How do you measure success?

 

How do you measure success? I was thinking this very question as I was running the NYC Marathon last Sunday, trying to figure out why I was running closer to failure and further from success. Or so I thought at the time.

 

I train five times a week: long runs, speed runs, intervals, tempo runs, hill runs, recovery runs. It’s all part of the routine, working towards a certain goal. This goal is measured in minutes and seconds, not in hours. (Yes, it takes hours to run a marathon.) I am not a professional runner, but, like professional runners, I want to measure success in numbers. My golden pace for last Sunday was 5:00 min/KM, which would bring me to the finish line in just over three and a half hours. This is broken further down into 5K laps, with each 5K having its distinct target pace, based on the terrain and the part of the race.

 

The weather was perfect. I studied the course: every bridge and hill, every turn in Brooklyn and the Bronx. My training told me that the paces I had memorized for each 5K lap were achievable. I took my gels, I carbo-loaded for a week, put on my lucky socks. Every box was ticked, everything was in place. I was ready to measure my success—until everything started falling apart.

 

Some mornings, even when everything is set to be right, we wake up sick. Some mornings, could be any morning; it could even be the morning of the NYC Marathon. This was Nov 3 for me. Sickly, weak, a “I wanna stay in bed” kind of morning. I made it to the starting area of Staten Island. From the warmup, my whole body felt off. My legs were heavy. “I will get into the groove,” I kept telling myself. After all, in the last three years, this was my sixth run of the symbolic 42.2 KM distance. I started the run, crossed the first bridge, trying to enjoy the atmosphere, and all I could focus on was my watch—how the pace I was aiming for felt very hard. “Not today,” the course was telling me, or so I wanted to think. The NYC marathon course doesn’t have emotions, doesn’t care if I run my faster or slower. The course doesn't care if I finish. But I care. I want to fight, I want to make sure I give everything I have. “Not today,” I keep hearing.

 

Every 5K, I look at my watch and try to do the math, to see if I can still make it. The pace starts to drop, ever so slightly at first, and then more and more; the goal starts to slip from my fingers like sand. My legs feel heavier and heavier. How do I measure success if it is not with numbers? I reach halfway, still pushing, always counting the minutes, the seconds. I cross one more bridge. The crowds are loud, so loud that they annoy me. “Not today,” I keep hearing in my head.

 

I get to 25K, almost two-thirds, but not quite, and my legs finally give up. I feel cramps in my quads and thighs, first one leg, and soon enough, both legs. I must stop, I have to stop; there is no other option. What is the opposite of success? Failure. I have failed. I get to two-thirds (almost) and have to stop. My legs stop running. I stop running.

 

“We are not finished if we stop; we are finished if we don’t start again,” I remember the words of a famous coach. Forward. I will continue forward. I walk for a few meters and try to run again. The pain is excruciating. Someone from the crowd must have seen me, read my name on my t-shirt, and yelled, “You’ve got this, Panos!”

 

“I’ve got this,” I try to echo these words one step at a time. Somehow, I start running again. I am scared to look at my watch; I don’t want to know the pace. It will remind me how far from success I am today. I run a few more kilometres, slowly, in pain from the muscles that are now locked and feel like stones I am carrying with me.

 

Then it hits me. “How do I measure success?” The numbers on my watch only tell half the story; they only tell how far the story went and how long the story lasted. But they don’t tell what happened, how it felt, what I saw and what I did. I look around and start seeing: the runners around me, the crowds on the sides, the city. Almost three hours of running, and I hadn’t seen anyone. The man with the “47 times NYC Marathon finisher” shirt, the couple running hand in hand, the lady with the “in loving memory of Dan” on her clothing along with a drawing of an invisible child between two adults, the endless messages in the crowd: “I am so proud of you,” and even a very funny one from a young woman, “Jeff, I am pregnant.” All there to inspire, to touch our hearts, to remind us that extraordinary lives within every one of us and we can bring it out any day, even a sick day. I heard, again and again, my name being called out by strangers who wanted me to know that success is measured in more ways than just numbers.

 

I kept stopping and starting, every few KMs at first, then every few hundred meters by the end. I got to Central Park, and soon I could see the finish line coming up ahead. The voice in my head—“not today”—wanted me to feel ashamed for crossing the finish line slower than I had planned (44 minutes slower, it reminded me). But I had more I wanted to celebrate.

 

It was in face this same voice got me to the starting line in NYC and to countless starting lines throughout my life. But it was something else, a new awareness, that got me to the finish. Each start holds the potential for triumph, but it's the decision to cross the finish line—regardless of the outcome—that defines success. Life is full of start lines, where courage is found, and finish lines, where resilience is earned. In both lies the meaning of our journey forward.

Panos

PS I got to the hotel in shivers with fever. I took me several days to recover, but I did.