Run Through the Puddle

You don't have to be an elite athlete to treat yourself like one.

A recent visitor to Dream Run Camp told me a story that has stuck with me, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to share it with you.

Becky had just run a trail half marathon in wet conditions, finishing toward the back of the field. At the awards ceremony that followed, she noticed that all of the top runners were spattered in mud, whereas Becky herself was spotless above the knees. Curious, she collared a podium finisher and asked him if he’d run through the mud puddles that she had carefully avoided, and he said he had. Becky then asked a fellow clean-shirted back-of-the-packer if she had also gone around the puddles, and she said she had.

Prior to this moment, Becky had assumed that the only difference between frontrunners and athletes like her was talent, but she now realized there was also a difference in mindset. In principle, nothing stands in the way of a slower athlete saving a few seconds by plowing through puddles just like faster athletes, yet many choose not to. When Becky shared this story with me, I recognized it immediately as a prime example of self-disqualification, whereby runners eschew certain practices because they view themselves as unworthy of them. As I coach, I see slower runners disqualify themselves in all kinds of ways. Here are a few examples:

Training

The following table is taken from a 2017 study published in the Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine. As you see, it shows that slower marathoners train less frequently. The traditional interpretation of such findings is that slower runners are slower because they train less. But I believe that slower runners also train less because they’re slower. In other words, they disqualify themselves from running more frequently.

Nutrition

The most effective way to fuel a long workout or race is no mystery. Decades of focused research have taught us that athletes of all abilities perform best when they drink ad libitum and consume as much simple carbohydrates as they can comfortably tolerate. But the same research has also shown that only a small fraction of athletes take advantage of this knowledge—a fraction that (surprise, surprise) is composed almost entirely of the fastest athletes. As with training frequency, there’s nothing stopping slower runners from fueling scientifically and reaping the rewards—nothing other than self-disqualification, that is.

Coaching

Nearly all elite runners have a coach. The reason is simple: Good coaching improves performance outcomes, and elite runners need to perform as well as they possibly can to put food on the table. Good coaching is even more beneficial to nonelites, yet only 5 percent of recreational runners work with a coach. Some simply can’t afford a coach, but others have the means yet choose to go it alone because they don’t feel worthy of a coach. In other words, they disqualify themselves from being coached.

Warm-Ups

I once coached a runner who had never done form drills—high knees, butt kicks, and the like—so I taught her a few of my favorites and encouraged her to sprinkle them into her next pre-race warm-up. She promised to do so, and I believe she meant it, but on race day she saw that the only other runners doing form drills looked much faster than her, so she elected to skip the drills for fear of “looking ridiculous.” Going ahead with the drills would have helped her perform better in the race—that’s why faster runners do them—but this athlete disqualified herself from the practice in a way that seemed almost tragic to me.

All Options Open

I want to make sure I’m being understood. The argument I’m making here is not that athletes of all abilities should feel compelled to do everything they possibly can—run through puddles, do form drills before races, and all the rest—to maximize their performance. There are lots of ways to be an runners, and the hardcore competitive way isn’t for everyone. But in my experience, casual runners don’t face a lot of pressure to be hardcore. What I see instead is that slower runners assume they don’t deserve to be anything but casual competitors, and I’m trying to change that.

Next time you encounter a puddle in a race and the time-saving option is to run right through it, what will you do?