Waiting for the whale

Whales don’t appear because you decide today is the day you want to see one. You can’t rush them. You can’t negotiate with them. You simply sit patiently, keep looking out to sea and trust that if you spend enough time on the shoreline, eventually one will surface.

“How long will it take?” One of the first questions almost everyone asks. Whether it is building a business, qualifying for a race, changing careers or simply trying to become healthier, our instinct is to search for a timeline. We want certainty before we commit. We want to know when the investment will pay off. It feels like a sensible question, but over the years I have become less convinced that it is the right one. Perhaps we rewrite the T letter of the S.M.A.R.T principle in some way at some stage.

The problem with attaching dates to ambitious goals is that life has very little interest in our calendars. Businesses don’t grow because it is quarter four. Relationships don’t deepen because twelve months have passed. Your body doesn’t suddenly become capable of extraordinary things because you decided that October was the month. Some things simply arrive when they are ready, and our job is not to force the moment but to prepare ourselves so that when it comes, we are capable of taking it. That is the difference and that is key.

Around four years ago Steph (one of our coaches at InnerFight endurance) asked me to help her to run a sub 3 hour marathon. She then quickly followed that up with “how long do you think it will take?”. I had seen her run, more importantly I had heard her talk and seen her as a human being.  “Maybe 3 – 5 years.” The timeframe was not my focus. I was confident that it would come, someday. We spoke more about what running was, learning, trying things, life and in more parts than I ever think she would imagine, feelings. What was exciting was far beyond a time frame. What was the rush after all?

2 years passed. We tried things. She got faster. There were races that looked perfect on paper and ended in disappointment for her. I could feel it but not carry it. There were training blocks that promised everything but the time always ticked over the 3 hour mark. There were moments when we thought we had the solution, only to discover we hadn’t. As time went on what I thought at the start played out more and more blatantly. This was nothing to do with running. This was a far bigger gift. It was about managing stress, understanding herself, learning patience and becoming someone capable of delivering when the opportunity eventually arrived. I was always confident that it would.

It was fluid, it had to be. New ideas. Conversations, sometimes hard. Listening for any signal I could get. Then BANG one day it came. Steph told me she loved having her training appearing in Training Peaks, because she didn’t have to think. She meant it as a compliment, but it stayed with me. The more I reflected on it, the more I knew we had to make changes. Steph is a running coach. She knows exactly how to write a training programme. What she didn’t need was someone telling her what intervals to run. What she needed was to reconnect with her own decision making, to reconnect with herself.

“I am not going to write your program anymore”. An announcement from a coach to an athlete that you probably do not expect to hear. I believe that coaching isn’t about making people dependent on you. It is about helping them become more capable without you doing the thinking for them. From that point onwards my role changed. Sometimes I challenged her. Sometimes I was there to just listen. Sometimes we barely discussed running at all. A few days before this marathon we spent three hours walking, talking, drinking coffee and never once mentioned the race. We didn’t need to. I needed to know that she was relaxed. I knew if she was relaxed she would run well.

47 days after moving her life to Australia, Steph was on the start line of the Sunshine Coast marathon. If you were writing the perfect lead up to a marathon and the perfect marathon conditions, this would not have been the script.  Sunshine Coast named after a key ingredient that was not on offer for the entire race. Sunshine. Quite the opposite as the rain poured down dropping the temperatures and turning the smooth tarmac into a tractionless splatter of puddles.

When I saw her at twenty-five kilometres she was tucked comfortably into the sub-three pace group. Everything looked smooth. Marathons have a wonderful way of lying to you like that. Ha ha. Isn’t that why we love them. They look effortless until suddenly they don’t. That narrative always formed my pre-race message to Steph. “Have fun, relax until it’s time, then f**king send it. No Weakness.” This was our 9th marathon, I had had practice.

A few kilometres later, climbing over a bridge, she lost contact with the pacer. I shouted for her to close the gap. I didn’t need her to acknowledge me, her body language spoke louder than any words ever will. A kilometre later she came past again and the pain written across her face told me everything. I paused for a moment planning my next move. “How can I help her?” I thought.

The truthful answer was there was nothing I could do. So I rode to a nearby coffee shop, ordered a long black and stood on the side of the road watching runners go by. What I saw next strangely did not surprise me. 5km from where I had left her Steph was almost floating towards me. Calm. Relaxed. Running well. In a total state of flow. Less than 2km to go. I sipped my long black and smiled.

2:59:34

We spend so much time trying to create a perfect race plan, the perfect conditions or whatever it is. We so often forget that the real work is who we are and who we are ready to become. Success in many areas of life and in endurance sports for sure rarely arrives because everything has aligned. We do not need everything to align. All we need is the individual to align. If the individual aligns then when the opportunity arrives the chance is taken.

Anyone can calculate that a sub-three marathon requires running roughly 4:14 per kilometre. Information has never been scarce. What is scarce is perspective. It is incredibly difficult to stay patient through years of almost getting there. It is difficult to keep believing when the timeline stretches further than you expected, or even wanted. Sometimes you simply need someone who is willing to hold the belief for you while you continue turning up. So many people ask why they need a coach when they already understand the training. They are so right. I have been reading training plans since the late 80s in Runners World Magazine. The true answer is that coaching can be very little to do with training.

Two days before the race Steph went to the beach to write her race plan. As she sat there all she could see were whales. She messaged me later on saying that she sat and watched them and wrote no plan. From there I knew she was ready.

Well done Steph. It has been an honour. I am very proud of you. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for making me better at life.

No Weakness,
Marcus