A runner’s guide to rethinking success and failure

How do you know if you’ve succeeded or failed after a workout or race? Most runners look to the numbers to determine if they’ve done well or not, with hitting their goal time (or times) the number-one metric for success. While this seems to make sense, this mentality leaves many runners frustrated, disappointed and un-motivated, ruining their enjoyment and future success in the sport. The good news is, you can reframe what success and failure look like so that you never have a disappointing race or workout again.

The four prongs of success for runners

The numbers trap

The problem with basing success on whether or not you hit your goal time or ran a new personal best is that more often than not, how fast you run on any given day is influenced by factors outside of your control. The temperature could spike on race day, it could be really windy or there might be heavy rain. You may have had a stressful week at work that negatively affected your sleep. You might be coming down with a cold, or for the ladies, it may be that time in your cycle when you’re feeling sluggish and tired.

Runners who base success on factors outside of their control are more likely to experience pre-race or pre-workout anxiety, which not only makes the sport far less enjoyable but can negatively affect their performance. These runners are also more likely to experience a drop in motivation, either mid-race or mid-workout when they feel their goal slipping away, or after when they’re disappointed with their performance.

Success vs. goal achievement

This is not to say that you shouldn’t have goals. Running goals help direct your training and are a great way to maintain motivation, but it’s important to understand that goal achievement and success aren’t the same things.

If that sounds absurd to you, hear us out. Yes, the numbers are a part of success, but they don’t define it entirely. Success should be based on a number of factors — did you make good decisions during the workout or race? Did you push yourself to work through the hard parts? Running well doesn’t just mean running faster than you have before, it means overcoming obstacles, staying mentally tough and doing your best on the day, considering the circumstances.

This doesn’t mean you should give yourself a gold start after every race, either. In fact, there may be races or workouts when you run a fast time, but you cross the finish line knowing you could’ve pushed harder or ran smarter. Giving it your all in a race should always be a more important goal than whatever you want the clock to say at the finish line.

How to change your mindset around success

All of this is easy to say, but if you’re used to defining success with numbers alone, it can be more challenging than you’d expect to put it into practice. If you want to start changing your mindset around success and failure, you have to be intentional about it. One way to do this is by setting goals that have nothing to do with the time on the clock. For example:

1. My goal is to stay focused and strong during the middle of the race, when I usually slow down.
2. My goal is to have a good finishing kick, no matter how tired I am.
3. My goal is to run smart on the hills so I can use them to my advantage.
4. My goal is to nail my fuelling strategy so I don’t hit the wall in the later stages of the race.
5. My goal is to stay mentally strong through the entire race, even when it gets hard.

These are just a few examples of non-time-related goals that you can use to measure success. This way, whether you hit your goal time or not, if you accomplished these goals, you still succeeded. Another way you can reframe success and failure after a workout or race is by asking yourself two questions: did I make smart decisions during the race (or workout)? and did I git it my all? If the answer is yes to both of these, then you succeeded, regardless of how fast you actually ran.

The bottom line

How to stop perfectionism from ruining your running goals

Success cannot be measured with only one metric, and just because you didn’t reach your time goal in one race or one workout, doesn’t mean that you won’t reach that goal in the future. It simply means that either the conditions weren’t right on the day, or you weren’t quite ready to accomplish that goal yet. Having different ways to measure success can help you stay motivated and enjoy the process of improving.