to all who supported their training. Their words can be surprisingly honest and vulnerable. Thoughts are more lucid and emotions are rawer after a race. They’ve left 95% of themselves out on the course, and the last 5% is squeezed out into a paragraph on Instagram.

Unfortunately, the race doesn’t always go as expected. The tone is often one of disappointment and frustration. A triathlete I know who’s finished multiple Iron Mans reflected that he’s “come up short almost every time.” It’s a shame that a bad result can throw a dark shadow over all that effort. It’s a bit hard for me to read, especially after logging many miles together in the pool or on the bike. I’ve seen how hard they’ve trained, and I want them to get the result they wanted. But I’m bias, and a more objective person might be thinking “it’s an iron man, why wasn’t finishing good enough?”

It could be that the self-control and discipline that get athletes in the shape to compete in a long distant event, backfires when they face truly uncontrollable situations. Here’s a couple of examples of over-controlling ruining stuff.

Over-control takes out the joy in things

When you’re training for a race, fixating on a perfect end-state ruins the actual work. For example, eating, a pretty damn enjoyable thing to do, starts looking more and more mechanistic. We’re chopping up stuff and shoving it into a boiling cauldron, waiting for a magical belch of smoke that will propel us across the finish line. A swim in the pool or a long run should really be treated as their own separate thing. Even if there’s an upcoming race, a training session doesn’t have to exist purely as a means to an end.

Over-control makes you rigid and reactive when plans change

I fall into a similar trap of trying to control my life at work, the same thing that athletes think they can do on race day. And the results are the same. I approach a new project with the flimsy hope that everything will unfold in a predictable way that benefits me. A project (or race) panning out exactly like you want it is a bit of a selfish goal, isn’t it? Even if we’re able to control all those variables and brute force our way to the end, the accomplishment will be a hollow one.

Over-control is self-defeating

I also do something similar in my personal life. It’s hard to make friends when you move around, especially in your 30s and when you tend toward introversion. So naturally I’ve made it a goal to make new friends. But it’s never worked out. By desiring this abstract ‘great new friendship’, I’ve found it impossible to make it happen. The more of a priority I made it, the harder I found it to meet new people and the more disappointed I was with the people I did meet. Interestingly, when I gave up on these impossible ideals, I started to meet new people.

Doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice.

Marcus Aurelius

Ideally, we finish the race with a good result and feeling great. Next, a bad result with a smile is nearly as good. But it’s far more common to get a decent result but be unhappy about it, or a complete blow-up. We’ve seen how over-control can backfire, so it’s worth checking in occasionally on how hard you are trying to bend an outcome into reality. I’d like to see a world without any miserable race reports. I want to read a race report that involves no expectation, sense of control or selfish goals. I want a race report that sounds like it was written by a troglodyte: “Bike hard. Run strong. Feel good.”