55. Why Your Race Result Isn’t the Real Story
That number next to your name, or those three letters DNF, can feel like they define your entire race. In this episode, I’m diving into why that happens and why it sticks with you, even when you know it doesn’t tell the whole story.
What’s actually going on is that the number isn’t the problem, it’s the story you’re telling about it. When you don’t decide that story on purpose, your brain fills in the gaps with judgment, embarrassment, and doubt. That’s what leads to second guessing your ability, running scared in future races, and trying to “fix” one result instead of going after what you really want.
In this episode, you’ll discover how to take control of the story of your race so the result stops holding power over you. I’ll walk you through a simple process to help you look at your race differently, recognize the strengths you showed even in a tough result, and build a version of the story that actually supports your confidence going into your next race.
My 1:1 Mental Mastery Coaching for Ultrarunners is a six-month coaching program where we build the mental skills experienced ultrarunners use to handle difficult races well. Schedule a consult call to learn more here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why a finish time or DNF doesn’t tell the real story of your race.
What’s actually causing the frustration and embarrassment after a bad result.
How your brain creates a negative story and why it feels so convincing.
Why trying to manage what other people think makes things worse.
The three step process to rewrite the story of your race.
How to recognize the strengths you showed, even in a tough result.
Why choosing a stronger story helps you run better in the future.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
The Ultrarunner’s Mastery Debrief Template helps you evaluate your races like experienced ultrarunners do - identifying what worked, what didn’t work, and what to do differently next time. Download yours for free here.
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Episodes Related to Race Results:
Ep #11. Why Can’t I Finish? The DNF Question That Holds You Back
Ep #53. DNF Post-Mortem: What Went Right and What to Do Next
Full Episode Transcript:
You know that number or the three letters DNF next to your name on the results list? It doesn't tell the whole story. The one you know. And that gap between what the number says and what you know happened in the race, that's what this episode is about.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 55. Here's something that comes up a lot in coaching sessions, and it often comes up early, first thing. Clients will often start out by confessing that there's this thing that they know shouldn't bother them, but it does, but it really shouldn't, but it does. And they waffle around a little bit before they confess what it is. And what is it? It's a race result that they don't like. A slow finish time or a finish place near the end or a DNF that's now on their record.
And what I see is they know why they got that result. That's not a mystery. But what's eating at them is the number or those letters, those three dreaded letters, DNF. That's what's bothering them. And if that's you, this isn't a silly thing. And it's not something that you shouldn't let bother you. Like anything that bothers you in ultra running, it's not something that shouldn't be there. It's something worth getting curious about why it does bother you. And what's bothering them here is that the number is only a number. It's not the story. And a race is a story.
When you have a race result that you don't like, the first thing you feel after the frustration and disappointment of the race is embarrassment because now that number is public. Anybody can see it. So you have this urge to start managing what people see. You want to give the reasons for the number before anybody asks. You know the story, you can give them, you know why, and you can explain it. You want to make sure that people understand the circumstances of the race that you were dealing with. You explain it, you defend it, you justify it. You need them to know you're a much better runner than that number says. It's not how you could have run. You could have run so much better than that.
And here's how you know this is happening to you: you feel anxious. There's this urgency to it. You need to get to people to explain the number before they form the wrong opinion about you and about the race. But you can't be everywhere with everybody that might see that result. You can't control every single conversation that people might have about that result. So somebody is going to look at that number or those three letters DNF and maybe think poorly of you or less of you.
So what you do in that circumstance, because you can't control everybody in the world, is you do the only other thing you can do, and you just hope people forget about it. You pretend it doesn't bother you even though it really does.
And if that's not stressful enough, here's where the real damage starts. It's not just a stressful thing, but there are real negative consequences that come from this cycle. It's not in how other people see that result, but in what you do next because of it. Because to you, that number kind of becomes this blot on your record that you need to hide or erase. And since you can't do the race over, you start planning how to fix it. You try to get enough better results to water this one down and make it look like a stray, a one-off, or an anomaly.
And that's when the fear starts running your training and your races, making all of it miserable. Because what you're trying to do here is you can't have another bad result. You have to water that one bad result down, so you start avoiding taking any kind of risk. Much less the risk to get the big results you want. You'd rather get a finish or a bunch of finishes at easy races that you aren't necessarily excited about than risk failing at the races you really do want to run. So what ends up happening is you start running not to lose instead of running to win.
And the cruel irony of all of this is that it doesn't even work. Running scared like this, running to not make mistakes and not lose, doesn't protect you from getting bad results, even at easy races. Those can still happen at those easy races where you think there's not that much risk. So running scared like this just makes sure that you never get the results that you're actually capable of in those races that you really do want to do.
So, the real problem here with a bad result isn't the number, those digits on the results list or those three letters, DNF. Those are just neutral things. It's not your training, it's not the weather in the race, it's not even the things going on in your full, busy life. The real problem here is simpler than any of that, and that's good news. It is that you haven't decided how to tell the story of the race. You've just been listening to your brain tell the story to you and accepting whatever it comes up with.
And here's how that's actually happening. Here's how that works. You're frantically trying to control what other people think about that result because you know the number doesn't tell the whole story, right? They might get it wrong and they might think less of you. That number is not what you're truly capable of. But that fear that they might get it wrong and think less of you, it's not really about them. You're worried about how others will see you because that's already how you see yourself. Your brain has handed you that verdict, given you that judgment the moment you cross the finish line or didn't, and you accepted what your brain told you without question.
So you're not actually fighting other people's judgment about you. You're fighting your own judgment about you and then outsourcing it to them.
When you're stressing about what people will think about this result, you know that it's just a data point. That number is just a data point and they don't know the story, and you want to give them the story. But you haven't decided what that story is. You're just trying to tell them not to think a bad story about you, but you haven't decided what the good story is.
So the solution here isn't to manage their perception, it's for you to decide what the story of the race actually is. You get to tell the story first. Because when you change your story, that changes the whole energy of it. When you know the real story, you naturally stop worrying about how other people misinterpret it or judge you. You know the story and you feel solid and good about it, and that's all that matters. That creates confidence. Let them misjudge you. You know what you're capable of and how that race actually made you stronger, how it actually gave you a priceless gift.
Your brain isn't telling you the one and only true version of the story, okay? It's making up a negative story out of the raw materials of the facts. And you can take that same raw material, put some thought into it, and make a better, stronger story that is—and get me here—just as true. And a story that helps you run better and enjoy your ultra running more.
Runners who master the mental side of ultra running don't outsource their story to whatever anybody else out there thinks, or to what their brain just kind of tells them, feeds them. They're the authority on their own race. Theirs, what they decide the story of the race is, that is the real version.
So deciding how to tell your story of the race isn't spin. It's actually a skill that separates runners who care about how they think about their own running from runners who worry about what others think about their running.
And to help you build this skill, I'm going to share an exercise I learned a long, long time ago from Martha Beck that showed me the power that we have over how we choose to think about the facts of our life.
And when I first read this exercise, I had no idea that a story of your life or a race could have different versions. It just never occurred to me. I thought at the time, a long time ago, that the miserable, victimy story I was telling myself about my life at that point in time was just the truth of the world and the only way to see it. I mean, it was factual. But I thought, okay, here's this exercise. It sounds fun. I love hero stories. So why not give this thing a try? So I sat down and wrote this out and really put some thought into it. It was fun. And I had been thinking I was powerless all that time. And I remember the moment doing that exercise when I saw how powerful I actually was. It changed my life. And so, let's do that for your race. So what we're going to do here is tell your story of the race as a hero's story.
And two things before we start. First, I highly, highly recommend that you handwrite this out. Writing has been showed by a ton of studies to stimulate your brain, increase your focus, and help you see patterns and insights. Thinking it out with pen or pencil on a page of paper creates deeper reflection and insight that you're going to need here and you might otherwise miss. And that depth of thinking really matters here because I know if I had just taken this exercise out on a run and done it in my head, I would never, ever have found my own aha. I really had to sit down and write it out to get where I got with it and to have the magic of this exercise work for me.
The second thing I want you to do first is you have to be willing to put yourself in the spot where this is going to succeed. You have to be willing to see that race result in a different way. And by willing, I mean you have to want to see things differently and be open to it and not dismissive of every possibility that comes up. Don't passively expect this process to just do step one, two, three and expect it to create the result for you. You have to put the effort in, the mental effort.
What that looks like is you have to let go of any negative story that you're telling yourself about the result, no matter how firmly you believe the story is negative. Give yourself some time, just set that negative story about how the race was a disaster aside for a moment and explore some different ways here of seeing things. You can pick that negative story back up again afterwards if you want to, but for the moment at least, just set it aside long enough to be willing to let your mind explore different possibilities that you might not see right now.
So, this is a three-step process, and the first step is name the dragon. Here, what we're doing is you describe the challenging, tough experience you faced. Maybe it was the moment you DNF'd, maybe it was the whole race. The one or several tough experiences that you had in the race, the thing that led to the bad result.
However small or big this is, this is your dragon. Now, describe what happened. Go ahead and let loose here. Get it all out of your system on paper. Let the words flow about how this thing happened and how bad it was. And I'm going to give you three examples as we go through these steps just to show you how this might work.
So let's say you had a slow finish time or a bad place that wasn't typical for you. Here's how you might talk about your dragon. It might be like this: I missed a turn and I got lost. I realized it maybe 30 minutes later. I figured it out, but all my friends finished hours ahead of me, hours. I ended up last and making people wait on me. So that's the dragon in that case.
Let's pick another case. If you had a DNF where you dropped, you voluntarily dropped. The dragon might be phrased like this: I was tired, cold, and demoralized when I got to mile 75 in the 100-miler. I had such high hopes, but the race wasn't going the way I planned. It just wasn't my day. And the only other three runners at that aid station at mile 75 were all dropping and getting into a nice warm car to take them back to the start. And I would have been alone out there all night by myself. So I dropped too. That's that person's dragon.
Third case, let's say this is a DNF where you timed out. Dragon might be described like this: I made a stupid mistake in a 100K and started out too slow. I should have remembered the race has tight cutoffs, and I remembered that a few miles in and picked up the pace, but the moment I did, it started raining and the course got so muddy. I was having a hard time staying upright. I lost count of the times I slipped and fell, and it was exhausting and demoralizing. I wanted to cry. Other people didn't seem to be having the same hard time, and that was even more frustrating. I tried so hard and I could have finished, but I just happened to be too slow to make the very last cutoff. That's that person's dragon.
Okay, that is the first step. Next step, find your superpowers. In this step, what we're doing is finding the internal tools, things like traits and strengths and skills that you have that you used in that moment or you used in this situation.
Ask yourself, what did I actually do in that tough situation and what did that require? I'm going to give you a big list of superpowers here to help prompt you. Superpowers are things like ambition, drive, seeing possibility, digging deep, betting on yourself, running your own race, not quitting even when you had the reason to, solving your problems quickly or in an ingenious way, keeping promises to yourself, resourcefulness, physical toughness, emotional regulation, knowing your body, keeping your head when others didn't, honoring your promise to yourself, refusing to catastrophize.
So those are some of the superpowers you could have. And the way I like to frame this step is it's kind of a, hey, wait a minute, that was actually kind of badass, realization step. That's the vibe to have in this step. This is where you want to put the thinking effort into to explore different ways of seeing the race that you might not normally see. And here are the same three examples, just as examples.
Let's say you got a slow result. This is the slow result case. Finding your superpower might look like this: Hey, even though I got really lost, and that was a bunch of bonus miles I didn't count on, and I had no idea how far I'd gone or where I'd missed the turn, or I didn't know where it was, I didn't panic. I surprised myself. I got calm, thought it through, figured it out, got myself back on course, and then, instead of dropping, I figured I was still in the race, so I fought hard and I didn't once give up. Like, I never gave up believing I could still finish. Getting lost wasn't great, but I never stopped believing I could finish. So my superpower is staying calm under pressure, trusting my own navigation, and refusing to let a setback become a reason to stop.
Here's the example where you had a DNF where you dropped. Your superpower might be when you're writing it out and trying to find it might be like, hey, you know what? I got past every obstacle and there were a lot of crazy ones until that very last one. So my superpower here is looking at this bad result honestly and not shying away from it and not beating myself up, making it safe for me to look at dropping with curiosity. And that superpower leads me to another. I know that dropping like that is just not me. It didn't feel right in the moment to quit. I knew it was wrong even as I did it. So, hey, I have a strong inner compass I can trust.
In the third case, the DNF where you timed out, you might say, hey, you know what? From the moment I realized my mistake of going out too slow and corrected it, I ran incredibly strong the whole rest of the race. Even while I was falling and slipping in the mud and getting frustrated about it, I ran out all out all the way to the last aid station. I did not give up. I dug deep, not just for a moment, but for like, now that I think about it, 55 miles out of the 100K. That is a lot of digging deep. I did not give up. I used everything I had and surprised myself. So my superpower is relentless commitment. I kept going all out even after the mistake, even after all the falling and the frustration, even knowing cutoff might catch me. That's the second step. Third step, reframe the story.
Now, you get to take the superpower that you just identified and rewrite the story. And this is key here. You're rewriting it as the hero. Focus on how you overcame obstacles and used superpowers you didn't know you had, how this ended in triumph, no matter what the number or the letters say.
So this might look like this. If you had the slow result, it might look like, this was extreme pressure getting lost in a race. I didn't know how far I was or where I even was. It would have been so easy to panic, but instead I got calm and cool, so calm and cool that I figured it out. And I even pulled out a finish that like on paper probably looked impossible. It felt impossible. I trusted myself the whole way though. I never doubted that I could do it and that feels fantastic.
The DNF where you dropped, rewriting that story might sound like this, you know, it's weird that I dropped and I trust myself now more, not less. I know that I have that inner compass inside that I can trust. And that tells me, even though I'm feeling down and it seems logical to drop that it's just not what I'm meant to do. I'm meant to finish and I can trust that voice to back me up. I ignored it in the race, but now I know how to listen to it. That race changed my relationship with myself. And I know for sure I'm not going to do that to myself again. I'm stronger now.
So, the DNF where you timed out, retelling that story might be, I am so ridiculously proud of the way I ran that race. I didn't know I had that in me. Even with all the mud and the slipping and sliding, I did not go quietly. I did not give up. I can honestly say I fought for every second and every step with a strength I didn't know I had. That's actually one of my best races even if I didn't finish it. One of my strongest races ended in DNF, and that's kind of funny. But I'm proud of it. I definitely know that I have more in me than I thought. That is going to be so fun to play with in the next race.
So, those are the three steps. Those are some examples to help you rewrite your own story about a race. Name the dragon, the challenge you faced in the race that led to the result. Find your superpowers that you discovered in how you dealt with that dragon, and then reframe the story in an accurate way that serves you better.
This is actually a mastery skill. It's not a feel-good exercise or pretending the race went better than it did. The best ultra runners I know are the authors of their own races. They decide what the story is.
This is uncovering the superpowers that you miss when you worry about the number or those three dreaded letters. And the story you retell here is just as valid as any negative, self-blaming version that your brain hands you. And it's smarter to recognize the strengths you have, see them even though the race might not have gone the way you wanted to and tell a good version of the story rather than a bad story. Those are both legitimate versions. The negative story your brain hands you and the one you retell, both legitimate versions of the same facts. So why not tell a stronger story?
This is why also, just as an aside, I track a client in their race if I can and check their result as the race finishes. I'm dying to know how the race went, but I know when I look at those results and I see a number or heaven forbid, the three letters DNF, I know that's not the story. I always am dying to hear the story of the race and help them evaluate the race afterwards because the number or those letters are not the story. And what I also know is there are always superpowers at work that they can miss or discount in their frustration about the result. There are always superpowers there even if the race result wasn't what they wanted.
And that's the choice you have too. You can tell a different version of the story. Why would you choose a negative version that makes you miserable and sucks the energy out of you and makes you hate ultra running? Why not choose a strong version of the race that gives you the confidence that you earned? Like, I'm not making these superpowers up. You earned them. You put those superpowers to use. Why not choose a stronger version of that story that's going to fuel you to run better and get excited about the next race?
There are a million valid versions of the story you can tell about a race. And it's just plain smart to choose the one that feels good and is going to help you run better and enjoy ultra running more.
Writing your own story instead of just letting the fear in your brain write it for you is powerful. And that's one of the strongest skills you can have, deciding how to see yourself and your running. And it's not just a feel-good exercise. This can literally change how you run, how you see ultra running, what you see as possible for yourself. When you write the story, you're not a victim of the bad result. You're an ultra runner who faced a dragon, a dragon, and came out knowing something about yourself that number can never tell anyone.
When you rewrite your story, you can stop worrying about the number. That finish time and the results list is just one tiny data point about one race. It's trivial. Without the story, that number has no meaning, and you get to decide what the story is. When you're not worried about the number, you can do also what you came to do in the race, and that is enjoy it and create a new story.
And here's the reality. Some people are going to get it wrong. Some people are going to jump to conclusions, and that's fine. You're not running for their approval. You know the story of the race and that's what matters.
So remember this, every race creates a number, but the number isn't the story. And no matter what the number, your race deserves a good story. There's a superpower in there. You just need to find it, and that's what matters. That's not just a better way to feel about a race. That is mental mastery.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 55. Here's something that comes up a lot in coaching sessions, and it often comes up early, first thing. Clients will often start out by confessing that there's this thing that they know shouldn't bother them, but it does, but it really shouldn't, but it does. And they waffle around a little bit before they confess what it is. And what is it? It's a race result that they don't like. A slow finish time or a finish place near the end or a DNF that's now on their record.
And what I see is they know why they got that result. That's not a mystery. But what's eating at them is the number or those letters, those three dreaded letters, DNF. That's what's bothering them. And if that's you, this isn't a silly thing. And it's not something that you shouldn't let bother you. Like anything that bothers you in ultra running, it's not something that shouldn't be there. It's something worth getting curious about why it does bother you. And what's bothering them here is that the number is only a number. It's not the story. And a race is a story.
When you have a race result that you don't like, the first thing you feel after the frustration and disappointment of the race is embarrassment because now that number is public. Anybody can see it. So you have this urge to start managing what people see. You want to give the reasons for the number before anybody asks. You know the story, you can give them, you know why, and you can explain it. You want to make sure that people understand the circumstances of the race that you were dealing with. You explain it, you defend it, you justify it. You need them to know you're a much better runner than that number says. It's not how you could have run. You could have run so much better than that.
And here's how you know this is happening to you: you feel anxious. There's this urgency to it. You need to get to people to explain the number before they form the wrong opinion about you and about the race. But you can't be everywhere with everybody that might see that result. You can't control every single conversation that people might have about that result. So somebody is going to look at that number or those three letters DNF and maybe think poorly of you or less of you.
So what you do in that circumstance, because you can't control everybody in the world, is you do the only other thing you can do, and you just hope people forget about it. You pretend it doesn't bother you even though it really does.
And if that's not stressful enough, here's where the real damage starts. It's not just a stressful thing, but there are real negative consequences that come from this cycle. It's not in how other people see that result, but in what you do next because of it. Because to you, that number kind of becomes this blot on your record that you need to hide or erase. And since you can't do the race over, you start planning how to fix it. You try to get enough better results to water this one down and make it look like a stray, a one-off, or an anomaly.
And that's when the fear starts running your training and your races, making all of it miserable. Because what you're trying to do here is you can't have another bad result. You have to water that one bad result down, so you start avoiding taking any kind of risk. Much less the risk to get the big results you want. You'd rather get a finish or a bunch of finishes at easy races that you aren't necessarily excited about than risk failing at the races you really do want to run. So what ends up happening is you start running not to lose instead of running to win.
And the cruel irony of all of this is that it doesn't even work. Running scared like this, running to not make mistakes and not lose, doesn't protect you from getting bad results, even at easy races. Those can still happen at those easy races where you think there's not that much risk. So running scared like this just makes sure that you never get the results that you're actually capable of in those races that you really do want to do.
So, the real problem here with a bad result isn't the number, those digits on the results list or those three letters, DNF. Those are just neutral things. It's not your training, it's not the weather in the race, it's not even the things going on in your full, busy life. The real problem here is simpler than any of that, and that's good news. It is that you haven't decided how to tell the story of the race. You've just been listening to your brain tell the story to you and accepting whatever it comes up with.
And here's how that's actually happening. Here's how that works. You're frantically trying to control what other people think about that result because you know the number doesn't tell the whole story, right? They might get it wrong and they might think less of you. That number is not what you're truly capable of. But that fear that they might get it wrong and think less of you, it's not really about them. You're worried about how others will see you because that's already how you see yourself. Your brain has handed you that verdict, given you that judgment the moment you cross the finish line or didn't, and you accepted what your brain told you without question.
So you're not actually fighting other people's judgment about you. You're fighting your own judgment about you and then outsourcing it to them.
When you're stressing about what people will think about this result, you know that it's just a data point. That number is just a data point and they don't know the story, and you want to give them the story. But you haven't decided what that story is. You're just trying to tell them not to think a bad story about you, but you haven't decided what the good story is.
So the solution here isn't to manage their perception, it's for you to decide what the story of the race actually is. You get to tell the story first. Because when you change your story, that changes the whole energy of it. When you know the real story, you naturally stop worrying about how other people misinterpret it or judge you. You know the story and you feel solid and good about it, and that's all that matters. That creates confidence. Let them misjudge you. You know what you're capable of and how that race actually made you stronger, how it actually gave you a priceless gift.
Your brain isn't telling you the one and only true version of the story, okay? It's making up a negative story out of the raw materials of the facts. And you can take that same raw material, put some thought into it, and make a better, stronger story that is—and get me here—just as true. And a story that helps you run better and enjoy your ultra running more.
Runners who master the mental side of ultra running don't outsource their story to whatever anybody else out there thinks, or to what their brain just kind of tells them, feeds them. They're the authority on their own race. Theirs, what they decide the story of the race is, that is the real version.
So deciding how to tell your story of the race isn't spin. It's actually a skill that separates runners who care about how they think about their own running from runners who worry about what others think about their running.
And to help you build this skill, I'm going to share an exercise I learned a long, long time ago from Martha Beck that showed me the power that we have over how we choose to think about the facts of our life.
And when I first read this exercise, I had no idea that a story of your life or a race could have different versions. It just never occurred to me. I thought at the time, a long time ago, that the miserable, victimy story I was telling myself about my life at that point in time was just the truth of the world and the only way to see it. I mean, it was factual. But I thought, okay, here's this exercise. It sounds fun. I love hero stories. So why not give this thing a try? So I sat down and wrote this out and really put some thought into it. It was fun. And I had been thinking I was powerless all that time. And I remember the moment doing that exercise when I saw how powerful I actually was. It changed my life. And so, let's do that for your race. So what we're going to do here is tell your story of the race as a hero's story.
And two things before we start. First, I highly, highly recommend that you handwrite this out. Writing has been showed by a ton of studies to stimulate your brain, increase your focus, and help you see patterns and insights. Thinking it out with pen or pencil on a page of paper creates deeper reflection and insight that you're going to need here and you might otherwise miss. And that depth of thinking really matters here because I know if I had just taken this exercise out on a run and done it in my head, I would never, ever have found my own aha. I really had to sit down and write it out to get where I got with it and to have the magic of this exercise work for me.
The second thing I want you to do first is you have to be willing to put yourself in the spot where this is going to succeed. You have to be willing to see that race result in a different way. And by willing, I mean you have to want to see things differently and be open to it and not dismissive of every possibility that comes up. Don't passively expect this process to just do step one, two, three and expect it to create the result for you. You have to put the effort in, the mental effort.
What that looks like is you have to let go of any negative story that you're telling yourself about the result, no matter how firmly you believe the story is negative. Give yourself some time, just set that negative story about how the race was a disaster aside for a moment and explore some different ways here of seeing things. You can pick that negative story back up again afterwards if you want to, but for the moment at least, just set it aside long enough to be willing to let your mind explore different possibilities that you might not see right now.
So, this is a three-step process, and the first step is name the dragon. Here, what we're doing is you describe the challenging, tough experience you faced. Maybe it was the moment you DNF'd, maybe it was the whole race. The one or several tough experiences that you had in the race, the thing that led to the bad result.
However small or big this is, this is your dragon. Now, describe what happened. Go ahead and let loose here. Get it all out of your system on paper. Let the words flow about how this thing happened and how bad it was. And I'm going to give you three examples as we go through these steps just to show you how this might work.
So let's say you had a slow finish time or a bad place that wasn't typical for you. Here's how you might talk about your dragon. It might be like this: I missed a turn and I got lost. I realized it maybe 30 minutes later. I figured it out, but all my friends finished hours ahead of me, hours. I ended up last and making people wait on me. So that's the dragon in that case.
Let's pick another case. If you had a DNF where you dropped, you voluntarily dropped. The dragon might be phrased like this: I was tired, cold, and demoralized when I got to mile 75 in the 100-miler. I had such high hopes, but the race wasn't going the way I planned. It just wasn't my day. And the only other three runners at that aid station at mile 75 were all dropping and getting into a nice warm car to take them back to the start. And I would have been alone out there all night by myself. So I dropped too. That's that person's dragon.
Third case, let's say this is a DNF where you timed out. Dragon might be described like this: I made a stupid mistake in a 100K and started out too slow. I should have remembered the race has tight cutoffs, and I remembered that a few miles in and picked up the pace, but the moment I did, it started raining and the course got so muddy. I was having a hard time staying upright. I lost count of the times I slipped and fell, and it was exhausting and demoralizing. I wanted to cry. Other people didn't seem to be having the same hard time, and that was even more frustrating. I tried so hard and I could have finished, but I just happened to be too slow to make the very last cutoff. That's that person's dragon.
Okay, that is the first step. Next step, find your superpowers. In this step, what we're doing is finding the internal tools, things like traits and strengths and skills that you have that you used in that moment or you used in this situation.
Ask yourself, what did I actually do in that tough situation and what did that require? I'm going to give you a big list of superpowers here to help prompt you. Superpowers are things like ambition, drive, seeing possibility, digging deep, betting on yourself, running your own race, not quitting even when you had the reason to, solving your problems quickly or in an ingenious way, keeping promises to yourself, resourcefulness, physical toughness, emotional regulation, knowing your body, keeping your head when others didn't, honoring your promise to yourself, refusing to catastrophize.
So those are some of the superpowers you could have. And the way I like to frame this step is it's kind of a, hey, wait a minute, that was actually kind of badass, realization step. That's the vibe to have in this step. This is where you want to put the thinking effort into to explore different ways of seeing the race that you might not normally see. And here are the same three examples, just as examples.
Let's say you got a slow result. This is the slow result case. Finding your superpower might look like this: Hey, even though I got really lost, and that was a bunch of bonus miles I didn't count on, and I had no idea how far I'd gone or where I'd missed the turn, or I didn't know where it was, I didn't panic. I surprised myself. I got calm, thought it through, figured it out, got myself back on course, and then, instead of dropping, I figured I was still in the race, so I fought hard and I didn't once give up. Like, I never gave up believing I could still finish. Getting lost wasn't great, but I never stopped believing I could finish. So my superpower is staying calm under pressure, trusting my own navigation, and refusing to let a setback become a reason to stop.
Here's the example where you had a DNF where you dropped. Your superpower might be when you're writing it out and trying to find it might be like, hey, you know what? I got past every obstacle and there were a lot of crazy ones until that very last one. So my superpower here is looking at this bad result honestly and not shying away from it and not beating myself up, making it safe for me to look at dropping with curiosity. And that superpower leads me to another. I know that dropping like that is just not me. It didn't feel right in the moment to quit. I knew it was wrong even as I did it. So, hey, I have a strong inner compass I can trust.
In the third case, the DNF where you timed out, you might say, hey, you know what? From the moment I realized my mistake of going out too slow and corrected it, I ran incredibly strong the whole rest of the race. Even while I was falling and slipping in the mud and getting frustrated about it, I ran out all out all the way to the last aid station. I did not give up. I dug deep, not just for a moment, but for like, now that I think about it, 55 miles out of the 100K. That is a lot of digging deep. I did not give up. I used everything I had and surprised myself. So my superpower is relentless commitment. I kept going all out even after the mistake, even after all the falling and the frustration, even knowing cutoff might catch me. That's the second step. Third step, reframe the story.
Now, you get to take the superpower that you just identified and rewrite the story. And this is key here. You're rewriting it as the hero. Focus on how you overcame obstacles and used superpowers you didn't know you had, how this ended in triumph, no matter what the number or the letters say.
So this might look like this. If you had the slow result, it might look like, this was extreme pressure getting lost in a race. I didn't know how far I was or where I even was. It would have been so easy to panic, but instead I got calm and cool, so calm and cool that I figured it out. And I even pulled out a finish that like on paper probably looked impossible. It felt impossible. I trusted myself the whole way though. I never doubted that I could do it and that feels fantastic.
The DNF where you dropped, rewriting that story might sound like this, you know, it's weird that I dropped and I trust myself now more, not less. I know that I have that inner compass inside that I can trust. And that tells me, even though I'm feeling down and it seems logical to drop that it's just not what I'm meant to do. I'm meant to finish and I can trust that voice to back me up. I ignored it in the race, but now I know how to listen to it. That race changed my relationship with myself. And I know for sure I'm not going to do that to myself again. I'm stronger now.
So, the DNF where you timed out, retelling that story might be, I am so ridiculously proud of the way I ran that race. I didn't know I had that in me. Even with all the mud and the slipping and sliding, I did not go quietly. I did not give up. I can honestly say I fought for every second and every step with a strength I didn't know I had. That's actually one of my best races even if I didn't finish it. One of my strongest races ended in DNF, and that's kind of funny. But I'm proud of it. I definitely know that I have more in me than I thought. That is going to be so fun to play with in the next race.
So, those are the three steps. Those are some examples to help you rewrite your own story about a race. Name the dragon, the challenge you faced in the race that led to the result. Find your superpowers that you discovered in how you dealt with that dragon, and then reframe the story in an accurate way that serves you better.
This is actually a mastery skill. It's not a feel-good exercise or pretending the race went better than it did. The best ultra runners I know are the authors of their own races. They decide what the story is.
This is uncovering the superpowers that you miss when you worry about the number or those three dreaded letters. And the story you retell here is just as valid as any negative, self-blaming version that your brain hands you. And it's smarter to recognize the strengths you have, see them even though the race might not have gone the way you wanted to and tell a good version of the story rather than a bad story. Those are both legitimate versions. The negative story your brain hands you and the one you retell, both legitimate versions of the same facts. So why not tell a stronger story?
This is why also, just as an aside, I track a client in their race if I can and check their result as the race finishes. I'm dying to know how the race went, but I know when I look at those results and I see a number or heaven forbid, the three letters DNF, I know that's not the story. I always am dying to hear the story of the race and help them evaluate the race afterwards because the number or those letters are not the story. And what I also know is there are always superpowers at work that they can miss or discount in their frustration about the result. There are always superpowers there even if the race result wasn't what they wanted.
And that's the choice you have too. You can tell a different version of the story. Why would you choose a negative version that makes you miserable and sucks the energy out of you and makes you hate ultra running? Why not choose a strong version of the race that gives you the confidence that you earned? Like, I'm not making these superpowers up. You earned them. You put those superpowers to use. Why not choose a stronger version of that story that's going to fuel you to run better and get excited about the next race?
There are a million valid versions of the story you can tell about a race. And it's just plain smart to choose the one that feels good and is going to help you run better and enjoy ultra running more.
Writing your own story instead of just letting the fear in your brain write it for you is powerful. And that's one of the strongest skills you can have, deciding how to see yourself and your running. And it's not just a feel-good exercise. This can literally change how you run, how you see ultra running, what you see as possible for yourself. When you write the story, you're not a victim of the bad result. You're an ultra runner who faced a dragon, a dragon, and came out knowing something about yourself that number can never tell anyone.
When you rewrite your story, you can stop worrying about the number. That finish time and the results list is just one tiny data point about one race. It's trivial. Without the story, that number has no meaning, and you get to decide what the story is. When you're not worried about the number, you can do also what you came to do in the race, and that is enjoy it and create a new story.
And here's the reality. Some people are going to get it wrong. Some people are going to jump to conclusions, and that's fine. You're not running for their approval. You know the story of the race and that's what matters.
So remember this, every race creates a number, but the number isn't the story. And no matter what the number, your race deserves a good story. There's a superpower in there. You just need to find it, and that's what matters. That's not just a better way to feel about a race. That is mental mastery.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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