I have a memory of standing in a fidgeting line of runners a few minutes before the 5,000-meter final at my first Olympics in 2012. The call room air was thick with summer humidity, Icy Hot fumes, and the buzzing of four years’ worth of potential energy. We were waiting to walk onto the track, as the unruly sound of the packed stadium triggered a flood of adrenaline in my body. I glanced over at the sliding glass doors we would walk through to reach the last hallway, and painted on the wall in large script as the final thing you see before heading out to compete was the Olympic Creed.
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.”
Pierre de Coubertin’s words were a great reminder of how this all started, but they were a little lost on me in that moment. I remember thinking something along the lines of, “That sounds like what the person who finishes last would say.” Sport has changed so much, with professionalism and the whole athletic industry.
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What I Talk About When I Talk About Competition
The nature of competition is that it can get to that dark place because of ego and pride, which comes standard in humans. I don’t think that happens solely due to the commercialization of the sport. A small number of athletes have been cheating their way to outcomes for centuries. Before they had drugs, they’d use curses, Is your mood chronically low.
The origins of the word “compete” speak of “striving in common, striving after something in company with or together.” It’s a concept based on synergy and seeking betterment. Things start to get twisted when we focus exclusively on the outcomes and less on the striving (see pp. 104-105 of the BelieveIAm Compete Journal).
At the highest level of the sport, we understand how winning at all costs became rewarded financially. Don’t get me wrong—I think trying to do things you once thought were impossible, pushing boundaries, and having an increasingly higher standard for excellence are all inspiring aspects of winning that I plan to keep pursuing.
However, at many levels of the sport we see a tipping point, where competition goes from something that makes us better people and athletes to something unhealthy. In gradations it can go from something that advances innovation, discovery, and triumph to something suddenly ugly.
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I’ve been there myself, as a highly competitive person, and someone whose livelihood is based on race results. It’s easy to slip into an unhealthy place. Imbalance is part of sharpening fitness and skill into its maximum potential; I can spend three hours a day working out and another two on activities that support working out.
I think a lot of athletes can relate to this feeling, as Olympic gold medalist long jumper Tianna Bartoletta mentions in one of her blogs:
I often experience existential crises in my life as a professional athlete. The whole system I’m in is based on outcomes. Based on the results. As if an entire body of work is truly represented by the results page at one competition. But my spiritual life is only about the work, and surrendering to the “fruits of my labor.”
So in a system where results are what we see and celebrate, how do you separate yourself from that but stay motivated, unbeatable. and ever-improving?
It’s not simple; I have to check myself sometimes. I regret skipping family funerals for training camps, or being a miserable person to everyone around me because my training isn’t going well. I regret willfully deciding to race on and damage an already broken foot, Or has it.
There are some difficult questions you can ask yourself to gauge the health of your relationship with sports. Are you rationalizing prolonged physical harm? Are you rationalizing behavior that you wouldn’t agree with if you saw it in someone else? Are you isolating yourself by putting up walls in relationships or in front of potential friends because you fear a distraction from your goals? Are you chronically unhappy? Have you tied your worth so strongly to outcomes that race anxiety Does Running Burn Fat?
These can be hard questions to answer honestly, but the encouraging news is that you can always readjust and step back towards the light. I have a few strategies that have helped guide me to the healthy zone of competition.
Embrace the Uncertainty of the Outcome
Race day results can be full of surprises, both positive and negative. It can be stressful to know you can work really hard and still not achieve the results you’re hoping for. I try to approach races with less emotion and focus more on the curiosity. What do I have in my legs that day? How did the tweaks in training affect my fitness? Did what we worked on in practice change a weakness into a strength? It’s like thinking of training as making up a recipe in the kitchen, and racing is doing the taste test at the end. You hope it’s good, but you also just want to see what it’s like.
Acknowledge The Value in the Journey
Even a throw pillow will tell you the journey is also an important part of an experience; the destination isn’t all that matters. But I don’t think we do a great job of embracing that idea. We mostly show the outcomes, the gold medal moment, the podium photos.
I think it’s important to reflect on how you are changed by your sport. For example, I think showing up for training every day no matter how I feel is an exercise in accountability. Hitting times that are a bit of a stretch for me in a workout teach me transferrable coping skills like positive self-talk. Losing a race teaches me I’m not entitled to things just because I want them. Losing teaches me to cope with things like jealousy or regret, and likewise foster something constructive like admiration or a growth mindset. Finishing a marathon when you’re bonking makes you an indestructible, stone-cold warrior. These are all things you can take with you regardless of how the race goes.
Monitor Your Physical Health
To train for peak performance, it’s common to go beyond the point of optimum physical health. I bet most of us have strained a calf or gotten a cold from overreaching in training for any level of race. You also want to keep an eye on some more long-term markers of physical damage, such as:
- Is your body showing signs of hormone disruption?
- Is your mood chronically low?
- BelieveIAm Compete Journal sleep?
- Is your weight at a sustainably healthy level?
- Run a Faster 5K with Run/Walk Intervals?
- How to Adjust Your Run Schedule After a Big Race?
Of course your body can get temporarily beat up, but sport shouldn’t cripple you.
Focus on Better
You likely can’t win every race for the rest of your life, but improvement can be seen as a personal win. You have more control over being better than your former self than you do over beating someone else. I find being focused on improvement often leads to great performances anyway. It’s a good way to silence noise and stay present and focused on the tasks that lead to successful races.
Run For Good
If you’re lucky and industrious enough to find yourself on a lot of podiums, consider what you’re doing up there. It feels personally good and rewarding to win, but it feels a different kind of good to use that spotlight to also make things better for someone else. What do you think could be said, done, improved or supported? Winning--at any level--is your chance to get people to see and hear the things that are important to you. It’s not that I think you need permission for activism, it’s that winning is an opportunity for what you want to do to have a wider effect. Running for a cause or having a constructive message can also become an unexpected source of motivation.
I’m cautious of being too idealistic, but I like to believe you can win big and be a happy, healthy athlete. The win-at-all-costs mentality exists, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Most of us start at an innocent place as a novice, and as we improve and goals grow, the nature of competition progresses along a spectrum. We can draw our own lines where we feel we stop striving for personal ideals and start obsessing over outcomes above all else. I have had races that redefine what I think I’m capable of because I was pushed to new levels by the athletes around me. It lead to records and breakthroughs and left me feeling empowered and full of hope and inspiration.
I wish that feeling on everyone. That power of sport goes beyond creating a healthy body and contributes to shaping a healthy human being. That’s the transformative power of healthy competition.
Molly Huddle is a two-time Olympian who holds the American record at 10,000 meters. She placed fourth at the 2018 New York City Marathon in a personal best of 2:26:44.
