I finally failed. And why failure is important.
Photo by Ultra Trail Cape Town
I failed… A race report on UTCT 100km and an even better life lesson.
A year ago, when we moved to Cape Town, I started to train for the Ultra Trail Cape Town. This is a 100km race that circumnavigates Table Mountain and the surrounding mountains that grace Cape Town with so much beauty. In this last year, I have lost 30+ pounds, sacrificed a lot of time, and worked my way up to 70 – 90 mile weeks of running. I put everything I had into getting ready for this race.
Last week on Wednesday, I woke up just like any other day. I was three days from race day, and I was ready. By early afternoon I started to feel like I was having some issues with my sinuses, and by the end of the day on Wednesday, I was dealing with a full-blown allergy attack.
Thursday morning when I woke up, I was beyond return. I was fully and properly sick. In an attempt to get out of the pollen infused air, I spent the entire day at Century City mall and that seemed to stall the sickness from getting worse. Thursday night I didn’t get a lot of sleep and felt progressively worse.
Friday morning and I was still very sick. I tried to spend the day in the mall again, but I felt so miserable I couldn’t handle even that. Friday got worse and worse. Friday night when I went to bed I knew that this was not looking good for my race the next day. This had never happened to me before, and I was trying to figure out how to change the reality that was consuming my hopes of a good race.
Saturday morning, at 2:00am, my alarm went off. It wasn’t hard to get up because I had not really gone to sleep. It had been a mostly sleepless night, and I felt like the dirty side of a mud flap. I got ready, had some breakfast and coffee, and then caught my taxi to the race. I spent the 40 minutes before the start of the race sitting in the grass off to the side. I could feel a fever beginning to build. I felt dizzy and nauseous. My stomach was full of snot, and my throat felt like fire.
4:00 am and the race starts. As I ran I tried to find a way to do as I had always done for races. Take whatever I’m dealing with and detach from it. Lean on my training and gut it out. I was sweating far more than I should be. My skin was on fire. I was running with a fever. Occasionally, I would feel like my body was trying to fight this thing and was going to turn around. Despite feeling so bad, my legs were working great, and I was moving up in the pack. I was happy with how I was running, even though it was a slower pace due to not feeling good. At the first aid station on Signal Hill, I passed Dylan Bowman. He was sitting off to the side and had dropped due to being sick. He is a great guy and a great runner, and I hated to see him in the spot he was in.
As I ran around Signal Hill and Lions Head, I tried to find something steady within myself that could carry me through this race. When I got to the bottom of Platteklip Gorge, which was the hardest, steepest, and most sustained climb of the race, I was looking for relief anywhere that I could find it. There had been a couple moments where I thought for sure I was going to be able to overcome being sick, but those had been few and far in between. They had also stopped coming. As I climbed Platteklipp, I was no longer able to consume any fluids or calories. My body was rejecting everything that I put into it. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other. My skin continued to feel hotter and hotter. I was now sweating more than I had ever sweat, and, to top it off, I was getting chills. But still, one more step, and then one more step after that.
As I finally reached the top of the mountain, I desperately looked for a place to pull over. My world was fuzzy, nauseous, and getting dark. I could feel gravity taking over and my body go sideways. Just before losing consciousness completely the lights came back on, but only part of the way. I put my head down between my knees and waited for everything to come back. I was losing consciousness.
I took my pack off and grabbed my phone. I sent my wife a message telling her that I was going to drop from the race at the Constancia Nek aid station. I knew that my day was done.
Once I knew that I was going to be able to run again I decided to push to the best of my ability to Constancia Nek aid station. This was a section of the course that I was looking forward to. You got to run right on the rim of Table Mountain and after coming up a hard climb like Platklipp you had a couple hours of running ahead that was considerably easier. This is the point in the race when I should have just been warming up. Instead I was trying to process the reality that I was not going to finish this race. I dug deep and looked inside myself for any ounce of anything that could sustain me for another 10+ hours of racing. There was nothing there. I was empty.
While thinking through this I realized that I had a couple options. I could get mad at the world for getting sick. I could get upset and say that this wasn’t fair. I could get disappointed in myself for not being able to push through it. I could even start to doubt myself and say that I’ve lost my running “mojo”, and that I wouldn’t have been able to finish anyway. OR, I could look for something positive in the situation. I choose to ignore all the bad and look for the positive.
What I found was this:
Sometimes failing is the greatest thing that could ever happen to us. In failure, we find unique opportunity that we would never be able to find anywhere else or in any other situation.
Failure gives us the opportunity to be grateful, thankful, and humble when we are at our weakest. It gives us the chance to prove the best of ourselves in our lowest moments.
It’s easy to be a good person when life goes our way. It’s easy to be kind, patient, gracious, and giving when life gives you a full house and everything works. But, what about when you fail at something? What about when life fails you? What about when nothing goes your way and everything seems to unravel?
Those are the greatest moments we could ever have in life. In those moments we find opportunity, and when we take those opportunities, we grow. We become better. We become more thankful. We become more gracious of ourselves and of others. Our capacity grows. Our humility grows. Our ability to accept God’s gracious love grows.
In our broken we become free pieces for God to pick up and put back together in a better version of ourselves then we knew before. We only truly discover God’s capacity to love us in our failure; not in our success. Because, guess what, we were created to love and be loved and there is nothing that can separate us from the love that hung on the cross and washed our sins clean.
As I ran down some of the most beautiful single track in the world and thought about this, I could feel the disappointment begin to disappear and the hope of opportunity to be a better man, husband, and father rise with in me. It was a moment that I will always be thankful for. I ran the next 7 or so miles the best that I could. When I came down the mountain and into the Constancia Nek aid station, I declared myself withdrawn from the race. My wife and son were there, and to them I was still the hero that they always thought that I was. Only now I knew that I got to be a hero on a day that didn’t go my way and that was pretty great. I’ll take that any day, any time.
I’m thankful for this reminder of God’s love. Even if it did come during a race that I was in no shape to finish. Saturday as I came through the last aid station and had my number pulled from the race, I walked back to the car with my wife and my son. I was still their hero and I felt the love of God more than ever. I’m thankful for the days that everything comes together and I feel like I’m winning, but I’m even more thankful for days like Saturday. With the Love of Jesus and the family that he has put around me…I’m always a winner. Even if I fail.
