Your Age is Your Edge

Making good time in a race is about efficiency. Efficiently using the hours you have.

That’s why you think your age is a problem. You’re slower now and you might not make cutoff.

You stress about it every race, and even if you finish, you dread the next where you have to face cutoff fear all over again.

You’re just waiting for the day cutoff wins.

But when you’re thinking your age is the problem, you miss seeing how it’s an asset, instead.

You’ve done a lot of things in your life and lived a lot of experiences. In all of that living, you’ve accumulated a vast wealth of strengths. You might not think they translate to ultras, but they absolutely do.

Everything you’ve experienced in life, you’ve built skills you need to run as efficiently as possible in a race. Not to be the fastest - to make the most efficient use of the time you have to get to the finish line.

Take just one example - being the primary caregiver for an elderly parent or ailing partner. In this one role alone, you’ve developed:

The patience you need to stick with your plan when everyone else is doing something different. Because you know that’s the best way to accomplish what has to get done.

The adaptability you need to adapt to whatever happens in the race. Because that’s your every day.

The creative problem-solving muscle you need to know that whatever the problem, you will find a solution that will get you through the race, to the finish line. Because it’s not optional.

Everything you’ve done in life has built skills that can work to your advantage in a race. The more experience you’ve gained in life, the more skills and strengths you bring to the race.

Here’s a sample of strengths you’ve built in other roles you may have had in life:

• Parent - not giving in to your brain’s tantrums.

• Friend - paying attention to the signals your body is sending

• Entrepreneur - handling risk and the possibility of failure.

• Manager - leading your team of crew and pacers.

And here’s where age is to your advantage. Being an entrepreneur for one day doesn’t build the same strength as being an entrepreneur for 30 years. The more time at any of the roles you’ve had in life, the more mastery you’ve built and the more you have to bring to the race.

That’s why thinking about age purely as a negative holds you back.

And building a new identity as an ultrarunner in command of the skill and mastery you’ve gained in life - instead of comparing yourself to who you used to be - lets you race with confidence instead of holding back.