11. Why Can’t I Finish? The DNF Question That Holds You Back
Dropping out of races creates a particular kind of shame that goes beyond simple disappointment. I dropped out of Umstead 100 twice, despite it being one of the easiest 100-mile courses at the time. Those DNFs led me to a devastating conclusion: I was weak-willed, I gave up easily, and I simply didn't have the mental strength that other ultra runners possessed.
When you quit multiple times, the failure starts to feel personal. The question that haunts you isn't about strategy or preparation anymore. It becomes about your fundamental worth as a runner. But I discovered something that changed everything: the problem wasn't me, it was the way I was thinking about those drops.
In this episode, I break down why asking "What's wrong with me?" after DNFs keeps you stuck in shame and poor performance. You’ll learn a simple three-column process to turn painful race experiences into actionable solutions and how to separate race outcomes from your worth, allowing you to race from possibility, not fear.
Ready to stop dropping and start finishing stronger? Join my free masterclass, How Not to Drop, on June 26, 2025 at 12 PM ET! I'll show you how to recognize the 5 stages that lead ultra-runners to quit—and how to catch yourself before you spiral. Sign up now at susanidonnelly.com/masterclass.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why the question "Why can't I finish?" is actually a harmful statement disguised as a question.
How your brain uses DNFs to build a false narrative about your capabilities as an ultra runner.
A three-column analysis process to identify patterns across multiple DNFs and create targeted solutions.
How to separate race outcomes from your worth as a person and runner.
The three key differences in how experienced runners approach and learn from DNFs.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Join my free masterclass on June 26, 2025 to learn how to stop dropping and start finishing stronger - sign up here!
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Full Episode Transcript:
There was a time in my early ultra running when I thought I just didn't have what it takes to finish hundreds. I dropped out of Umstead 100 two years in a row, one of the easiest 100-mile courses out there at the time. It was a flat, crushed gravel loop course in glorious, beautiful springtime. I swore I'd finish, and I fully expected to. But I dropped, twice.
Add in a couple of DNFs at Leadville around the same time and a story started building in my head that seemed true. And that is, I'm weak willed. I give up easily. I'm not as strong and capable a person as I thought I was. I've failed at other things in life and I'm obviously going to fail at this too. I love this, but sadly, I don't have the mental strength that others have.
But then, something life-changing happened. I started learning coaching tools and I realized something that changed my ultra running and my life forever. I wasn't the problem. It wasn't me. It was the way I was thinking.
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.
Hey there, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about something that happens to a lot of ultra runners and when it hits, it can shake your confidence to the core. That moment when you've dropped out of one race, maybe two, maybe more, and suddenly you're wondering what's wrong with you.
The question that loops endlessly in your head is, "Why can't I finish? Why can't I finish?" This episode is about what that question really means, why it's keeping you stuck, and what to do instead to get back to finishing races and feeling good about it. So, let's dive in.
And let's start with how it feels to drop from a couple of races. And when I say drop, I'm talking about drops where you regret it later because you wish you could have gone on and you know you could have gone on. I'm not talking about races that you drop for injury. I'm talking about the drops that you regret.
So, let's say you've dropped out of a few big races in a row. Not just short ones or tune-up races, races that you really care about, races you trained hard for. You were ready on paper, the training was solid, but when things got hard in the race you gave up. And now, it's not just disappointment you're feeling, it's shame.
So you're afraid to sign up for another race. Not because you can't handle the training or because you wouldn't be physically ready, but because you're scared of that moment where you're going to drop again. And one more failure feels like it would just totally confirm the thing you're already scared might be true about yourself.
You thought you belonged in the world of big, challenging ultras. You were so excited to run them and step up and sign up for them. But now that belief is wobbly.
And when you start questioning your place in the sport, it gets negative really fast. You're afraid of what other people might think. You're really afraid that they'll see you as someone who was so delusional that she thought she could do it, but obviously really can't, that you don't belong with them like you thought you did. And you made a fool out of yourself. And maybe the loudest fear of all, that they'd be right.
So you start protecting yourself from another drop and avoiding any risk that it's going to happen. You start telling yourself that maybe you don't need to run another hundred right now. You need a break. That what you really need is to find an easy race to finish, to boost your confidence. Or that this 50K will be enough. And maybe you really like 50Ks. You weren't cut out for the hundred thing. You don't really like hundreds. Even though deep down, those easier races and shorter races aren't really what you want.
And you try and make peace with all of it, but you're still carrying that dread around. You're not excited about those easier, shorter races that your heart's not really in. You're just hoping not to drop again.
And deep down, you're also scared that you might quit those races too. You're trying hard to feel confident, but it's actually getting harder and harder to access that feeling. And here's the trap. That fear of dropping again actually makes you more likely to drop again, which then just confirms your worst fear about yourself. So now, it's gone beyond a few DNFs and you're questioning who you are as a runner. Now, it's about you.
Here's what's actually going on, though. When you ask yourself, "Why can't I finish?" you're not really asking a question. You're making a statement, and that statement is, "Something is wrong with me."
Your brain is stacking up a few times you haven't done what you said you were going to do. You haven't finished no matter what. You've given up and quit instead, and it's taking those times and it's turning them into a blanket statement about you. It's turning them into a judgment about your worthiness. That's the real problem.
You've collapsed all those race outcomes into a single global assessment about who you are. And when you do that, your brain just goes to work looking for more evidence to support that, evidence to prove you're lacking. And it starts scanning wider outside ultra running for every weakness, every past failure, every moment in life where you've struggled, and it brings all that in to confirm your fear that, "I'm just no good at this."
And the worst part? The worst part is that as bad as all this feels, and it feels really bad, the worst part is that that thinking never, ever, ever leads to better results. It doesn't motivate you, it doesn't teach you, and it definitely doesn't help you solve problems or find solutions. It just makes you feel worse about yourself.
And when you feel worse about yourself, less confident, less worthy, and a failure, you race worse. You run tense and anxious and hesitant and disconnected from everything you're doing, just thinking about the fear of dropping and how you're not going to drop. And the moment things get hard, you're thinking about it so much and you expect it so much that it's easy to quit because your brain already decided you would. You expected to drop.
So this pattern keeps you stuck in giving up and dropping. But, thankfully, there's a way out. And here it is. Instead of asking, "Why can't I finish?" change your focus and ask this: "What factors led to each of those DNFs?" Not what's wrong with me, but what actually happened?
This question pulls you out of the quagmire of shame and puts you back in action. It gives your brain something actually useful to do, something that's going to lead to solutions instead of self-pity, to figuring out what actually happened.
When you ask this question, you step out of uselessly blaming yourself and into analysis. Now you're looking at it objectively instead of judging yourself, and that allows you to clear away that fog of shame and get to the real data. And now you can actually see what happened and what to fix.
Because every time you drop when you could have gone on to finish, there are factors that set the stage, things like going out too fast or getting dehydrated or not fueling enough. And then there's a defined series of steps that actually lead you to dropping. And you can remove those factors and stop any of those steps that lead to dropping. They're all fixable.
But you can't fix any of it if you keep thinking you're weak and you aren't willing to look at how the drop actually happened. You can't make real progress if you're busy using race results as evidence that you're not a real ultra runner.
So here's a process that I used for years and years as an engineer with causal analysis and I use with coaching clients, and it really works. It's very simple, easy, and it works.
So, I want you to do this separately for every race you've dropped, the ones that you're making mean that you're a failure. And for each of these races, I want you to make three columns on a piece of paper or a table on your computer, your choice.
And for each race, ask, in the first column, "What went wrong?" List everything you can think of that made you think that dropping was the only solution. What reasons did you use to justify it, or what things prompted you to think about dropping? List everything you can remember in that first column. And for instance, you got dehydrated.
Now, in the second column, for each one of those things you listed in the first column, ask, "What would have gone right in an ideal race?" Put that all in the second column. And let's just say for this dehydration example that in an ideal race, you'd obviously stay well hydrated.
Now, compare the first two columns. Why are they different? What caused this factor in the race that you dropped turn out differently than it would have in an ideal race? And list all of that in the third column.
For example, were you worried about cutoff and stressed about cutoff and not paying attention to how often you were drinking as the day heated up? Is that why you got dehydrated? Put that in the third column.
And if you have more than one drop race, great. Use that to your advantage. See if you notice any patterns across the races. Are the same challenges showing up? And are you always underfueling early or always going out too fast or always panicking when things get uncertain?
And once you've done that, once you've got your three columns and once you've looked at any patterns across multiple dropped races, identify fixes. This should be easy because now you're not guessing at what to fix. You're forming smart, specific changes based on real data.
And when you're done with this exercise and you've done this for all the races that you think make you a failure, you have an action plan. You have ways to prevent another drop, targeted ways to prevent another drop.
This is how you rebuild your confidence. Not by pretending quitting was a smart decision, but by learning everything you can from those dropped races and making targeted changes that aim at the things that actually led you to dropping. Remember, when you drop out of a race, you lose the finish, but you don't have to lose the value of that race unless you waste it beating yourself up.
So, in my case, dropping now looks like this. Fortunately, I've dropped a couple times in the past few years, so I have some examples to tell you. I dropped at Javelina 100 and Zumbro 100 in the past couple of years, decades after those early drops at Umstead and Leadville. So I have these examples to compare to. And here are three things that are different now that I no longer make it mean that I'm the problem.
First thing is, I don't just fall into dropping anymore. You know the way dropping just kind of happens and you feel helpless and suddenly you find you're dropping? I don't do that. I don't drop and wonder what happened and where my resolve went. In the rare cases I do drop, it's a reasoned decision based on defined criteria. In both Javelina and Zumbro, I was actually dealing with an injury and thought I'd likely fixed it, but the answer in both races was clearly, "Eh, not yet."
The second difference is that I obviously regret not finishing. We always want to finish. I'm not going to deny that. But the difference is that I don't regret dropping because I went out and I tried it and now I have more information from both races.
The only way to find out if my injury was healed was to actually go out and run the race and see. Sometimes you just can't tell how you're doing until you get into a long race and you go 50 or 70 miles that you're not going to go in training. But the answer was clearly not yet in both races and it wasn't the answer I wanted, but it was the answer I needed to know. Both times, I was able to see what still wasn't working and come up with new fixes.
And the third thing that's different about dropping now, and this is a big one, is that I don't make it mean anything about my worth as a human or as an ultra runner. I'm not a failure. I just simply failed to finish these two races. And trying those races showed me what I need to do next time. And I started finishing races again.
So, if you're thinking, "Why can't I finish? What's wrong with me?" I really want you to pause and step out of that trap. Don't combine a few race results into a verdict about who you are. You are not a failure. You don't like quitting because you know you're not a failure. You know you're better than that.
You're a runner who's working out a solution. That's all. You're an ultra runner who now has more information than you had before you ran those races. You have information that you need to work out a solution. And you have the information you need to run smarter and finish. When you're willing to resist the urge to make dropping out of a race a personal judgment against yourself and instead get curious and look at those painful races objectively, in detail, you find the answers you need about how to finish. And more than that, you'll start enjoying the process again because now you're racing from possibility. You're thinking, "These new solutions put me closer to a finish." You're racing from possibility, not fear, and that makes you unstoppable.
Thanks for being here today. If this episode hit home, share it with a friend who needs to hear it. And until next week, keep going. You've got this. 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.
Add in a couple of DNFs at Leadville around the same time and a story started building in my head that seemed true. And that is, I'm weak willed. I give up easily. I'm not as strong and capable a person as I thought I was. I've failed at other things in life and I'm obviously going to fail at this too. I love this, but sadly, I don't have the mental strength that others have.
But then, something life-changing happened. I started learning coaching tools and I realized something that changed my ultra running and my life forever. I wasn't the problem. It wasn't me. It was the way I was thinking.
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.
Hey there, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about something that happens to a lot of ultra runners and when it hits, it can shake your confidence to the core. That moment when you've dropped out of one race, maybe two, maybe more, and suddenly you're wondering what's wrong with you.
The question that loops endlessly in your head is, "Why can't I finish? Why can't I finish?" This episode is about what that question really means, why it's keeping you stuck, and what to do instead to get back to finishing races and feeling good about it. So, let's dive in.
And let's start with how it feels to drop from a couple of races. And when I say drop, I'm talking about drops where you regret it later because you wish you could have gone on and you know you could have gone on. I'm not talking about races that you drop for injury. I'm talking about the drops that you regret.
So, let's say you've dropped out of a few big races in a row. Not just short ones or tune-up races, races that you really care about, races you trained hard for. You were ready on paper, the training was solid, but when things got hard in the race you gave up. And now, it's not just disappointment you're feeling, it's shame.
So you're afraid to sign up for another race. Not because you can't handle the training or because you wouldn't be physically ready, but because you're scared of that moment where you're going to drop again. And one more failure feels like it would just totally confirm the thing you're already scared might be true about yourself.
You thought you belonged in the world of big, challenging ultras. You were so excited to run them and step up and sign up for them. But now that belief is wobbly.
And when you start questioning your place in the sport, it gets negative really fast. You're afraid of what other people might think. You're really afraid that they'll see you as someone who was so delusional that she thought she could do it, but obviously really can't, that you don't belong with them like you thought you did. And you made a fool out of yourself. And maybe the loudest fear of all, that they'd be right.
So you start protecting yourself from another drop and avoiding any risk that it's going to happen. You start telling yourself that maybe you don't need to run another hundred right now. You need a break. That what you really need is to find an easy race to finish, to boost your confidence. Or that this 50K will be enough. And maybe you really like 50Ks. You weren't cut out for the hundred thing. You don't really like hundreds. Even though deep down, those easier races and shorter races aren't really what you want.
And you try and make peace with all of it, but you're still carrying that dread around. You're not excited about those easier, shorter races that your heart's not really in. You're just hoping not to drop again.
And deep down, you're also scared that you might quit those races too. You're trying hard to feel confident, but it's actually getting harder and harder to access that feeling. And here's the trap. That fear of dropping again actually makes you more likely to drop again, which then just confirms your worst fear about yourself. So now, it's gone beyond a few DNFs and you're questioning who you are as a runner. Now, it's about you.
Here's what's actually going on, though. When you ask yourself, "Why can't I finish?" you're not really asking a question. You're making a statement, and that statement is, "Something is wrong with me."
Your brain is stacking up a few times you haven't done what you said you were going to do. You haven't finished no matter what. You've given up and quit instead, and it's taking those times and it's turning them into a blanket statement about you. It's turning them into a judgment about your worthiness. That's the real problem.
You've collapsed all those race outcomes into a single global assessment about who you are. And when you do that, your brain just goes to work looking for more evidence to support that, evidence to prove you're lacking. And it starts scanning wider outside ultra running for every weakness, every past failure, every moment in life where you've struggled, and it brings all that in to confirm your fear that, "I'm just no good at this."
And the worst part? The worst part is that as bad as all this feels, and it feels really bad, the worst part is that that thinking never, ever, ever leads to better results. It doesn't motivate you, it doesn't teach you, and it definitely doesn't help you solve problems or find solutions. It just makes you feel worse about yourself.
And when you feel worse about yourself, less confident, less worthy, and a failure, you race worse. You run tense and anxious and hesitant and disconnected from everything you're doing, just thinking about the fear of dropping and how you're not going to drop. And the moment things get hard, you're thinking about it so much and you expect it so much that it's easy to quit because your brain already decided you would. You expected to drop.
So this pattern keeps you stuck in giving up and dropping. But, thankfully, there's a way out. And here it is. Instead of asking, "Why can't I finish?" change your focus and ask this: "What factors led to each of those DNFs?" Not what's wrong with me, but what actually happened?
This question pulls you out of the quagmire of shame and puts you back in action. It gives your brain something actually useful to do, something that's going to lead to solutions instead of self-pity, to figuring out what actually happened.
When you ask this question, you step out of uselessly blaming yourself and into analysis. Now you're looking at it objectively instead of judging yourself, and that allows you to clear away that fog of shame and get to the real data. And now you can actually see what happened and what to fix.
Because every time you drop when you could have gone on to finish, there are factors that set the stage, things like going out too fast or getting dehydrated or not fueling enough. And then there's a defined series of steps that actually lead you to dropping. And you can remove those factors and stop any of those steps that lead to dropping. They're all fixable.
But you can't fix any of it if you keep thinking you're weak and you aren't willing to look at how the drop actually happened. You can't make real progress if you're busy using race results as evidence that you're not a real ultra runner.
So here's a process that I used for years and years as an engineer with causal analysis and I use with coaching clients, and it really works. It's very simple, easy, and it works.
So, I want you to do this separately for every race you've dropped, the ones that you're making mean that you're a failure. And for each of these races, I want you to make three columns on a piece of paper or a table on your computer, your choice.
And for each race, ask, in the first column, "What went wrong?" List everything you can think of that made you think that dropping was the only solution. What reasons did you use to justify it, or what things prompted you to think about dropping? List everything you can remember in that first column. And for instance, you got dehydrated.
Now, in the second column, for each one of those things you listed in the first column, ask, "What would have gone right in an ideal race?" Put that all in the second column. And let's just say for this dehydration example that in an ideal race, you'd obviously stay well hydrated.
Now, compare the first two columns. Why are they different? What caused this factor in the race that you dropped turn out differently than it would have in an ideal race? And list all of that in the third column.
For example, were you worried about cutoff and stressed about cutoff and not paying attention to how often you were drinking as the day heated up? Is that why you got dehydrated? Put that in the third column.
And if you have more than one drop race, great. Use that to your advantage. See if you notice any patterns across the races. Are the same challenges showing up? And are you always underfueling early or always going out too fast or always panicking when things get uncertain?
And once you've done that, once you've got your three columns and once you've looked at any patterns across multiple dropped races, identify fixes. This should be easy because now you're not guessing at what to fix. You're forming smart, specific changes based on real data.
And when you're done with this exercise and you've done this for all the races that you think make you a failure, you have an action plan. You have ways to prevent another drop, targeted ways to prevent another drop.
This is how you rebuild your confidence. Not by pretending quitting was a smart decision, but by learning everything you can from those dropped races and making targeted changes that aim at the things that actually led you to dropping. Remember, when you drop out of a race, you lose the finish, but you don't have to lose the value of that race unless you waste it beating yourself up.
So, in my case, dropping now looks like this. Fortunately, I've dropped a couple times in the past few years, so I have some examples to tell you. I dropped at Javelina 100 and Zumbro 100 in the past couple of years, decades after those early drops at Umstead and Leadville. So I have these examples to compare to. And here are three things that are different now that I no longer make it mean that I'm the problem.
First thing is, I don't just fall into dropping anymore. You know the way dropping just kind of happens and you feel helpless and suddenly you find you're dropping? I don't do that. I don't drop and wonder what happened and where my resolve went. In the rare cases I do drop, it's a reasoned decision based on defined criteria. In both Javelina and Zumbro, I was actually dealing with an injury and thought I'd likely fixed it, but the answer in both races was clearly, "Eh, not yet."
The second difference is that I obviously regret not finishing. We always want to finish. I'm not going to deny that. But the difference is that I don't regret dropping because I went out and I tried it and now I have more information from both races.
The only way to find out if my injury was healed was to actually go out and run the race and see. Sometimes you just can't tell how you're doing until you get into a long race and you go 50 or 70 miles that you're not going to go in training. But the answer was clearly not yet in both races and it wasn't the answer I wanted, but it was the answer I needed to know. Both times, I was able to see what still wasn't working and come up with new fixes.
And the third thing that's different about dropping now, and this is a big one, is that I don't make it mean anything about my worth as a human or as an ultra runner. I'm not a failure. I just simply failed to finish these two races. And trying those races showed me what I need to do next time. And I started finishing races again.
So, if you're thinking, "Why can't I finish? What's wrong with me?" I really want you to pause and step out of that trap. Don't combine a few race results into a verdict about who you are. You are not a failure. You don't like quitting because you know you're not a failure. You know you're better than that.
You're a runner who's working out a solution. That's all. You're an ultra runner who now has more information than you had before you ran those races. You have information that you need to work out a solution. And you have the information you need to run smarter and finish. When you're willing to resist the urge to make dropping out of a race a personal judgment against yourself and instead get curious and look at those painful races objectively, in detail, you find the answers you need about how to finish. And more than that, you'll start enjoying the process again because now you're racing from possibility. You're thinking, "These new solutions put me closer to a finish." You're racing from possibility, not fear, and that makes you unstoppable.
Thanks for being here today. If this episode hit home, share it with a friend who needs to hear it. And until next week, keep going. You've got this. 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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