“It’s not easy, possible or even necessary to set aside the tendency to compare, but…”
The objective nature of our sport invites comparison. Did I run faster than my last race? Am I doing more miles than I did last year? How did my time and place stack up to my friend or teammates? How do I rank in the state, or country or world? Am I the local legend or have the fastest time on a segment on Strava? There’s no end to the ways in which we can compare ourselves to either ourselves or others.
I’m sure you’re all expecting me to launch into a diatribe against comparison. Indeed comparison can, as Theodore Roosevelt is purported to have said, be “the thief of joy.” But it’s also not a very realistic expectation of runners (or anyone, for that matter), to eliminate comparison from their life. Comparison can actually serve a positive purpose, and can even be fun at times. The trick – and my suggestion – is to pay attention to when you are engaging in comparison, to use it for good when you can, and to set it aside when it is not serving you well.
I have an example of how comparison can work against, or for you, from my own running career. As a collegiate runner at Stanford, I struggled mightily my first 3 years. There was a whole lot of not fast enough, thin enough, or tough enough running through my brain. Finally, after hitting the absolute pits in terms of performance my third year, I let go a little bit and found some success and felt pretty good my final year and a half. Despite making some progress toward the end of my collegiate career, I was at best a solid guy on our team, and far from a star. I ran the NCAA XC Regional Meet my last two seasons, but was subbed out for another runner at the nationals, and I never had the chance to compete in the Pac 10 Championships.
This is all just to say that I finished college feeling like I just wasn’t good enough to really do much in the sport. Fortunately, a love of running for its own sake kept me doing it occasionally while working a temp job after college, and then doing it a little more, and ultimately getting connected with a local running club in San Francisco (shout-out to the Excelsior Running Club), which led to me 1) getting way more into competitive running again, and 2) starting my coaching journey at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory.
Despite starting to have some success running road races and cross country after college, I still felt like it would be a hobby at most. That all changed when I went to watch the 2000 USA Olympic Track & Field Trials in Sacramento. I watched many of my collegiate teammates compete there, and in fact three of the guys made the US Olympic team. It was truly an “aha” moment, where I realized just how good the guys I had compared myself to actually were. It wasn’t that I was a different runner after that, but my mindset around comparison changed dramatically though. Rather than re-running the narrative of “not good enough” in my head, I could call upon moments where I had run just as well or better than some of those teammates who had achieved amazing things in running. The following year, I was 3rd in the US Marathon Championships, a result that shocked my former teammates.
Of course, comparison still cropped up in negative ways after that. We do tend to be greedy and always want a little bit more. But over many foibles and failures with comparison, I have learned to try to just pay attention to when I am doing it, and to be reflective about how it is serving me in that situation. It’s not easy, possible or even necessary to set aside the tendency to compare, but with a lot of work over time it is possible to gain self-awareness of how it is impacting us, and to work toward having a more positive relationship with it. Not exactly a quick and easy fix, but hey, most of the best things in life require some time and effort.
Chris Lundstrom is the head coach of Minnesota Distance Elite – formerly Team USA Minnesota – which includes some of the top distance runners in the USA, including Annie Frisbie, Dakotah Lindwurm, Breanna Sieracki and Joel Reichow.
